Home Field Disadvantage In the AFL?

Adam Markowitz
Friday April 1, 2011

There isn't a person involved in the Arena Football League that thinks that the league is easier now than it was circa 2008. Players are coming and going on a regular basis, and the talent level in the league clearly isn't as strong as it was back in the day before the brutal end to the 2008 season.

There was a ton of turnover in this league from 2008 to 2010, but there was almost as much turnover from 2010 to 2011. One of the teams that really had a huge drop off in terms of talent was the Tulsa Talons. It's really clear that a team that won its division title last season was expecting to do a heck of a lot better out of the gates than 0-3, but maybe it shouldn't have been all that surprising.

Last season's Tulsa team featured a ton of players that had great seasons. Justin Allgood threw for 4,333 yards and the most TDs in the league with 108. Odie Armstrong ran for 13 TDs. Jeff Hughley caught 113 passes and had 28 TDs. Donovan Morgan caught 123 balls for 1,707 yards and 52 scores. Gabe Nyenhuis had 7.5 sacks and won the AFL's Defensive Player of the Year honors. Chris Royal picked off 11 passes.

The problem with these players now is that they are all playing on other teams.

One of Tulsa's co-owners, Paul Ross doesn't think that this was any sort of a mistake. Obviously, with only a choice to have three Marketing Players, all of these players couldn't have been offered the reported $1,000 tags, but even if they all were ultimately offered those tags, Ross now knows firsthand that that wasn't enough to keep those players in Tulsa.

Ross had this to say to the Tulsa World Sports Extra, "We're allowed to pay so much money under the guidelines. When we offer a marketing contract and a player says he's got a better deal, there's not much more room for us to go unless we want to start breaking the rules."

So that brings us to a new question. What in the world could Ross possibly mean by saying that players are getting "a better deal" elsewhere? Is he insinuating that there are teams that are paying players  money under the table, thus breaking the agreement set by the single entity AFL?

Though perhaps that might be what he is wondering aloud, I'm not so sure that that's what he is actually implying. There really could be something to one of the last comments in this piece by the Tulsa World Sports Extra. Ross said, "We've got our backs against the wall trying to compete (as one of the league's smaller cities)."

There's definitely something to be said about that. In general, players in this league that are now playing for significantly less money than they used to want to play this game on teams near their hometown. That's why the likes of Mark Grieb didn't come back to the league in 2010, but did come back in 2011.

Though it remains a bit of a mystery how the insides of the AFL are really conducted, we do know a few things that cannot be denied by the league. Each team has to have practice facilities and meal plans, and it has to be able to provide housing for its players. Though supposedly, there are guidelines that have to be met both in terms of the luxury of the housing (or lack thereof) and the prices which could be spent for it, what's to say that the housing provided in one market isn't as good as the housing provided in another market?

There's also the issue of jobs. Let's be real. These players aren't raising families on a supposed $400 per week. They're going to need part-time jobs during the season, and even if they don't take on part-time jobs then, they are certainly going to need full-time jobs in the offseason. Players are not allowed to work for businesses owned any owners of the teams themselves, which eliminates the ability for an owner to sneak around the salary restrictions by using their own businesses. The smaller the market, the harder that it could potentially be to find a job. Plus, the truth of the matter is that most people prefer living in and around big cities, which does give the edge to a team like the Philadelphia Soul or the Chicago Rush. There is a heck of a lot more to do in those cities than there is in Tulsa.

Finally, there is one more factor that could come into play here. Players like playing for certain coaches. We're not saying that this is precisely the case, but it seems odd that DeAndrew Rubin, Corey Surrency, and most recently, Kelvin Kinney, all former members of the Tampa Bay Storm, are now all playing with the Dallas Vigilantes now that Tim Marcum is helping out as an advisor to that franchise.

Want more proof of that? Just check out the Philadelphia Soul roster. DeJuan Alfonzo, Chris Martin, Donovan Morgan, Syvelle Newton... all players that played with Head Coach Mike Hohensee in the past with the Rush that are all now with the Soul.

Though I tend to believe that Ross really does have a point that his team is at a disadvantage simply because it is located in Tulsa, a number of the factors that are surrounding the club are problems that ownership could be facing. Whether it's the housing, the coaching staff, or whatever it is, these players that all made tremendous names for themselves last year in Tulsa no longer wanted to play there.

Maybe Ross should be more worried about what he has to work with right now, a team that is 0-3 and going nowhere fast, instead of bothering trying to justify why his team is one of the worst in the league.

ArenaFan tried reaching the Talons for comment on this story, but phone calls were not returned. Emails to the AFL league office were also left unreturned.