The Barry Wagner Award
Tim Ball
Friday March 7, 2008
The best of all time.
The Willy Mays of . . .
Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali...
We have a name like that for the AFL:
Barry Wagner.
Comparisons are a thing of beauty. In sports they are a thing of history and legend. For example: In Chicago, there is such a player that evokes comparison to history and legend. DeJuan Alfonzo is his name. And like many putting up career numbers today, he represents that legend is indeed an on-going process.
What Alfonzo proved Monday night was that a rule change can bring excitement to the most exciting version of football ever devised and give rise to comparison debates that can rage on forever. That’s good for the league.
What would Wagner do with the jack linebacker rule change?
 Barry Wagner Image courtesy of Ken LaRue |
Weekly awards can start the debate raging.
And of course, in keeping with the Wagner legend, Alfonzo is Ironman of the Week. But this article is not really about Alfonzo, it is about history and respect of it.
If you do not like Arena Football, there’s something wrong with you that I can’t cure. More than likely a girly-man whiner, or, whatever. My perspective on the AFL is not open for debate here. Email me and I’ll bash you properly there.
OK, I’m sorry.
With all due respect to ladies in the league like Jenn Boehm and Teri Schafer, I should have known better than to use that phraseology. But still, if anyone liking football doesn’t like Arena version of it, they are unimportant to me here.
Did you see that?
This jack linebacker rule change is something to behold and an indication that the game of arena football can endure alterations. The game is better for it.
Now, in keeping with “the best of all time” theme, Mark Grieb is as good a quarterback as has ever thrown a football on any field anywhere. Yeah, Johnny Unitas and his outdoor gang have company. Move over NFL, you’re no longer awe inspiring. That era died in my world after I watched my third AFL game.
The Chicago Rush’s Alfonzo displayed why changes in some of the structure of the AFL game are good.
Now a guy like Grieb can bring his team back from just about any point deficit. You have to stop him to stop the SaberCats.
In one fell swoop, in the fourth quarter of the Rush versus SaberCats game Monday night, Alfonzo took what the League and Grieb offered him and was “out of the box” for an interception that sealed the fate of the reigning ArenaBowl Champions.
Notice the “scores” in week one? This will always be a league of offense. So purists take your meds and relax.
History in the making
There’s a lot of little catch phrases to describe the arena football game. The "Fifty Yard Indoor War" and "Don’t Blink!" are two of my favorites, but the one I hear most often coming from people in the seats is, "Did you see that?”
That’s yet to don a t-shirt, but it is the unofficial league mantra. And of course in arena football if you did blink or sneeze, you didn’t “see that.”
Wagner was “did you see that” in the flesh.
There are still thousands of original fans that know who was the best that ever played. “Touchdown” Eddie Brown for example will be brought to the forefront in Wagner comparisons in some minds, but that is for discussion elsewhere.
There are stats pages to use as your study guide for who the good players are and were, but any football fan knows that stats are not always where you find greatness.
The Ironman Award is about all-time greatness.
With AFL roster sizes the way they are, there will always be the need for multi-purpose players. Even in the outdoor pro-league, players play a position and on special teams. For sure there are other players yet to rank in AFL lore and the record books that have the ability to swing games on one play, but none that dominated every aspect of every game on every play like Wagner.
In my humble opinion, the greatness of "Wags" is in a player that will get your team a real shot at a championship in every single game.
Wagner is the history of the AFL.
Alfonzo and other players now and to come have been putting in performance after performance, game after game, and I can’t even begin to stack up all the great plays made in this league. But ALWAYS you hear the name of Wagner when a comparison is made.
The Barry Wagner Award will give the proper respect to Ironman Award.
Watching a “best of all time . . .” in arena football?
There is only one man that that phrase conjures up.
Rules are solid
"Rules are never made to be broken."
That is one of those lies told long enough that you start believing it. Like, “defenses win championships.” That’s another bogus urban legend. The offensive line wins championships. Football is an endless scrum of non-scoring without great offensive lines. That is a provable fact. But another topic left for another day.
The changing of the jack linebacker – a rule change championed by me last season – will bring excitement to a part of the game long ignored. I thought of top-tier players like Wagner and Alfonzo when I wrote about the jack change. Men who are just as smart as they are gifted athletically can bring excitement to a game that is unimaginable and unending. The AFL deserves that.
In one sentence, Alfonzo summed up greatness:
”We’re not here to stop stats.”
That was Alfonzo in response to the self-absorbed reporters at the Chicago/San Jose post game press conference mentioning that the SaberCats’ Grieb put up impressive stats in Chicago’s blow out victory.
A Wagner-esque moment, on the field and off.
Touché Mr. Alfonzo.
Lore, legend and fact
Wagner wasn’t exactly loved by certain people at certain levels of the game throughout his career. There are stories told about Wags’s refusing to pick up an Ironman Award at the corporate office because he was upset at the League. Legend is a beautiful thing. A select few live there.
What great players think inside of their heads when asked stupid questions is often thought about by them I’m sure. We seldom ever hear anything but clichés offered in response to obvious questions.
Wagner, was anything but cliché.
Those days are not gone as long as names mean anything. Yes, one play can turn a football game around, but in arena football it usually takes about fifty great plays from start to finish doing it.
Wagner was also “start to finish.”
The Ironman has been changed a bit, but not by much. True grit is still needed by players to get their name mentioned by it.
The Ironman Award should not be an “it.”
What Wagner could have done as a dedicated one-way player used sparingly elsewhere would have been something to behold. Talk to a Predators fan from back in the day about Wagner. Be ready to for a one-hour one-way conversation.
Here’s one of mine from Wags in San Jose green and white:
Away game at Dallas, SaberCats kicker Darron Alcorn sets to kick off, runs up to the ball and literally on-sides kicks - a pass - to Wagner in stride down the boards. From Alcorn’s foot to Wagner’s hands. Even the announcers were stunned as to comment.
Stuff of legend.
Arena football is close to perfect in competitive sports, but there are still things that can make it better. The next big move will be deadening the metal frame around the nets. Depending on luck to win is for gamblers, not athletes.
A careening ball bouncing around makes the games look silly more than it does exciting. Arena football is the personification of impressive. But more rule changes are for another time.
Great and powerful
There is no wizard, no magic spells that can make an AFL game go one way or another. It takes complete and utter focus from the first play – and as we all know – to the last and often beyond.
Men like Barry Wagner entered into the football world through another gate and into a league of promise and uncertainty. Like Willy Mays in baseball; in the AFL all great and talented players are compared to Wagner.
If it weren’t for cronyism and denying retirement benefits to hero athletes before the fourth game of their fourth season in the outdoor league, they would have men like Wagner starring for years as well. But I’m not here to bash the NFL. There are athletes there that deserve better as well. The powers that be in the professional outdoor league will have to answer to an authority far higher than mine on how they treat their fellow man. I am just a fan of the AFL, a league of extraordinary gentlemen.
I’m just honored to have seen Wagner play. For me, 2002 will always be the season with which to compare all teams, as well as players in this league. Legend now but fire always.
The Barry Wagner Award.
It’s already given out weekly, monthly and yearly called the Ironman Award.
Let’s give the Ironman a name.
And in twenty-two seasons, Barry Wagner is the only name that will fit on it.
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.
