Do you care? I’ll miss it. I enjoy watching arena ball on tv sometimes as a change of pace. It made a nice change of pace in that period between the Super Bowl and baseball.
Not sure if this means anything for the larger sports scene. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some franchise shifts or even contraction in the NHL. The WNBA might also be at risk.
It doesn’t bother me. I’m hoping the NHL goes out of business as well.
I hope the economic problems serves as a wakeup call to these professional sports leagues that they’re not immune from all this even as they increasingly tailor their stadium experiences to the wealthy. The NFL and NHL especially. They need to get back to their blue collar roots.
Looking at the 6 completely putrid teams in the Western Conference, I’d say the NBA could stand to lose a couple of franchises.
Yeah, I actually do care. We have no football team in LA, and I’ve been saying for four years that I’m going to go see the Avengers one of these days. Now it looks like I won’t have a chance, and I actually would have had the time and money this year.
Le sigh…
Amen brother.
The business model and the unions of the NFL have most decidedly altered the love of the sport for me. It’s EXPENSIVE to go to a game, ticket prices aside, since they vary depending on the teams success.
REAL NFL teams (unlike my Bengals) generate HUGE TV revenues for the league. When you are a consistently losing team, you AREN’T generating those revenues on par with the rest of the league. Unless you’re the Cowboys.
I think that the NFL owners need to take a hard line against the unsustainable percentage increase in the salaries of players.
A co-worker’s son plays for the Avengers. That’s kind of a bummer for him. He has a second job so it won’t hurt him too bad. Oh well.
I’ve always said I was going to go, but I haven’t, and I’ve never watched more than 5 minutes of it on tv. I feel like I’d like it, though. So I care, but it won’t actually have any effect on me.
I’d like to see some sort of springtime football league be successful, but not bullshit that looks like a 7 on 7 drill on crack.
We went to opening day last year for the hell of it. The novelty wore off before too long. It didn’t help that the score was something like 70 to 60, which doesn’t seem particularly uncommon in the AFL.
Also annoying was the PA guy. On damn near every possession, he would scream, “It’s time… to STAND WITH THE AVENGERS!!!” So much so that it’s a running joke among me and my friends to this day (I texted them yesterday, “I guess we didn’t stand hard enough with the Avengers.”). Toss in a sleeve-tattoo giveaway and a red rope guy who was clearly auditioning for everyone he came in contact with, there was a definite trying-too-hard feel to it, despite the Staples Center being half-full. Minor League Baseball embraces that kind of cheese, but the AFL did not, despite its presence.
Plus, the Sabercats happened to be the visiting team, so we rooted for them, and we were getting major “I munna shank you” vibes from the bitter locals in the next section. The whole thing was simultaneously silly and overwrought.
During halftime, a rugby team had a scrimmage, at which point we thought, “Hrm, I bet that woulda been fun to watch.”
I went to a Colorado Crush game a few years ago, and I found the whole thing surreal. I described it later as a J.V. scrimmage combined with a patriotism rally and a WWF match.
For a game that was supposed to be all about action, Arena football seemed to have way too many game stoppages and commercial breaks.
Agree completely. Look at what’s happening with the Buffalo Bills. They sell out every game at their home at Ralph Wilson Stadium, despite not having made the playoffs in years. Even when it’s zero degrees out, they still fill the stadium to watch a bad team.
So what happens? They sign a deal to play a game a year in Toronto so they can make more money. They couldn’t even fill the stadium even though half of the people there went up the QEW from Buffalo. There can’t have been more than 10,000 local Torontonians there. But, oh, those luxury boxes sold out.
Now it’s a given that when Ralph dies, the Bills will move somewhere else, despite some of the most diehard fans in the league.
Bill Simmons (love him or hate him, he nailed this one) calls the new NFL stadiums “state of the art stadiums” which kill the fan experience stone dead. And he says…well, actually, you should read the whole thing.
But how is this different from any other American sport?
Why? The league which attempted to do so, the AFL, just went out of business. The NFL looks at that and thinks, “Thank goodness for our mega-wealthy personal seat licensees and luxury suite holders.”
I’m saddened by the league’s demise. I went to one game in Cleveland last year and while I wouldn’t call it football - they play defense in football - it was fun and interesting.
First of all, PSLs are despicable no matter how much money they bring in. Second, it’s not the luxury suites so much as the higher priced field level seats in the stadium. If you’re the owner of a team like the Lions or Bengals those seats can’t be selling too well, and all the extra costs involved with attending a game (parking, concessions, etc) make even the upper deck seats not worth it.
The NFL can’t be too secure if it just laid off 10% of it’s staff.
I always meant to start liking arena football, but never got around to it. Now I feel bad. 
This is disappointing. I always liked watching it on TV - had a lotta zip, and I wanted to go see a Desperados game live.
Hopefully they come back stronger.
Arena Football?
Yes, Arena Football.
(Or, rather, no Arena Football.)