The "All Fun League" is a Thing of the Past

Adam Markowitz
Monday July 12, 2010

For those of you that have been reading my articles for the past four years, you know that there weren't many fans that were bigger diehards of the Arena Football League than I was. Two years ago when the league was essentially folding up shop, I took days off from work to try to find out the latest information of what was going on, not even so much for ArenaFan's sake, but so I could keep in the know as well. There were nights that I cried myself to sleep, wondering if this league would ever really be back.

This is what I grew up on. I was just seven years old when I was introduced to my first Orlando Predators game. I thought going to the ArenaBowl in 1994 was the coolest thing in the world in spite of the fact that my Preds were beaten at the wire by Sherdrick Bonner and the Arizona Rattlers. It was my first live AFL game. My family went to a handful of games over the next year, and ultimately in 1996, we became season ticket holders for the first time.

There weren't many Preds game that I missed at least watching on television or listening to on the radio from that point forward, home or away.

On Friday night though, I couldn't take it anymore. I did something that I don't ever recall doing at any sporting event, let alone at an Arena Football game, and especially let alone a Preds game. I left early.

To sum it up, I'm tired of this league. I'm really tired of it.

I watched 58 minutes of that lousy game between the Alabama Vipers and Orlando Predators which featured six turnovers. There were only four offensive TDs scored in the final three quarters of the game. As the Vipers were sitting on the doorstep of the Orlando end zone with about two minutes to play, I packed my laptop bag and left.

By the time most of you read this article, 15 weeks of play will be in the books in the AFL. There is a part of me that is glad that this is almost over for another year.

Part of what makes this league no fun anymore is the fact that the record keeping is an absolute joke. Hell, here we are in Week 15, and on the league's website, the stats for the second half of the Jacksonville Sharks/Arizona Rattlers game still don't exist. Forget about the fact that there are no stats from the first three quarters of the Tampa Bay Storm/Dallas Vigilantes game from last night.

A bit of the aura of the AFL was looking and seeing what type of ridiculous numbers quarterbacks and wide receivers could put on the board on a weekly basis. It's sad that I can't just say, "Nick Hill has thrown for 61 TD passes this year." I have to say, "If the stats are right, Nick Hill has thrown for 61 TD passes this year."

By the way, if the stats are right, Dion Bynum has attempted a field goal for the Preds this year as well. Unless someone slipped Bynum into Carlos Martinez's uniform, the stats aren't right.

I'm tired of the officiating in this league as well. It feels like it takes ten minutes to make a call on the field, and it's anyone's guess as to whether or not the call was actually made properly. Two weeks ago in Tampa Bay, the officials there marked off an illegal defense penalty for ten yards. Last night in Orlando, the exact same call earned the Predators four yards. Then there's Tulsa, where apparently, it isn't illegal defense when your jack linebacker is ten yards behind the line of scrimmage or Dallas, where an illegal defense penalty offsets with a personal foul that occurs after the play is over.

Things got so bad that I had to start a weekly column in the middle of this season that called out all of the BS calls that these stupid refs make on a weekly basis. I've even spoken to Tampa Bay Storm HC Tim Marcum, who, when asked about the officiating of a game earlier this year said, "We still have referees trying to learn the game."

I'm also tired of the crappy teams in this league, most of which came from the af2. There was a reason that I didn't watch the deuce when it was around as a legitimate minor league of the AFL. The quality of play for a lot of teams was awful.

I already hear the Spokane Shock fans yelling at me at the top of their lungs that they have the best team in the AFL, and they're right. The Shock are the most professionally run team that came out of the af2 to join the AFL. However, if I had to guess, had the AFL continued and played its season out in 2009, by 2010, the Shock would have been admitted into the AFL as a "major league" team.

I'm sorry. Watching the Bossier-Shreveport Battle Wings, the Iowa Barnstormers, the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz, the Utah Blaze, the Alabama Vipers, the Orlando Predators, and the Dallas Vigilantes this season has made me want to pry my eyes out with a rusty fork.

Utah's season starts with some owner's kid playing quarterback out of the AIFA (which is even worse than the af2). Iowa tries making this Brian Villanueva stiff a quarterback at this level. Collin Drafts has made a mockery out of the quarterback position in Dallas. Gary Cooper randomly decides that he isn't playing anymore for Bossier City...

... And that's another thing. Since when do guys just up and leave their teams in this league? Cooper and teammate Randy Hymes both randomly decide to up and leave the squad the week of the Tampa Bay game. That leaves this kid Jimmy Welker, who hadn't started a game since HIGH SCHOOL to take snaps for the Battle Wings.

Of course, HC Mike Hohensee wants to know what I'm complaining about. He lost his FB Robert Boss to pursue the chance of being an assistant coach at his alma mater mid-season, while QB Russ Michna and WR Samie Parker both didn't play against the Milwaukee Iron a few weeks ago due to a UFL camp tryout. Oh by the way, that game only gave the Rush the chance to effectively lock up the Midwest Division. Another by the way... Milwaukee lost that game against half of a Chicago team with another quarterback who had never taken a snap in the AFL in his life before under center.

I've heard the argument before that the quality of play in this league is no better or worse than it was all those years ago when I was attending my first Orlando Predators games. Perhaps it was because I was so young then, but the game felt a lot different at that point. Free agency really hadn't taken over yet. Stars on your team remained stars on YOUR team for several seasons. I knew that every season until free agency kicked in, that #22 and #82 were going to be mainstays on my team. (That's Herkie Walls and Barry Wagner respectively for those of you not versed in AFL history.)

The guys on the field all carried second jobs. They played in the AFL because they loved playing the game. Yes, there has to be a level of that now that players are putting their careers on the line for $400 per week for the most part, but even then, there are clearly more important things on the minds of a lot of the players than the game itself. No, it isn't all of them. In fact, the ones that don't have a care in the world about this league are clearly in the minority. However, there are enough of them to make the game no fun anymore.

I also can't watch the games on TV anymore. Yes, part of this is because I have Brighthouse Network in Orlando, which I swear is still the only company in the world that doesn't carry the NFL Network, but I can only very rarely see Preds game on TV locally. Some Storm games are covered in Tampa Bay. A few other markets have some local deals as well, but not many are covered on a regular basis.

Local television stations don't send crews to the games in Orlando anymore for that 60 second blip of highlights for the late nightly news. Heck, the score doesn't even flash on the screen when the team is on the road for the most part. Print coverage is non-existent in several markets. Coaches shows and call in shows seem to be a thing of the past.

As a result, attendance is as low in this league as it has been since 1989. Heading into Saturday's games in Week 15, the average AFL game had 7,890 people announced in attendance. That's over 5,000 fans per game off of the pace of 2008. In fact, there wasn't a season in which the average attendance at an AFL game was under 10,000 since 2002. Unless the average goes up by almost 1,000 fans for the rest of the year, this will be the second lowest attended season per average in the history of the league.

The AFL doesn't care about its statistics or fielding good refs that have a clue how to read a rulebook. So many teams could care less about fielding competitive teams and are just going through the motions of playing the season out. Enough of the players don't care that it is really starting to show.

So why should I, or any of the other hundreds of thousands of fans of this league care anymore? Yes, I'm still going to find myself going to games for the rest of this season and into next year, if for no other reason, it is a social outlet for myself with a lot of the friends that I have built through this league through the years.

But no, I'm not amused anymore. If I was sitting down and watching this crazy indoor game for the first time this season, I'd be turning off the television set and forgetting that it ever existed. In fact, even knowing my history and having the love for the game, it seems to me as though all of the fun that used to exist in the AFL is quickly leaving.

Hopefully when next season rolls around, the game won't be this painful to watch or ultimately, it won't just be the fun that is a thing of the past. The Arena Football League as a whole will probably be a thing of the past as well.