Indoor football season begins

[J. Myrle Fuller]

So, we're less than three weeks removed from the Super Bowl and all of a sudden we are now about to start indoor season.

The first one off the blocks is the Indoor Football League. Last year the IFL was the most expansive of the myriad indoor football leagues out there, with 24 teams. They've contracted quite a bit in the past year-- their presence in Alaska is now gone, with the last team in that territory (the Fairbanks Grizzlies) having gone down in a pile of lawsuits, and the league in general tightening up in its original territory of the Plains-to-Texas region.

One of the interesting teams in the IFL this year is the Allen Wranglers. Allen is now under the ownership of star NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens, who at 38 is attempting a comeback with the team. They begin their season tonight against the Wichita Wild, and it appears that the team's not exactly lighting it up (as I type this, Owens dropped the ball and led directly to an interception). The Wranglers' two quarterbacks are Bryan Randall, who's played indoor ball and the CFL (and he had a nice college career at VA Tech), and Casey Printers, who started several years in the CFL but was generally pretty mediocre there. The game's being carried on ESPN3.

Most of the other indoor leagues start either next week or the week after.

[gatek99]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhLuQarZpG8

scored 3 tds in the 2nd qtr

[coachb]

Love indoor ball!

[J. Myrle Fuller]

So we're a couple weeks into the indoor season, and most of the teams have started up. The Arena Football League starts tonight... but... unfortunately for them, the player's union just went on strike about an hour ago. The main complaint appears to be wages-- they want more than the AFL-standard $400 a game.

The AFL responded rather quickly by firing all the union players and immediately hired replacement players for tonight's game (Pittsburgh at Orlando, which will be on NFL Network). There are rumors they're going to evict the AFL players from their team-owned housing and strand the Pittsburgh players in Orlando. Jerry Kurz, the league commissioner, has been relatively cavalier about the whole situation-- he basically said they have every right to strike, but we have every right to fire them and replace them with the next 480 players down the line.

This is going to be an ugly labor dispute.

[jwolf]

Mar 9, 2012 18:52:15 GMT -5 J. Myrle Fuller said:

So we're a couple weeks into the indoor season, and most of the teams have started up. The Arena Football League starts tonight... but... unfortunately for them, the player's union just went on strike about an hour ago. The main complaint appears to be wages-- they want more than the AFL-standard $400 a game.

The AFL responded rather quickly by firing all the union players and immediately hired replacement players for tonight's game (Pittsburgh at Orlando, which will be on NFL Network). There are rumors they're going to evict the AFL players from their team-owned housing and strand the Pittsburgh players in Orlando. Jerry Kurz, the league commissioner, has been relatively cavalier about the whole situation-- he basically said they have every right to strike, but we have every right to fire them and replace them with the next 480 players down the line.

This is going to be an ugly labor dispute.

Wow this does sound like it's gonna get ugly......

[broncofan]

Am I missing something? Don't the players have a contract? I thought one went on strike when the contract ran out. Not that I know though, never been on strike.

[J. Myrle Fuller]

Mar 9, 2012 22:17:26 GMT -5 broncofan said:

Am I missing something? Don't the players have a contract? I thought one went on strike when the contract ran out. Not that I know though, never been on strike.

The AFL players only recently unionized, as I understand it. The AFL has used a standard form contract for all of their players, something the union as a whole never consented to accepting.

I must add that there's an additional wrinkle here. The Pittsburgh players had not initially planned to strike, only to "take a knee" at halftime in solidarity with the players' union. However, the Pittsburgh group got rumors of a strike and acted preemptively by firing the entire roster, then re-signing anyone who was willing to accept their terms.

It appears not to be universal: San Antonio agreed to cross the picket line en masse for today's game against Utah (who they say also will field their original roster). The other games aren't as certain.

[jwolf]

Well, looks like their strike didn't last very long. I got a kick out of imagining the announcers not knowing who the replacement players were on the field, reminded me of watching an NFL replacement game back in the 80s when you could hear the frustration and hear the papers shuffling during the broadcast!

www.mcall.com/sports/football/mc-arena-football-strike-0312-20120312,0,7159455.story