Steve McMichael, coach of the Indoor Football League Slaughter, has issued a dare to the Rush of the new Arena Football League.

“I want to challenge them to a game or a scrimmage,” McMichael said Friday during a news conference to announce that former Bears quarterback Jim McMahon is among the team’s new owners. “I think it would be great for Chicago. I know (one of) their owners, Mike Ditka, (whose favorite charities are) Misericordia, the Walter and Connie Payton Foundation … the money can go to that.”

When was Steve McMichael granted the wisdom of Solomon? I always thought he was recommending cleaving infants in two because he was bughouse crazy. But perhaps he was… crazy as like unto a fox? On the other hand, if the infant AFL wants to keep the IFL as a satellite, AAA league, the Rush had better only accept this game if they think they can win.

As of Tuesday, www.arenafootball.com was still like Colonial Williamsburg, if everyone who was paid to dress up like Goody Witch-hunter and Goodman Wimple decided “fuck it, let’s go get a beer and a Nissan Versa” and never returned. “Ah,” one might say, visiting this well-preserved ghost town, “so this is how Arena Football lived when Vesuvius exploded.” You had to go to something stupid like http://www.arenafootballone.com to fail to follow what on earth was going on with the clumsy, fawn-like stumbling of the new league. Yesterday, however, ARENA FOOTBALL DOT COM RETURNETH! With a snazzy graphic! They can hire graphic designers! You can even, if you are so inclined, play the game “Which of these teams were conceived in the last 3 months, last several years, or the Bronze Age?” (Hey, Rattlers, your logo just broke its hip falling down in the shower.)

Stealing Graphics again! It's like we never stopped blogging!

You would also do well to note the partnership with the NFL Network, as well as the fact that the design of the Tulsa Talons looks like it has a dorsal fin, which can only mean: EAGLESHARK.

This is probably because olympic curling starts today in Vancouver.

Also, hey: the AFL is back! We don’t even have to call it Arena Football One (1) anymore! According to sources (a profootballtalk.com post forwarded to us at least twice), the old nomenclature was used on a conference call from the league. WOOOO. AIN’T NOTHIN’ STOPPING US NOW!

Rising! Like a phoenix! Or a Firebird! Whatever!

We were going to wait until this clusterfuckery ended, and there were some actual games to be played, or data to be massaged, or characters to be assassinated, but whatever. There was a conference call! Kosar and Ditka are back! It’s a war! Indoors! On the floor! Petit four! Esprit de corps!

Who’s involved?

South Division: Alabama (Huntsville – space camp!) Vipers, Jacksonville Sharks (Al Pacino-coached), Orlando Predators (Now with Zero Grudens),  Tampa Bay Storm (Brett Dietz!)

Southwest Division: Bossier-Shreveport (LA) Battle Wings (served with a side of bleu cheese dressing), Dallas Vigilantes (Dr. Dolezel bought the name Desperado for his own perpetual use, thank you), Oklahoma City Yard Dogz (I will never use this name), Tulsa Talons (formerly the Pittsburgh Phlanges)

Midwest Division: Chicago Rush (Wooo! We’re getting the band back together!), Cleveland Gladiators (Wooo? We’re getting the band back together?), Iowa Barnstormers (Look, it’s not like Kurt Warner’s doing anything), Milwaukee Iron (Wooo. We’re getting the band back ”together.” With Ringo’s kid playing the drums.)

West Division: Arizona Rattlers (I wonder if the money-back guarantee’s still good), Spokane Shock (more like shocked to find themselves in Spokane, am I right? Oh, let’s just get through this), Utah Blaze (who are currently holding open tryouts, and that’s really the only news of use on arenafootballone.com)

Conspicuous by their absence: Jaws/Bon Jovi-owned Philadelphia Soul, only the current Arena Bowl Champions; Grudens; ESPN (Hooray? The NFL Network?); San Jose Sabercats and ol’ LazerQBVision; actual useful data.

On the other hand: football games, starting April 10. -ish.

"Big Fan" - it's about football, sort of!

It’s been a while since we’ve had any hot-off-the-presses news regarding that good ol’ redheaded cousin nobody likes to talk about, the AFL, but we recently received an offer to take an advanced look at “Big Fan”, last year’s well-reviewed but barely-seen dark comedy starring Patton Oswalt. Since we’re both fans of free stuff, and JM’s been playing over here as of late, we said “hell yes”.

“Big Fan” follows Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt), a die-hard New York Giants fan that has diddly-squat to live for. When a chance encounter with his hero, the G-Men’s star linebacker Quantrell Bishop, goes seriously wrong, Paul ends up in the hospital and Bishop is benched, and the Giants’ playoff hopes start to fade faster than a Plaxico Burress touchdown route (provided he hasn’t shot himself in the leg,  been arrested, or jailed). Paul decides he’s coming down with amnesia, in the hopes Bishop will get to retake the field, the Giants have a better record than the Eagles, and his rival sports talk caller, Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport) will have to eat a plate of crow.

Commence the tried-and-true POINT-COUNTERPOINT:

POINT: STORY: JM: “Big Fan” is a typical indie feature – small in scope. So small that a movie about a giant Giants fan does not feature a lick of on-screen sport. Oswalt is the ultimate outsider, so far removed from the team he loves he’s forced to watch games in the Meadowlands parking lot. This, however, is to the film’s advantage. By keeping the stakes low and not going with the obvious Hollywood plot turns, “Big Fan” feels frighteningly authentic, which makes the relatively small stakes feel big and black-comedy end note all the more visceral.

TC: ADDENDUM: If there had been ONE MOMENT of football action, the story would’ve collapsed. We only are able to experience the despair and joy and hope and pathos through watching Oswalt’s reactions. We’re obligated to trust his reactions, because we get – at best – snippets of play-by-play. And more stunningly (to me): Oswalt succeeds in doing it for us. I never for one moment went “Well, this is unbelievably overboard.” This MAY be due to the fact that I’m a sports fan, and have (recently, as a matter of fact) lived and died with a team’s fortunes. Mind you, I didn’t get the crap kicked out of me by Cory Wooton (as they say in Spain: El Espoiler!) but still: it’s scary how we’re able to say to ourselves “there but for the grace of God go I.”

PATTON OSWALT, ET AL, POINT: TC: If I have one complaint with the performances, it’s that Patton Oswalt’s character is dumped into a pastiche of random Jersey/Staten Island stereotypes. So, you have this nuanced, tortured character hanging out with pretend people. With the exception of his pal, who’s a nicely affable, if dim, fellow.

Let us now discuss my favorite Patton Oswalt performance: any time he’s crafting/delivering one of his radio-call-in rants. I think I said while I was watching the movie that it reminded me of high school speech. But it’s actually the obsessive crafting of a comedy bit. It makes complete and total sense, and makes Oswalt the perfect choice. I could watch him assemble and deliver his rants all day.

JM: EXTRA POINT: I agree, Kevin Corrigan, the house-party host from “Superbad” among other stuff, is amusing as Oswalt’s dimwitted partner in fandom. His family members are somewhat generic, but I’d argue Oswalt’s performance and character keeps those stereotypes in check. Michael Rapaport is fun as the quintessential asshole fan of your rival team.

On Oswalt rehearsing his call-in rants: yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. The call-in scenes illustrate both the gross inadequacies and blind fanaticism of our protagonist. His passion is hindered by his propensity to mix metaphors and trip over his own words, which isn’t helped by the thin walls separating his bedroom from his mother’s. There’s been a quiet buzz among the critics and online community that Oswalt’s performance could make him a dark horse Oscar contender, and likewise the widened field for ten best picture nominees could give “Big Fan” a chance for wider exposure.

Which brings us to our final

POINT: OVERALL IMPRESSION: JM: I was thrilled to finally see this flick. It played in Chicago for one night at the Music Box (where I also missed a Q&A with writer/director Robert Siegel and Oswalt) back in October, and despite a strongly positive critical reception the film didn’t see a wider theatrical release after it’s initial tour. “Big Fan” is a simple story told with uncommon grace. Aside from being both a riveting drama and occasionally laugh-out-loud dark comedy, we’re given a chance to reflect on what it means to be loyal to your team, and how our teams can bring us together or drive us apart. Oswalt’s expressions when watching the final game of the regular season are priceless, and the lengths he’ll go to for the Giants are all the more bleakly comic when we consider how far removed he is from his team.

TC: Oswalt is riveting. End of line. A nuanced, graceful, subtle film, handled delicately but not fluffily. If you’re a fan of sports, you know this. And if you’re not a fan of sports, this is just scary. My main criticism is I have no idea if the last 25 minutes of the movie is buy-able if you don’t follow sports. I think it might read as just pitiful and crazy to people who haven’t expended inappropriate amounts of emotion rooting for laundry.

It nails the critical fact that the players that fans root for, obsess over, and think they know are so far removed from their fans that they may be a different species. It’s a movie that grips you, and does its work without hammering you over the head. You aren’t embarrassed enough for Oswalt to stop rooting for him, and he’s not so pitiful you feel distanced from him. Somehow it walks a tightrope for, what, 90 minutes? 110? How long was this movie?

JM: 87 minutes.

It’s a jim-dandy of a little thriller/dark comedy, and is certainly worth checking out when it’s released on DVD this Tuesday.

“Big Fan” was written and directed by “The Wrestler” scribe Robert Siegel, and stars Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, and Michael Rapaport. We regret to inform you that no Eagles fans were hurt in the making of the film.

This brings up a very interesting question.  Is the media circus that is guaranteed to follow Vick good or bad for the league?  First, it is nowhere near a done deal that Vick would come play in the UFL.  He comes off of house arrest for the dogfighting charges sometime this month and the NFL commissioner will be making a determination if Vick is going to be suspended further.  If he is suspended by the NFL, the UFL commissioner would also need to make a ruling if he would be able to play for them.  Then there is the issue of Vick himself, if he even wants to come play in a “minor” league.  But that’s not what we’re talking about today.  Today, we look at the fundamental question of if the UFL should let Vick come play for them.

One thing that Vick brings immediately is publicity.  There is no question about that.  I can see the headlines right now: “Disgraced star to play in upstart league” and so on.  But with Vick would most certainly come a lot of negative publicity.  I’m sure that the PETA folks are going to be all over him, regardless of where he ends up playing.  Does the UFL really want that kind of press?  I think so.  For an upstart league, any publicity (with a few exceptions) is good publicity.  I don’t think that Vick will end up playing in the UFL.  For Vick, this could be an opportunity to show an NFL team that 2 years away from the game (in prison) hasn’t taken away from his abilities.

I have a hunch that Roger Goddell will let him back and the circus will follow him to the big leagues.  For the UFL though, I think they would love to have a chance to let him bring some attention to their league.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present you with the latest in a long line of “minor league” football– The UFL!  The United Football League is planning to kick off their season this October with franchises in New York, Orlando, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Billing themselves as a developmental league is not a bad plan, but competing with the “sanctity” of High School football by playing on Thursday and Friday nights may not be the best idea.  They did apparently get a national TV deal with the Thursday night games appearing on Versus.

To give them some credit, they did start off with some big names to coach their teams.  Jim Fassel will take the helm in Vegas, Jim Haslett will coach in Orlando, longtime Defensive Coordinator Ted Cotrell will be in New York, and in San Francisco… What’s that…?  It’s a Denny Green sighting!

So last night, the UFL decided to get together behind closed doors and have themselves a little draft.  They didn’t tell anyone when they were going to have their little secret get-together to divvy up has-been/never was NFL players and college grads who weren’t going to get a sniff in the NFL to begin with.  Retread coaches and retread players, sounds like a recipe for some fantastic football action! Probably the best known name to come out of the draft is former Chicago Bear and St. Louis Ram Adam Archuletta.  There had been some chatter that J.P. Lossman and Michael Vick would be involved in the draft, but it was not to be.  Denny Green had some interesting choices.  He loved coaching Larry Fitzgerald so much with the Cardinals, he drafted Larry’s little brother Marcus to play for him in San Fran.  He also picked our favorite AFL superstar Brett Dietz to play QB.  I can picture the first press conference.  “Brett Dietz is what we thought he was!”  Good times!

Over the next couple months as more players and more details about the league come out, be sure to tune in here for all the latest and greatest on the UFL.  After all, with College Football and the NFL, there certainly isn’t enough football going on in the fall!

]]> http://stillfootball.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/if-you-have-a-draft-and-nobody-knows-about-it-did-it-really-happen/feed/ 1 chicagobronco UFL Denny Green http://stillfootball.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/guest-post-exploring-the-cifl-minor-minor-league-football/ http://stillfootball.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/guest-post-exploring-the-cifl-minor-minor-league-football/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:31:12 +0000 JM http://stillfootball.wordpress.com/?p=740 ]]> Yes, the AFL is twisting in the wind, and despite rumors the league will return in some form for 2010, what is the wacky-indoor-football fan to do in the interim? One of our regular readers, known to you as Mr. jcompton, caught a CIFL game and filed the following report.

Football with seven men? This is madness!

What’s an AFL fan to do this year? Why, avail himself of the hometown, expansion, second-tier indoor football team playing down the road, of course! Up in Madison, Wisconsin, we’re fortunate enough to have a new indoor team, the Wisconsin Wolfpack of the CIFL. The CIFL is better known as “The league with the Chicago team currently fielding a bunch of ex-Rush guys slaughtering the other seven teams.” I was part of an intimate gathering watching the Wolfpack beat the Rock River Raptors, 50-23.

I don’t know precisely how or why the Wolfpack got started, but I do know that their playing field used to belong to the Pensacola Barracudas, a defunct AF2 team. The AF2 logo is still at midfield and the Barracudas logo is still in the end zone. They’re a bit smudged, like somebody spent a few minutes scrubbing at it with turpentine, then said “This is second-tier minor league indoor football—why am I breaking my back?” and gave up.

At a generous guess, I’d say there were maybe 1300 people in the stands, in a stadium with capacity for 10,000+. It’s hard to say whether this being Final Four night hurt ticket sales, as the stands looked pretty empty in the photos from the Wolfpack’s only other home game to date. The fans in the stands were certainly thinking basketball, though—when the PA announcer broke the news of Michigan State’s win, he got arguably the biggest roar of the night. (Big Ten solidarity?) In any case, I got fine seats just walking up to the box office window 20 minutes before kickoff.

The CIFL plays like the AFL, except for two important details. It’s seven-man football instead of eight-man (more on this in a minute), and there are no end zone nets. When off-brand indoor leagues started popping up in the late 90s, they played without nets because Jim Foster patented the nets and the AFL (and later AF2) was the sole authorized user of the patent. The patent has since expired, but leagues like the CIFL continue to play without nets. This presumably is because it costs actual money to build and store a big freaking iron net apparatus. On the other hand, Menards probably charges about $25 for the parts you need to assemble the open-air, U-shaped hanging goal posts used by the Wolfpack, so Menards gets their $25 and the CIFL gets no nets.

The nets are what make AFL kickoffs exciting. The ball might bounce shallow, it might clang off the iron and skitter out to the 10. Craziness ensues. A lot of times guys run 40 yards side-to-side in their end zones before going down and taking a touchback. Good stuff. But the CIFL, like the AFL, penalizes a kick drilled out of the back of the end zone on the fly—the receiving team gets it at the 25. And the Coliseum has a huge basketball scoreboard exactly in the way of a typical rainbow kickoff you might drop into the opposing end zone—hitting it is also a procedure penalty, ball goes to the receiving team at the 25. So both kickers were reduced to pooching knucklers which were returned near or past midfield almost every time. The seven-man squad seemed to favor the receiving team—either that, or special teams play was atrocious. Kickoffs should be exciting opportunities for infrequent big plays, not just a formality to get 20 yards from the other guy’s end zone.

Kickoff struggles aside, it was a fine evening of off-off-brand football. With little need for advertiser timeouts, the whole game was wrapped up in just over two hours. The fans were less engaged with the team’s overall performance as with a few local standouts (lots of the players are from the UW family of football colleges, natch) but that’s not too surprising for a new team in a small league with little at stake. There was a decent scattering of impressive runs, hard hits, and one-handed grabs. Schlocky fan participation games were played on the field during breaks, with the usual goony props (“wear this hamburger suit”, “get drunk guys dizzy and have them try to kick a field goal”, etc.) T-shirts were thrown into the stands. The eight-girl dance squad looked like your average crop-topped troupe and danced their hearts out a couple of times. (The dancers also prowled the stands at one point selling 50/50 raffle tickets, which seemed tacky.)

With the AFL down and possibly out, it’s either the netless, low-frills, seven-man CIFL, or a 90-minute shot down I-94 to Milwaukee to watch their new AF2 team. The Iron seems to want real money for tickets. So I think it’s gonna be me and the Wolfpack for a little while longer.

The good:

• It was $31 for two tickets and parking. Maybe not the world’s best value in a night’s entertainment, but not bad for a football game.

• The Wolfpack front office published a handy 12-page PDF full of player stats and notes before the game, which made for a free print-at-home game program. It was a nice bit of professional polish, marred ever so slightly by typos, odd grammar, and at least one missing key player, a starting defensive lineman wearing #19. There’s got to be a good story behind that, either “I used to be a QB and then I got huge”, or “The team’s only spare, clean jersey was #19.”

• I really didn’t know what to expect out of the officiating—the officials were not introduced pregame, which I didn’t take as a great sign. But they didn’t seem to be a problem. The flags were disproportionately thrown against the Raptors, but I didn’t see any egregious non-calls in favor of the home team.

• Two guys got shaken up, but neither suffered a crippling injury. You never want to see a player hurt in any sport at any level, blah blah blah, but getting a life-altering injury for a $200ish game check would be the worst of the worst.

The bad:

• There’s no getting around the fact that arenaball defense is hard, but it’s beginning to look like Rock River’s defensive players may not be very good even for arenaball. The Raptors just signed a new defensive coordinator, who accurately sniffed out most of WI’s running plays (shouting “RUN! RUN!” at his players before the snap), but it seemed that the Wolfpack still managed to pick up at least 5 yards anyway.

• The Wolfpack’s early lead and the Raptors’ failure to mount any sort of comeback sucked a lot of the energy out of the crowd. The size and the lack of a lot of passionate emotions over arenaball rivalries didn’t help the tension, either. It’s fun to watch your home team win, but it was so lopsided that it came off dull.

• SI’s Dr. Z has long railed against petty timeouts in a foregone conclusion. This game was lousy with them. Needing four scores, the Raptors were taking timeouts on defense with less than a minute to play. Big comebacks are possible in arenaball, but as the Raptors hadn’t attempted an onside kick all game long, they didn’t seem to be terribly serious about a comeback bid. So they burned their timeouts and the Wolfpack got a first down anyway. Game over, right? No, the Wolfpack said “back atcha!” and called a timeout of their own. After one more end zone attempt, the team decided against further stupidity and just let the clock expire.

• No nets and lame kickoff play. See above.

Unanswered questions:

• Why in the world is the CIFL’s web forum set to members-only? Are they trying to keep out some undesirable element of rowdy second-tier indoor football fans? They should be so lucky!

• I realize this is not the multibillion-dollar stakes of the NFL, MLB, or NCAA here, but how does any league think it’s a good idea for the same man to own two teams in the same division? Bob Lowe owns both the Wolfpack and the Raptors. Yikes.

• Can the CIFL finish the season without drama? League champions have a habit of desertion, and one of the teams this year is a hastily-resurrected, “mostly-traveling” team that already couldn’t pull off one of its measly three scheduled home contests this season.

• The AF2 Barracudas haven’t played since 2002. Has that field surface been in storage for the past six years, or has it bounced from upstart minor indoor team to upstart minor indoor team like a bad penny? Either way—in all that time, nobody’s managed to get the logos off the turf? Seriously?

• Is the Wolfpack a tremendously Zen football outfit, or do they not have much time for proofreading? The organization also runs a semi-pro outdoor team, whose player application form judges a player’s quicks by his “40-year time.”

Really, guys? Aw, hell.

Announcement to come later today, apparently. The good news is, maybe we can get our hands on some cheap gear?

P.S. This doesn’t affect the af2, so, if you’re really looking for some sloppy indoor football… well, you might want to seek professional help first.

UPDATE: Yes, indeed, Operation Shutdown is in effect. From the league office:

We remain grateful to the greatest fans in the world for their avidity and their patience. It is with them in mind that the AFL, its owners and its players remain committed to resuming play as soon as it is feasible.

I’m not even interested in figuring out who or what to blame. So, I blame us, It’s Still Football, for not mocking hard enough last season.

Oh, and the economy. I also blame the economy.

Aieeeee! It's just like Pitcairn Island!

Oh, dear Christ. We get bored and wander off for several months, and our “beloved” league is in jeopardy? We figured it was the idle chatter of a few of the we-blogs, and perhaps there was some financial difficulty … wait, where’d the VooDoo go? Well, that’s just Tom Benson, and he’s kind of a dick. The league is as sturdy as one of my favorite Chicago institutions, The Tribune Company. Oh, it’s not? Oh, crap. The Predators, sold? What are the guys we met in New Orleans going to do with their scary masks? Terrorize children [more often]?

You’ll tell me it’s all going to be okay, right, San Jose Mercury News? Gak. “WE WILL TAKE ON ALL COMERS, FOR WE ARE INDESCRIBABLY WEALTHY,” is the campaign for the 2009 SaberCats, by the way. But what of The Dietz?  Certainly the Storm…

Despite reports of AFL troubles, Storm plods along

A ringing endorsement from the St. Petersburg Times-adjacent tampabay.com.

What happened? Well, until I can get a detailed analysis from our in-house economist, let’s use broad strokes: David Baker’s AFL was growing, and had a deal with ESPN that was supposed to secure the league’s future. He left us. Heleftusheleftusheleftus. Lex-from-Jurassic-Park interlude over, the VooDoo crumble with little-to-no-notice. A deal with A Mysterious Equity Group falls apart. Talks, dispersal draft, and free agency are all postponed. No schedule?

Boned, boned, boned. Where are our cut-rate Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money? Where’d it go? Did the league expand too quickly under Baker, only to collapse like a dying star? A star that was interesting, but never really that bright in the first place? Colorado is one of the teams facing awkwardness, and they’ve been one of the sturdier teams, owned by John Elway. If Elway’s hurting, everybody’s hurting.

Dammit.

We don’t write for a while, and this is what it takes to put fingers to keys?

At least we didn’t come back for an epitaph.

Yet.