Matt Nagy’s pants: not so cranky

Yours truly finally got up the nerve to have a little chat with Destroyers QB Matt Nagy. We’re pleased to report that despite the interactions we’ve seen with Skip Foster, Matt is actually very nice. And one hell of a good sport when I get a little side tracked.

Oh, Crap: We Haven’t Even Mentioned the Game!

It occurs to me that we’ve never made our predictions. Who will, with effort, hoist the 800,000-pound James Foster Trophy?

The Case for Columbus:

(TC)

• On their way here, they overcame the odds and defeated arguably the two best teams in the league whose name doesn’t rhyme with Man Fosé. Handily.
• Wily veteran coach Doug Kay don’t take no shit off nobody.
• Opportunistic on defense - converts turnovers into points.
• Kicker Peter Martinez is a pretty cool guy, and has tackled a couple guys but good.
• Matt Nagy’s mistakes tend to fly thirty rows deep into the stands. Hard to turn those into points.

(JM)

• Since everyone else that covers this league has mentioned it already, we’ll just repeat: Chicago was 7-9 heading into the playoffs last season (historical note: Chicago won).
• A QB that grows a beard means business, or maybe is just lazy (see: Kyle Orton). We suspect Matt Nagy is the former and not the latter.
• A team that’s made us eat this much crow has to be for real.

The Case For San José:

(TC)

• Hey! San José rhymes with Tan Flosé! Did I intentionally set it up so that mean’s they’re one of the top few teams in the league? (Hint: Yes.)
• Defense. Lots of it. A defense that tends to make it’s own opportunities.
• Coach Darren Arbet has a couple of rings, so that’s got to count for something, even if he hasn’t the demeanor of Emperor Palpatine.
• AFL stalwart Grieb > AFL stalwart Nagy. Sorry, Matt.
• I’ve been on the SaberCats bandwagon since week 7, with a one-week abstention in the hopes that Chicago’d make the Arena Bowl.

(JM)

• Coach Arbet - cool and composed.
• Mark Grieb - laser vision.
• In my experience, TC is a pretty smart hombre. He’s been singing San Jose’s praises since week 7.
• So far as Columbus in concerned, all good things must come to an end.

(TC) What it comes down to is that I keep saying to myself, “Really? Columbus? Where was this team all year? They’re not going to peel off their faces, Mission: Impossible-style, and turn out to be the Dallas Desperados in disguise, right?” San Jose hasn’t made any mistakes to speak of, and I stand by my statement that, even in the points-happy Arena League, defense wins championships. (JM) Verily.

(TC) Prediction: San Jose 60, Columbus 35. (JM) San Jose 62, Columbus 56.

We heard a rumor

TC and I have heard some rumors about the AFL throughout this season - Columbus Destroyers K Peter Martinez will neither confirm nor deny these rumors when pressed by TC. He did, however, allow TC to take a picture of his kicking foot. Peter almost fell over in the process. We’re glad he didn’t.

Shockingly, Access Does Not Equal Hot Fun

As part the It’s Still Football Arena Bowl XXI Grand Tour, we were invited to the now-annual AFL Combine. Photographic and videographic evidence to follow, once J makes that happen. In the interest of… being lazy, really, let me make my observations via bullet points:

• There were a lot of people there. Like, a shocking amount. The thing was held in the New Orleans Saints’ practice facility and it was relatively full - the place is a barn with a 100-yard field, and a conservative estimate would be 100+ prospective DBs and WRs, a baker’s dozen kickers, probably as many quarterbacks, and there were linemen and running backs and stuff that we didn’t see. People want to play in the AFL! They want to play enough to show up to what essentially amounts to an open audition. That’s pretty cool, right?
• A combine is bor-ring. Watching guys run curls for twenty-five minutes will not rock your world. Rarely, something exciting would happen - somebody would either miss a pass spectacularly, or make an awkward-but-fun-to-watch catch, but realistically, random fans might not be so interested. They’ll be interested in the results, as there were probably a couple QBs who were reasonable, and I’m sure some of the kickers will show up in the kicker’s death march that is the AFL.
• Watching kickers drill is mind-numbing. I kept hoping a game of HORSE would break out or something. I think they were getting bored, because some of them trying to kick over the net or fire rockets off of the taut nets on either side. Again, it seems like, with a few exceptions, teams go through up to three kickers in a season, because THE GOALPOSTS ARE VERY SKINNY. And maybe that messes with your psyche. I like the idea of a roomful of shattered shells of kickers hanging out somewhere. They’re all just sitting around muttering “what do you want from me?” and “deceptively narrow, deceptively narrow…” under their breath.
• Coach Hoensee got bored and was leaving by the time we got in. I assume. He was walking away as we were walking in.
• The AAFL’s combine was yesterday, apparently. Apparently they’re serious about this. 400 people were there… I think that the AFL’s beat that, but I’d have to check the paperwork we recieved as MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA. At least one guy attended both. Which seems like an exhausting weekend. And expensive.

We managed to miss the event at the children’s hospital, which I’m sure was heartwarming. We talked to Nicole O’Malley for about 12 seconds, pretending to be actual journalists, and she… seemed pleased. Our investigative journalism skills extended only to reading her name tag. There were a couple of kids that were chucking mini-AFL footballs around the lobby so a) that’s cool, and b) those kids couldn’t have been that sick. We presume the actual visitation brought smiles to the faces of kids like this:

All right, all right, but you try to make doing nice things for sick kids funny.

Tonight: Styx and hopefully athlete or famous person sightings! Otherwise, the only exciting thing that’s going to happen this week is the actual game, and we can’t have that. Once we distill the footage from Media day, we’ll post that. It’ll be chock full of penetrating coverage. Example:

The game on Sunday could rest on this.

Yes, indeed. We asked if we could take a picture of Peter Martinez’s foot, and he obliged. The best part was that he wasn’t very adept at standing on one leg (or perhaps didn’t anticipate being asked to), and wobbled a little bit. Had he fallen over and hurt himself, I think we would’ve been lynched. Now THAT’D be a story: “Bloggers Injure Kicker, Are Murdered.”