This War on I-4 Like None Other

Adam Markowitz
Tuesday March 25, 2014

Arena Football League fans who are knowledgeable of the game know that this league is a heck of a lot better off when both the Tampa Bay Storm and the Orlando Predators are both good. The truth of the matter? The last time that both of these teams were good at the same time was 2010, but even then, those teams were seeded third and fourth in the playoffs that season, and the Preds only just squeaked into the playoffs at 8-8.

This time though, it's a different story. The Storm are 2-0 for the first time since 2008, and they are playing well for their mild-mannered head coach, Lawrence Samuels. The Predators are 2-0 for the first time since 2011, and they are playing with a fiery sense of passion that this city of Orlando hasn't seen in years under head coach Rob Keefe. The two teams are 2-0 together for the first time since 2005.

There's been a lot of talk about how things need to be different in Orlando and in Tampa Bay, and both sets of head coaches have preached to their teams that they not only should be better than they have been over the course of the last few seasons, but they should demand of themselves to be better as well.

"It's a tradition that we're trying to repeat and bring back to the Storm organization," said Samuels in an interview for AFL Tonight Episode 3. "A lot of these guys that we recruited and brought on our team, they're from the Tampa Bay area, and they're used to seeing the Tampa Bay Storm win."

Unfortunately for the Storm, the last time they won a championship was back in 2003, and I, for one, wasn't even old enough to legally have a drink yet. Just for the record, I'm older than 21 men on the active Tampa Bay roster, and not one of the Storm players were even in professional football when the Storm were last celebrating a championship. Since that point, they only have two playoff wins, both of which came in the 2010 season when Tampa Bay was beaten in the ArenaBowl by the Spokane Shock.

The Storm are trying to become 3-0 for the first time since 2001 as well. Let that sink in for a moment. 2001. At that point, we never thought about posting notes 140 characters at a time to the rest of the internet, and this thing called Facebook was still being constructed by a couple dorky college kids with nothing better to do with their lives. And this is the proudest franchise in AFL history?

Things haven't been much rosier in Orlando. The team has lost 55 games since 2007 (the Preds lost 50 games from 1992-2003), and since its last ArenaBowl appearance in Las Vegas in 2006 against the Chicago Rush, it has only gone 1-5 in six playoff games. None of those playoff games have even been played in Orlando. The last Preds championship was back in 2000, and yes, for the record, I was barely Bar Mitzvahed at that point.

Orlando has played in seven ArenaBowls. That makes it arguably one of the three greatest franchises in AFL history, too. One of those ArenaBowls has been played since gas prices were $1.27 per gallon and Big Brother debuted on TV in 2000.

"I think 11-26 in the last two years is extremely unacceptable," said Keefe. "And then you have an ownership group and you had front office workers that maybe didn't know what it took to win… You have to put yourself around winners."

Keefe went on to state that all of his players on this Orlando team were captains of their college teams once upon a time. And believe it or not, there are a heck of a lot of winners here historically.

Jason Boltus, who was the backup quarterback last year Keefe when he was with the Utah Blaze, started off his collegiate career with a 4-6 Hartwick College team that didn't win a game in conference play in the Empire 8. The next season, Hartwick went 4-6 with two wins in conference, followed by an 8-3 season with a 5-1 record in conference, and finally, a 7-3 record with a 4-2 record in conference. Boltus threw for 13,276 yards and 134 TDs in his four years with the Hawks, both school records which haven't even remotely been threatened since.

Greg Carr, Earl Okine, and Kendal Thompkins were surrounded in the winning traditions at Florida State, Florida, and Miami respectively. Tanner Varner's Northern Iowa Panthers played in the I-AA National Championship Game, and yes, he was one of the captains who led that team to the precipice of a national title.

And now, this hodgepodge collection of players separated by 75 miles of Interstate 4 hold all of the keys to the success of the Storm, the Predators, and the history of the greatest rivalry that the Arena Football League has ever seen.

Ben Bennett and Herkie Walls and Barry Wagner and Kenny McEntyre aren't running through the tunnel on Saturday night at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. Nor are Jay Gruden or Stevie Thomas or Sylvester Bembery or Lawrence Sam… well, okay… Samuels sort of is. But that's not the point. The fact of the matter is that up through the 2010 season, it never seemed to matter who was playing in black and red or in blue and gold. The rivalry always seemed to spark, and it was always good for the league when that happened.

There's still a long way to go for the Storm and/or the Predators to prove that they really are legitimately good this season. Even the team that wins the 53rd rendition of the "War on I-4" isn't guaranteed much of anything yet, as there are still 17 more long weeks and 15 more games to be played before we even think about the playoffs.

But it's a start. And that makes this version of the Orlando/Tampa Bay game like none other.