Tampa Bay’s XFL football team has filled a key role in its front office, tapping local sports marketing executive Josh Bullock to be its president.

Bullock comes to the XFL from the University of South Florida, where he had been the senior associate director of athletics and the senior director of development since March 2018. Prior to USF, Bullock had been the Tampa Bay Rays’ vice president of corporate partnerships for more than seven years.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, an official announcement could come as soon as today.

Bullock said he wasn’t looking to leave USF, but he was drawn to the uniqueness of the XFL job. He’ll oversee the team’s business operations and fan engagement.

“Opportunities like this just don’t happen in sports, to be part of building a professional sports franchise, to come in at the ground floor and be able to roll up your sleeves and really have impact,” he told the Times. “There’s so many advantages to doing it this way, where your voice can be heard. There’s not a whole lot of pre-existing rules and regulations. There’s very little baggage to kind of sort through to get something going.”

He was asked how he thought the AAF folding would impact the upcoming XFL Season.

“Them ceasing operations when they did, it does in a way clear a path in regards to players being available or its not as much of maybe a diluted product where fans are choosing between one league or the other,” Bullock said. “We would have gone down the path of both playing games at the same time, so I think it does clear the way a little bit just for focus during that time of year. That’s going to be the exciting piece — as soon as the Super Bowl is over, we’re going to ramp up and be really the only football product available.”

When considering the job, Bullock wanted to be sure that the rebooted XFL would be better than and different from the XFL of 19 years ago.

“A lot of my questions were about, ‘What’s the product going to be like? What’s the mission statement?” he said. “Because I initially thought about He Hate Me and the initial launch in 2001, so my gut reaction when the opportunity came to me, it was negative because I didn’t like the initial product. I think the people involved were very open to say, ‘That is over and done. It’s gone. This is completely different.’”

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UPDATE – Official Press Release from the XFL

JOSH BULLOCK NAMED PRESIDENT OF XFL TEAM IN TAMPA BAY