Poor Sports: Celebrating the Worst in Athletics

Working in the Wrong Arena

by Jeff Hause

So I go to my first Arena Football game.

Arena football is a lot like my last serious relationship: You dress and act like it's the real thing... but it's still doomed to fail, the rules are unclear, and there's a lot less scoring than you were promised when you first agreed to try it.

When you first enter the arena (in this case the Staples Center in Los Angeles) the scene looks vaguely familiar: There's a minature field (50 yards long by 85 feet wide), there are guys wearing pads, helmets with manly logos on the side, and NFL-style uniforms, and (of course) there are slutty-looking cheerleaders.

But there are obvious differences: Each team only has eight men on the field at one time. The sidelines are covered in 48"-high foam rubber barricades. There are goalposts, but they're only nine feet wide, and surrounded by netting. Touchdowns are six points, with one extra point for a conversion by place kick after a touchdown -- but you can get two points for a conversion by drop-kick or a run or pass. You get three points for a place-kicked field goal... or FOUR for a drop-kicked one. There are four downs, but punting is illegal, so on fourth down the team must try to get the first down or score. Weirder yet, the receiving team has to field any kickoff or missed field goal that rebounds off the net -- and the kicking team can, too!

Amazingly, the league has been around for fifteen years now (it only seems like five since I first started ignoring it). There are two conferences (the "American and the "National"), each with two divisions (the American has the "Western" and "Central," while the National has the "Eastern" and -- for some reason -- the "Southern." Don't ask me what happened to "Northern"). The teams are named things like the "Kats," the "Storm," and the "Thunderbears" (whatever they are).

My local team is the L.A. Avengers, with their star: NFL quarterback washout Todd Marinovich. You may remember Todd as the player who was arrested on the field by authorities for sexual assault last year. Todd was drafted by the Raiders in the early nineties, but was considered too out-of-control (imagine being to wild for the Raiders!). I know somebody that shared a room with him in drug rehab a few years back.

Anyway, Todd has cleaned himself up and is back in pro (no giggling) football after an eight year hiatus. He won "All Rookie" honors last year.

The Avengers were playing the aforementioned Thunderbears in the season opener. The arena was filled with electricity, if not spectators (the top sections were empty, but the floor and loge had a decent crowd).

Team stars.

There was a lot of passing, very little running, a cool halftime show with bike riders, and shirtless fans who painted themselves team colors with big letters on their bloated bellies (but together they spelled out "A-TEAM" -- the name of the cheerleaders, not the football team).

The one truly exciting moment was when the mascot -- a little man in bright red with a huge foam rubber head and helmet -- tried to walk along the top of the endzone barrier, hit his head on the goalpost and fell backwards onto some of the fans. I guess it's hard to see out of that foam rubber head, but he should be credited witrh the hardestt hit of the night.

My team lost. They were down by 10 with one minute to go, so they had a chance to score, boot the kickoff into the net, catch it and score... I think. At least I think that's what the announcer said. Who knows. Anyway, it ended up 58-48, with the Avengers losing. Marinovich was benched after two quarters.

So how would I compare Arena football to the NFL and XFL? As Limbo is to Heaven and Hell, Arena football is to the NFL and XFL (guess which one the XFL is). Hey, it's been around for fifteen years now, so maybe it will last...

... Right -- and I'm going out with my ex-girlfriend real soon, too.

4/20/2001

Poor Sports Archive

Jeffrey C. Hause has written professionally (in a very amateur fashion) for entertainers like Jay Leno, Jim Carrey, Rodney Dangerfield, Gabe Kaplan, Rick Dees and people he'd rather not tell you about. He's also written screenplays at Warner Brothers, Disney, Universal, Columbia, Franchise Pictures, the Samuel Goldwyn Co., and Interscope. Here's his résumé. E-mail: jeff@sportshollywood.com.