- For the Price Is Right concept, see The
Price Is Right $1,000,000 Spectacular#Million Dollar
Game.
The
Million Dollar Game was the
XFL's championship game at the end of its only season in
2001. At first it had no special name, then was going to be called
"The Big Game at the End," but eventually received the name it
ended up with because a pot of one million dollars was to be split
among the players of the winning team.
The game was played on
Saturday April 21, 2001 at the LA Memorial Coliseum
.
The game was between the Western Division champion
Los Angeles Xtreme and the western
runner-up
San Francisco Demons.
The Xtreme defeated the Eastern Division runner-up
Chicago Enforcers 33-16 in the first round
while the Demons beat east champs
Orlando
Rage 26-25. Orlando had finished the 10-game regular season
with the XFL's best record, 8-2. Los Angeles was 7-3 while both
Chicago and San Francisco each finished 5-5 (Making Orlando and
L.A. the only two of the eight teams to finish with winning records
in the regular season; the
Memphis
Maniax were also 5-5 but San Francisco won the playoff berth on
a tie-breaker).
The Xtreme, led by regular-season Most Valuable Player
Tommy Maddox, won the Million Dollar Game 38-6.
The game's MVP was Xtreme kicker
Jose
Cortez, which was ironic considering the reduced role a kicker
had in the XFL, which did not have a point after touchdown (extra
point) kick in its rules and also paid kickers the least per game
on its salary scale.
After each had been released by
National Football League teams
earlier in their professional careers, both Maddox and Cortez
eventually found themselves back in the NFL. Maddox signed with the
Pittsburgh Steelers in 2001. He
replaced
Kordell Stewart in the 2002
season and led the Steelers into the playoffs. That performance
earned NFL Comeback Player of the Year honors. Maddox lost his
starting job to
Ben
Roethlisberger in 2005, and was released in 2006, however still
became the first former XFL player to be a part of a
Super Bowl champion after the Steelers won Super
Bowl XL over the
Seattle
Seahawks.
Cortez, however, has not enjoyed the degree of success Maddox has.
Although he scored over 100 points in the 2001 and 2002 NFL
seasons, he has mostly been a
journeyman,
called in to fill in for a team's injured kicker (For this reason,
he played for four teams in 2005).