Officials aside, the action doesn’t flag

Well, I’m Shocked.

I thought they were bringing Arena Football to town. Turned out to be flag football Thursday night instead.

So then, two nitpick suggestions for the betterment of the game: more of the dance team, and less of the refs.

This is not to say that the debut of the Spokane Shock was a downer – anything but. A rowdy crowd announced at 9,386 turned the Spokane Arena into a sea – well, maybe a bunch of pothole lakes – of orange. Footballs flew into the stands at the promised clip, where they were finder’s keepers. Eardrums were suitably assaulted by every rock and rap song recorded from 1981 to the present.

Except the theme from “Shaft.” Which would have been appropriate, what with Samuel L. Jackson watching from a suite upstairs.

“I didn’t know,” said Shock coach Chris Siegfried. “Maybe he can get me a spot in the movies.”

So there was even a Hollywood touch, including the ending – which had the home team pulling out a 41-40 victory over the Stockton Lightning in their af2 opener by stopping a fourth-down quarterback sneak by Josh Blankenship with 55 seconds left.

Wait, stopping a sneak on fourth down?

A sneak?

What happened to three touchdowns in the last 30 seconds? What happened to the Hail Mary off the net? What happened to, sheesh, offense?

So much for truth in advertising.

But, hey, the score didn’t have to be 100-99 for the evening to hold some excitement. Of course, I say “hold” at the risk of having the refs reach into their pockets one more time and mark off 10 yards.

After 10 flags flew in the first quarter alone, one fan reached his limit when the 11th wiped out a Shock stop on fourth down three plays into the second period.

“Must be Seahawks refs,” he shouted, referencing the imagined Super Bowl officiating conspiracy/travesty that will scar football psyches in the Northwest for years to come.

But let’s be fair. With two expansion teams playing, maybe we can chalk this one up to expansion officials, too.

And down the line, it’s bound not to detract from the speed and athleticism Arena ball promises and mostly delivers.

Yes, there are those who dismiss the indoor game as toy football and suggest it may as well be played with Nerfs, but they weren’t on the receiving end of the lick that the Shock’s Johnny Lamar laid on George Williams to separate him from a third-quarter pass. They didn’t see Spokane’s Antwone Savage catch a ball over the middle, duck out of a shoulder tackle and then drag a defender along the dashers until he was just a forearm short of a touchdown.

And they didn’t see big Chuck Jones – “the Talk of the Shock” – break through and block a Stockton extra point with 6:56 left to account for the margin of victory.

“I’m the crowd pleaser!” Jones was roaring down on the Arena floor even before warm-ups started, and he certainly was on this night.

The advance subtext of Thursday’s game was the return of Blankenship, the former Eastern Washington quarterback who had spurned a couple of Shock entreaties to sign here – and with the crucial sneak aborted and a couple of picks thrown, it was not his best night. But Eastern still produced one of the evening’s heroes – Anthony Griffin, the one-time Eagle defensive back, who scored a pair of touchdowns.

“I like how fast-paced it is and how the fans are right there,” he said. “Since the outdoor game didn’t work out for me, this is almost better for a smaller guy who’s shifty and fast.

“I get to catch passes and play defense. It’s like high school again.”

It’s that and more. It has a little pro wrestling feel to it, but what doesn’t these days? It’s a game in a box that thinks outside it – really, would anyone else have ever imagined the U.S. Border Patrol as a corporate sponsor? And there’s no need for a heady player to be the clichéd “coach on the field” – because there really is a coach on the field. Two of them, in fact – one from each team, standing about 10 feet apart and often jawing at each other between calling the plays.

And there’s an innocent excitement to it all.

“We got a future,” said Jones. “We got over the hump. We’ll get people coming back now that they’ve seen how hard we play. That’s what we wanted to do – keep the seats full, and the only way you’re going to do that is by winning.”

Also by keeping the laundry off the lawn.

“I don’t know what was up with that,” Jones said of all the penalties, “but them refs were looking at me. I think they were from Stockton, honestly.”

Uh-oh. Sounds like another conspiracy. Shocking.