Like every other sports fan out there, I’m just beginning to negotiate the slow journey of the sports “dead zone”. No football until summer’s almost over and all that’s going on right now is mid-season NBA and NHL. For some that’s enough to get by on until pitchers and catchers report, but not if you’re from the SF Bay Area like I am. See, my NBA team growing up was the Warriors. There was run TMC for a while there but for the most part, nothing doing. And the NHL didn’t come to town until eighth grade when the Sharks showed up. College basketball? I went to UCLA. So let me say again: I’m basically SOL until the end of March when college ball finally heats up and gambling enters into the equation. The summer Olympics may be able to bridge the gap for a couple of weeks, but seeing as how both our soccer and baseball teams failed to even qualify for the games this year, I’m not counting on it.

So what the hell am I supposed to do? Read? Of course not. Enter one of my favorite yearly traditions: the two weeks in February where I try to talk myself into getting on board with the Arena Football League. Here’s last year’s entry from the day I attended Arena’s inaugural game on NBC.

My pal Dylan calls me up late Thursday night to announce that he stumbled across two tickets to the LA Avengers home opener against the San Jose Sabercats. This was not only a welcome weekend diversion, but also quite a coincidence since we had been discussing the very prospect of giving Arena Ball a chance earlier in the week. Now we not only had that chance, but it came in the form of a free, if you don’t enjoy it just keep what you like and cancel forever with no further obligation clause. Which is nice. Now some of you wouldn’t have even bothered, and I can understand that. Arena ball is to professional football as soft porn is to adult entertainment. It’s there if you want it and it’s entertaining in a pinch, but you can’t quite shake the frustration that what you’re watching has the potential to be so much more.

When we pulled into the parking lot and I saw all the cars with Avengers flags jammed in between the rear windows and the door frames, a glorious and fulfilling scenario began to play out in my mind. Maybe this game could really be the beginning of something special for me. Maybe I’ll really like it and discover something from which I’ll derive great pleasure for years to come. I could be this team’s biggest fan! I’ll start going to a game a month and follow the stats in the paper. I’ll be known by my friends and co-workers as the only true avengers fan they know, a real individual who marches to the beat of his own sports fan drum. Next year I’ll get season tickets, be at every game. I’ll make acknowledging eye contact with the players on the bench and even chit chat with Casey Wasserman’s secretary during halftime. Yes indeed, this could turn into something real special for me, I’ll have something to look forward to all year.

Then when we got inside I was told we were too late for the bobble-head dolls. Oh well, forget it.

I think Dylan summed it up best when he leaned over to me and said he felt like we were watching them shoot a scene in “Necessary Roughness”. The whole thing really did seem like a big show. When we first walked in all the colors were the first thing I noticed. The teams had flashy uniforms like they did in “Any Given Sunday”, and you definitely couldn’t shake the impression that these guys aren’t the best America has to offer, just like that synthetic feeling that plagued me throughout “Sunday”. They blare rock music throughout the whole thing, just like they did when I was here a few months ago to watch them tape Smackdown and Raw for the WWE. The buzz that happens in a stadium before an NFL or MLB game never fades no matter how many games you go to. When we sat on the floor for the Clip show, we knew we were about to be present for some really special athletes doing their stuff. The roster is a bunch of names you’ve never read before. And when you do recognize a name it’s even worse, because you know it’s some guy that played for your school and you remember knowing even back then that this guy probably was headed nowhere after he graduated. But now somehow he’s making a comeback, and you’re front and center for day one. Thrilling.

The next cover-your-eyes moment comes when we realize that this weekend is the maiden voyage for NBC’s broadcast deal with the AFL. The PA announcer comes on and starts warming us up like we’re the 4 o’clock audience at the Sea World killer whale show. All of a sudden there’s waaay too much over the top avengers rhetoric being strewn about and the crowd’s being ordered to cheer wildly whenever the PA guy utters the phrase “AFL on NBC”, which he then does roughly every 40 seconds for the remainder of the afternoon. It actually reminded me of the time I watched CBS shoot the pilot for Kilbourne’s “Late Late Show” – a bad comic trying to warm up an oblivious audience and producers instructing people when to laugh and when to shut up. They might as well have hung applause signs from the rafters (actually, they did: at one point the jumbo-tron featured a giant pare of gloved mickey mouse hands clapping together). I honestly felt embarrassed trying to cheer for them, mainly because the two people I was with were both well aware that I had no clue who these guys were or what the rules were.

I figured I’d start to get into it once the game started, but that charge of energy that comes with the kickoff just wasn’t there. It was as if I was watching a friendly, unofficial scrimmage instead of a real game.

Already bored with the game, I started checking out what’s going on in the seats around me. You can always get a read on the legitimacy of a sporting event by quickly cataloging the famous faces in the crowd. Happily, things started out great when I spotted Ron Jaworski sitting right in front of us. Hey, it’s not Nicholson or Hoffman, but at least there’s someone who knows the game, won a Superbowl and is not embarrassed to be right there in front, in full view of everyone. The only problem is that later in the game we figured out his daughter is somehow involved with the team and so that was his only tie to the event. Things went from ‘just ok’ to ‘not that good’ when I recognized Hulk Hogan sitting two rows up right in our section. Apparently the WWE was back in town for a taping of “Raw”. Now we’re talking C celebrities at best, which makes you feel the exact opposite of “hey this is cool I’m hanging out in the same general vicinity as this famous person and we practically have the same seats; finally I’m right where I belong.” Yikes. If that’s the only resident LA celebrity personnel they could round up for this thing, we could be in big trouble. At least that’s what I was thinking until I recognized Melissa Rivers sitting two rows up, twelve o’clock. Immediately we went from ‘it doesn’t look good’ to ‘this league has no chance’. Too pessimistic? Just tally it up: I don’t care about the teams, they hired the cheerleaders from “The Replacements”, I overhear people asking where the opposing team is from, and I had to sit next to the all-time textbook example of “if my mom wasn’t famous, you never, ever would have heard of me.” And let me tell you something, if you think she’s unattractive on television, well…

So now you may be saying “this isn’t a very objective look at Arena League Football. Was there anything good? Anything at all?” Yes. There were some great touchdown catches and one of the receivers ended up in someone’s lap down in front.

“Well that’s kind of cool then, it doesn’t sound all bad.” It really isn’t, especially when it was still the first quarter. But when both teams continue to score at will for the duration of the contest, the big plays lose their luster pretty quick. Strangely, the AFL advertises that their teams are scoring 80 and 90 points each per weekend. I think this isn’t that great of a strategy. I remember going to an NBA game back in the early 90’s. Nets vs. Warriors. It was billed as a possible scoring record breaker as two of the worst teams in basketball went up against each other; I think they ended up scoring a combined 260 points or something. I have a point: games with no defense are boring. And that’s the thing about AFL, no defense. There’s a reason you’re not seeing hilights of these games on SportsCenter every weekend.

I think we were already well into the 2^nd quarter when my buddy Dylan asked me how many downs there were in Arena Ball. Usually I’d be embarrassed at not knowing the answer to a question like this, but since nobody else knows what the hell’s gong on either, I shrugged my shoulders and twirled my complimentary fan towel.