Remembering the Posse, Outlaws, Las Vegas’ pioneering pigskinners

With all of the attention being paid to the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas, it’s easy to forget that Las Vegas has been down this particular gridiron before.

Not at the level the NFL’s Raiders will bring, of course. But many Southern Nevada football fans still can remember the pro-or-nearly-so Las Vegas Posse of the Canadian Football League and the Las Vegas Outlaws of the XFL.

The Posse and the Outlaws lasted just one season apiece, but they offered area gridiron fans a tantalizing taste of what major league pro football could be like.

The Posse played here in in 1994 as part of a United States expansion effort by the CFL, that league from up north that plays on 110-yard fields, where a “rouge” is worth one point and the league champion is awarded the Grey Cup.

The Posse, which played at Sam Boyd Stadium, finished its season here 5-and-13, good for last place in its division and a quick departure.

Then, in 2001, came the Outlaws, the Las Vegas franchise in the made-for-TV XFL, created by WWE head Vince McMahon and NBC as what McMahon characterized as a rowdier, more rocking alternative to the “No Fun League.” Some of its technological innovations — mic-ed players, a camera on overhead cables that showed action down on the field — the NFL eventually would adopt, and some of its on-field innovations (no fair catches on punts, for example), not so much.

Players also could display on their jerseys nicknames rather than their surnames. That move made Outlaws’ running back Rod Smart the league’s breakout star for his nom de jersey of “He Hate Me.” (Smart later went on to play for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and Carolina Panthers.)

Paola Armeni saw the Outlaws play their one and only season from the sidelines as an Outlaws cheerleader. She was in her first year of law school at UNLV’s Boyd law school then and was the first XFL cheerleader to be featured in a videotaped profile. Hers ran during the Outlaws’ and the XFL’s nationally televised season opener.

Armeni previously had been a cheerleader for the Las Vegas Silver Bandits of the International Basketball League and noticed that the XFL — which returns Feb. 8 but without a Las Vegas team — “did a few things differently.” For example, she said, “we actually got a paycheck, and we also would get paid if we did any promotional events.”

Also, cheerleading squads received choreography from the league, which attempted to make cheerleaders as key a part of the game as the players.

“It was a great atmosphere,” said Armeni, now a partner in the Clark Hill law firm. “People were into it and enjoying it. It was a very dynamic time.”

Other football teams have given Southern Nevada a shot, including arena football’s Sting and Gladiators and the United Football League’s Las Vegas Locomotives. But it’s the Raiders that will put Las Vegas into football’s major leagues, ending a pigskin drought that had been threatening to go into perpetual overtime.

“I think we’ve all been waiting for it,” Armeni says.