Arena Football is Ironman football
Tim Ball
Friday March 2, 2007
Barry Wagner is the best football player of all time.
Arena Football IS Ironman football.
That being written for “all-time,” the game of Arena Football will carry on throughout the ages if we let it.
The Arena game can survive John Elway and the NFL influences in the league.
Elway is not the devil. And no, I do not know either personally
Where was “Ironman Football” at the turn of the century?
Who knows? No one was talking about it but a select few in a league struggling to stay alive.
Sorry to disagree with my spirited co-parts here at ArenaFan Online and all of the other traditionalists out there, but before the influx of the NFLers, the AFL wasn’t looking to be a household word anytime soon.
Full-speed into third-class citizenry in the world of sports was where the best version of football every devised was headed.
Elway is not our enemy. But what is, is bad marketing and sales professionals employed for the success of any given franchise or the league as a whole.
You want to argue? The Ironman position is not the most crucial thing in the AFL.
Try keeping an Arena team in your town with 900 fans in attendance.
Try paying the salaries of the guys you love so much with tickets at five-bucks a piece!
How about we go back to a purer time when football players wore no face masks.
Six-figure salaries “in the AFL” are only going to quarterbacks you know. They’re one-way players by the way.
Find something else to debate. The change at Ironman is not going to end the AFL.
Empty seats will doom this league.
You get what you pay for
I was given access to a private suite for SaberCats games in 2001 by a friend whose Silicon Valley Company couldn’t get any employees to take them. My friend played football for Fresno State and never desired the Arena game and saw that I was feverish for it. He was a talented football player but opted for his six-figure salary acquiring microchips from Asia.
He chose gain with no pain.
As I felt a part of it all, I realized that free tickets were not helping “my” team. I knew that buying tickets gave me a vested interest in the team. And I still do. I also wanted to be with other fans in the seats.
We can argue aspects of the game all day long, but if you are not buying tickets to attend AFL games stop reading now. You are the only enemy I have in this article. Buzz off. I can understand the Ironman opinion without wanting you gone.
The most importance aspect of the game is ticket sales and seats being filled with fans. I’ve said that many times before. No one has an Arena Football team without money being involved.
Arena Football deserves a massive crowd at games. The real losers in this league are franchises that don’t put seats filled as job one.
NBC just never figured that out.
ESPN has made skate boarders and roller bladers into world class athletes.
If ESPN can turn those sports into fan venues, then Arena Football players should be on billboards in Times Square.
The NFLers are looking for a secure future and they are the ones willing to pay for it.
Let them decide the format of the game. If they ruin the game it will show when no one shows up.
Football player do not have tenure, even the big salary guys. Change is part of the professional life they have chosen to pursue. How many teams keep the same roster for years?
Ok “purists”
If you “purists” out there want to do something productive for football - any version of football - then start an award for blocking.
Nothing can happen in football without blocking. An aspect of football that can never change or be changed.
Everything revolves around blocking.
E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.
Even ticket sales.
You show me a losing a team, and I’ll show you bad blocking. I’ll show you the lack of a team for putting a “hat on a hat.” The Ironman is being replaced by a one-way and talented player. That cannot hurt the game itself. But you don’t have blockers your team can never win.
A huge reason the Chicago Bears lost the Super Bowl was that the Colt’s offensive line dominated that game. When a running back can waltz through the line of scrimmage, or “any” quarterback can drop back and have time for lunch, and a pass, that is when football is played right.
Get a hold of the Chicago Rush DVD on their Championship season and you’ll notice good blocks led them to the Promised Land.
Maybe only a lineman should be able to be called an Ironman?
I never knew there were two-way guys in the AFL when I first fell in love with the sport.
When I started paying for tickets, I was cheering TD’s great tackles and severe blocks, not sweat, gasping for air and limping.
I thought – as I do now – that “Ironman Football” IS Arena Football. Every player in the AFL is an Ironman due specifically to the game itself.
“By the way,” have any one of you “purists” written to ESPN’s Merril Hoge about his statements on the Arena Game being played on a field “half the size” of an NFL field?
Aren’t you “purists” interested in the game? The AFL field is one-quarter the size of the NFL version.
No matter who plays Arena Football, they will have to play it on an Arena Football field. A field encased in ion all around it. Just take a look under the sideline padding?
Arena Football IS Ironman football. Do you think these new one-way hotshots are not going to learn about the game the “hard” way?
Iron is very hard.
What is winning?
Not having a two-way guy busting his hump on every play is not going to be missed in the last minutes of an Arena game.
What will be missed is the team that doesn’t win or have the fan base with the guts and determination to support a team no matter what.
As in bye-bye. As in folding.
As in Las Vegas having to move to a YMCA or something like it to play this season because their last venue looked like a guy with leprosy.
Why aren’t you purists ranting about lousy marketing job by AFL teams like Las Vegas? That is what will harm us all.
The Gladiators will survive only with a fan base supporting “a team.” Who changed marketing rules? Drive those guys out of the league, not Elway. His team was embarrassing its first season and now has an ArenaBowl title hanging over its field.
Someone supported that team.
We fans of Arena Football are not losing that much with the Ironman not being a guy playing two-way. Come at me if you want to, but the game is not going to end with the change of the two-way player.
I’m not all that happy with the change, but life goes on.
What will end our days is no one showing up to games. The real enemy of Arena Football is bad management. Not NFLers. They look to be growing the sport that floundered for years in many places and succeeded in only a few.
What are you “purists” doing to fill seats? What’s going on in Arizona? Grand Rapids? Los Angeles? Not everyone is a Predators or Rush fan.
Empty seats means you will have no one to moan and groan to about changes.
Griping about the way things were isn’t going to benefit anyone.
Got a cell phone do ya’? Got a cell phone with a Microsoft operating system and built in keyboard in it do ya’?
Wanna go back to stopping at payphones? Wanna carry around your laptop all day long?
In some neighborhoods doing either can get you killed.
And what will certainly snuff out the Arena League is no one at the games.
NFLers vs. Purists
In just what way are these NFL guys disrespecting Arena Football and its history?
The Hall of Fame taking notice of the AFL will cement the guys you love and remember, in a way that the Arena game alone never could. Sorry folks but a fan club of twenty people ain’t gunna cut it eternity wise.
Barry “Wag’s” Wagner can and should have a place in football heaven.
I’ve never seen an athlete so talented.
Wagner is the Willie Mays of football. I don’t give a damn about the NFL mystique and never will.
Rashied Davis was open so many times for the Bears he could have sold T-Shirts from the field during the game mid-stride. His routes looked no different than his time in the AFL.
The real myth is that only the best football players are in the NFL. (I wish I could curse at this point.) Let’s argue about that.
Any AFL fan worth his season ticket knows the absurdity that the NFL is filled with the best of the best. If you want to eat B-S I’ll take you to a farm for lunch.
But, “Wag’s” and his story will not be told if the AFL wallows in mediocrity. And what about Hunkie Cooper, Darryl Hammond, James Roe etc., etc., etc.?
We should be telling their stories to all of America not just on fan site chat boards.
How many of us privileged to have seen Wag’s play could talk for ours about the great things we saw him do? What about Cooper doing it all as well?
In fact Mr. Purist, what do you talk about to people that haven’t heard of Arena Football or think so badly about it?
It should be spent every minute telling them about Arena Football and how incredible it is. Get people to go to games. Not with free tickets, but, by doing it the right way. Those players you claim to care about so much need paychecks. And if you haven’t noticed gas prices and houses are very expensive.
The NFLers, are looking to fill arenas with fans. They are looking to make Arena Football a league of greatness too.
Their way makes for success for the men that put their lives on the line down on the field.
Elway is not evil; he’s an ex-NFL quarterback and AFL franchise owner. Jon Bon Jovi plays guitar and sings and owns an AFL team. Why should we hate these guys?
(OK so seeing what MTV has done to society Bon Jovi may be the devil.)
Mr. “and” Ms. Purist, do yourself and the Arena Football League a favor and let the people paying the bills make the decisions.
If you don’t like their product then don’t buy it. Stop going to games. Or, buy yourself a franchise and fill your roster with two-way guys.
Bankruptcy isn’t the shameful stigma it once was so don’t worry about your ultimate failure and all of the players YOU will have to release.
Like that will help Barry Wagner and the game of Arena Football?
Wag’s should earn a paycheck now, at his age, on a coaching staff where he can use his future for someone else’s greatness. Then he should be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame where he and his career belong.
Go on
Well, after reading about the Nashville Kats and the Columbus Destroyers game, I see that the NFLers had no effect on the outcome. In fact: Columbus 58, Nashville 56, things look quite AFL.
So much for defensive expertise taking control of things.
Things go on.
The AFL is its own brand. It is its own game.
And seeing what happened in the first games of the year will be a telling sign of whether the rules changes are good or bad.
Now, if the league is willing to change rules, then the Ironman as a two-way player can come back.
What should take precedent is how many people were in attendance at the games. Will the teams that lost be able to retain their fan base?
That is what should be of most concern to all of us. Even to the ex-players of the Arena Football League.
Without a future there can be no place to talk about the past.
Tim Ball is a writer in the Chicagoland area. Married and father of three, his opinions on Arena Football reflects the positive aspect of the game as a family event second to none in pro sports.
