Shock success generates expansive talk
HATO REY, Puerto Rico – Think this might spark some interest in arenafootball2 expansion?
Civic self-esteem need a B-12 shot? Get yourself one of these babies. It won’t make all the bad news go away, but it’s a hell of a diversion for an overheated summer of palm-slap-to-the-forehead banner headlines that break your spirit. Why aren’t cities lining up? Sioux Falls? Schenectady? Somebody?
San Juan?
Just see how easy Spokane made it look. Some fresh-faced college buddies looking for a fun toy pony up the hefty initiation fee. A coach on his way to the top of the af2 wins list just happens to be unemployed and available. The citizens pack the house the first night on faith and keep coming because they have a reason to. And the players get to feel like superstars, at least on every day but payday.
And to put the perfect bow on it, the team wins the championship in its first season. Of course.
Did the af2 expand to Spokane, or did Spokane just expand the af2’s horizons?
Saturday night was a paean to all sorts of possibilities. The Spokane Shock became the first expansion team to win the ArenaCup, the 57-34 blowout of the Green Bay Blizzard as unlikely as anything else that’s happened this incredible season.
It’s like this: The team’s best player barely sees action. Somebody else gets thrown out. An injured defensive back, the team’s late-season hero, doesn’t get in at all. Yet another regular excuses himself to get married – though his teammates were thoughtful enough to tape up Jerome Stevens’ jersey on the glass behind the bench. All this and still the Shock put the worst beating of the season on a team that looked like the poster children for power football.
“My goodness, did you see them?” asked Shock coach Chris Siegfried about Green Bay. “They looked like an NFL team. They had a receiver who’s 6-4 and 235 pounds. In this league?”
And yet the Blizzard were simply out of theirs.
It was easy to see why. How could the Blizzard expect to contend with a lineman who kept having to introduce himself to his teammates – Voncellies Allen was signed to replace Stevens a couple of days ago – and the backup quarterback lining up at receiver?
“That’s why our record is so good,” said quarterback Kyle Rowley. “Whenever things don’t look good, we have a way to fix it. Our receivers can play every position. Our defensive backs can play receiver. Heck, even our quarterback can play receiver. And he’s no joke – he’s out there getting it done in the championship game.”
That would be Derrick Crudup, a fine athlete Spokane rarely saw this season, but who was out there snagging passes and recovering fumbles and generally making himself indispensable, doing what Mike Holmgren wishes he could allow Seneca Wallace to do.
It is easy to think of af2 players as mercenaries with all the roster churn and come-and-go, to say nothing of the pay-per-game set-up, but on Saturday night it was more Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show.”
It wasn’t just the sense of chipping in, but also the way the Shock were able to dominate a team that “a lot of people in this league didn’t think we could hang with physically,” as Siegfried noted.
Defensive end Neil Purvis took a stab at finding a reason.
“It’s not a team, we’re a family,” he said. “Everybody says that, right? But I’ve never been a part of anything like this. I’ll walk down a dark alley with any one of those guys. They’re my brothers. And I really think that’s the difference between us and a lot of teams and has been all season.
“I think it was the difference tonight.”
Well, right or wrong, it certainly was different Saturday, and it had something to do with where af2 decided to stage its showcase game – some 3,500 miles from where the fans were.
Yes, the league put on its best face and even its false one, since it announced that 5,658 customers paid their way into the Coliseo de Puerto Rico. Ominously, a pair of Cheer Stix were left on every seat, a part of American sports culture which really didn’t need to be exported. By the second quarter – when Spokane was reeling off 34 points to break the game open – they started showing up twisted into balloon animals.
Not that all the fans were indifferent.
Take Kevin and Betty Winans of Spokane. They arrived in San Juan about seven hours before kickoff – and were leaving about 12 hours after the final horn. They dropped a cool $1,500 on airfare for their 24-hour stay even though “we’ve never been farther on a plane than Seattle in our lives.”
Why? Well, they happened to sell their home this spring to move into an apartment at Canyon Bluffs, where most of the Shock players happen to be housed. Kevin went to the April 15 game and “since then you couldn’t keep me away.”
He bailed on a buddy’s 50th birthday – front-row seats for Ted Nugent at Silver Mountain.
“I called him from the airport,” Kevin said. “He understood. It’s a guy thing.”
Or maybe a Spokane thing. Certainly the Shock was Spokane’s thing this summer.
“I know it’s going to be hard to top this,” admitted Siegfried, whose bosses must now try to find a way to keep him around to try. “But no matter how next season goes in Spokane, the fans have just got to keep coming and supporting us. We won a lot of games at home because of the fans and the extra edge they gave us – and as long as we have them, we’re going to have winning seasons.”
Winning seasons?
Hey, now is no time to start thinking small. Time to think a little more, well, expansively.