It's Still Our Arena Football League

Adam Markowitz
Thursday March 14, 2013

It isn't a big secret that the last few years have been challenging for the Arena Football League and for all of us at the staff of ArenaFan. Our staff, which was 39 strong five years ago when I was given the privilege of writing This Article on the history of ArenaFan has dwindled drastically, and our time and resources aren't nearly as abundant as they were in 2008.

We have had plenty of spats with the league office since the new regime took over, and those spats have been well-documented. We were not permitted on the field for postgame interviews at ArenaBowl XXIV. We were essentially blacklisted by a number of the teams in 2011. We were referred to as an "unauthorized fan site" at ArenaBowl XXV. And most recently in this past offseason, we had all of our personal Twitter accounts banned by the league. Personally in that time, I was booted out of a post-game press conference, and I was banned from participating on the internet radio broadcast alongside some of my great friends and colleagues, simply because of my affiliation with ArenaFan.

I've been around this league for a long, long time. I've spent seven years with ArenaFan, and 20 years as a fan of the Orlando Predators. I've seen AFL games in Orlando, Tampa Bay, West Palm Beach, Daytona Beach, Atlanta, Gwinnett, New Orleans, Des Moines, Albany, Spokane, Phoenix, Nashville, and Austin, and I'm not even so sure that's a fully encompassing list. I've had the privilege of covering five straight ArenaBowls for ArenaFan, and I have been to 12 of the 25 championship games. I had tears of joy when the Predators won the ArenaBowl for the first time in 1998, and the happiest sports moment of my entire life is when David Cool's kick sailed through the uprights to give Orlando the ArenaBowl in 2000. I thought it was the end of the world when the Preds traded Barry Wagner to the New Jersey Red Dogs, and I wanted to declare the league as good as dead when they took the Ironman out of the game. I cried myself to sleep night after night in December 2008 when the AFL was officially put on hiatus.

The AFL truly is my passion in life. That's why I take it to heart, and that's why I'm so controversial at times. I just want things to be right with this league, and I want them to be right for the present and forever. And yet, my passion for this league has been sucked dry by a select group in Chicago that is destined to tell me time and time again that I am not wanted in their league.

They almost had their way. They almost won. I really was ready to give it up as recently as a month ago.

And then I ran into Pat O'Hara randomly in downtown Orlando, and he changed my entire view on everything.

O'Hara and I had our disagreements in the past as well. I'll admit that I was hard on his Predators in 2010 when O'Hara was coaching, as the team just didn't play well at the outset of the season and really didn't look anything like a playoff team. Of course, I turned out to be wrong, and the Preds came up literally just inches short of the ArenaBowl that season. My musing that Bobby Sippio wasn't what the Predators needed when he was signed as a street free agent in 2010 was dead wrong (See: This Admission of Mistake), and in the end, I even admitted I was wrong about the 2010 Preds as a whole.

Just after becoming the head coach of the New Orleans VooDoo, Coach O'Hara took the time to personally get in touch with me to clear the air, and we have had a great relationship since that point. It was great to run into P.O. around town, and amongst other things, he reminded me that it takes people like me that have passion for the game to keep it going. Players can come and go. Coaches can come and go. Commissioners and league officials can come and go. But fans are always fans, and if they go, the league isn't going to make it regardless of who is calling the shots. He didn't have to do all of that. He could have just blown me off – after all, I'm still nothing more than a writer for a relatively small fan site of a relatively small league. But he took that time to acknowledge me, and I'll never forget it.

It was the second epiphany moment that I've had about the AFL in the last calendar year. Though our trip to New Orleans last year at the ArenaBowl was certainly not as entertaining as our first two trips were in '07 and '08, we had some great moments with some of the best names in this league. Sitting down and talking to Doug Plank and Barry Wagner in the hotel lobby was awesome. Enjoying the bus ride back to the airport sitting with Les Moss and Ron James was amazing. Hearing from Kevin Guy that he was happy that we approved of his clock management at the end of the first half in the ArenaBowl was amusing and fulfilling (See, the rest of you coaches could learn a thing or two from us, too!).

And then I think back to some of the other great moments I've had in my years in the AFL. It started with the first time I was on the field to get autographs from the likes of Barry Wagner and Durwood Roquemore and Damon Mason and Kenny McEntyre and Cory Fleming and all of the other great Preds from back in the day. I'll never forget those bus trips to Tampa Bay as a fan. Because of my ArenaFan experience, I've had the chance to do great interviews with iconic men like Danny White, Mark Grieb, Aaron Garcia, and so many others.

You can take away my Twitter access. You can limit my access in games. You can stop sending me emails and press releases. But you can't take away the respect that I have for the history of game, you can't take away my memories, and you can't take away the respect that I know that those that truly made the game have for me, for you the fans, and for all of us here at ArenaFan.

Back in the good old days when C. David Baker was calling the shots, there was a real sense that this was a league that we, the fans, could all take ownership in. We had the Fans Bill of Rights. We had access to injury reports. We always knew how we could interact with our favorite players and coaches. We legitimately had the right to call the Arena Football League OURS. We were the fan-friendliest league in the world, and I could preach that to anyone.

We might not get access to injury reports. We might not get to see what the rule book looks like. We might not get responses to emails and phone calls. But it's not about the owners. It's not about the players union. It's not about the league office.

It's about the players. It's about the coaches. It's about the good guys in this league.

But most importantly, it's about us. It's about all of the passionate fans of arena football that travel from far and wide to cheer on our teams. We are arena football, and this is still our Arena Football League.