SPRINGFIELD, Va. — Johnny Manziel told reporters earlier this month that he'd welcome the chance to play in the XFL, calling it a "great opportunity."

But is the XFL interested in him?

"Well, I don’t know that yet," XFL commissioner Oliver Luck told USA TODAY Sports on Saturday. "That remains to be seen."

The startup spring football league, which will kick off in February, is currently holding a series of workouts in each of the eight cities that will house XFL teams — most recently in a suburb of Washington D.C. on Saturday morning. The invitation-only events are designed to give roughly 800 players a chance to audition in front of XFL coaches, with hopes of earning a spot in the league's draft pool in the coming months.

Manziel, the Heisman Trophy winner who has bounced from the NFL to the Canadian Football League and, most recently, the Alliance of American Football, has expressed interest about playing for XFL franchises in Dallas or Houston. Yet he did not receive an invitation to either workout.

When asked specifically about Manziel's status with the XFL, Luck said players who have not received invitations could still very well wind up in the league. Much will depend on the league's eight head coaches, he said.

"There are a lot of guys that played in the AAF and played all seven games or whatever they had. We didn’t invite them here because we’ve got enough tape on them," Luck said in an interview at the St. James athletic complex. "So Johnny has some tape, right? Whether it’s Canada — and we have two coaches from the CFL, (Marc) Trestman and June Jones. Or there’s college. What he did obviously in the NFL.

"If eight guys say, ‘we’d like that guy in the league,’ we’ll put him in the league. Or put him in the draft pool. Whether teams draft him, that’s up to the individual head coaches."

Luck said the XFL will probably sign between 200 and 250 of the players in this initial round of workouts to its draft pool. But the league plans to build the majority of its player base after NFL roster cuts — plucking talented quarterbacks, for example, who lose out on backup jobs. The XFL draft is expected to take place in October.

"A lot of this, you have to kind of look a little bit ahead and think about the kind of talent that we’ll have, right?" Luck said, in response to a second question about Manziel. "So last week in Dallas, Landry Jones participated. He just got cut from the Raiders. He was sort of in a battle for I guess the backup spot to Derrick Carr, with Mike Glennon. So that might happen three or four times with others in similar situations.

"There’s a lot of good players in that league that very well could get cut. Like Landry. So we have to make sure we kind of keep that in mind as we think about how we structure our draft pool."

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.