It won’t mistaken for Super Bowl, but that’s not all bad

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – It’s just like a Super Bowl. Only better.

There’s a football game. There are two fine teams – your Spokane Shock and the Green Bay Not-the-Packers. There’s a championship at stake. It’s being played in a hot, exotic locale. All sorts of craziness is going on.

That woman on Carolina Beach not wearing a top, for instance.

See? Better.

The city is crawling with tourists. Of course, it’s always crawling with tourists. But none is wearing a Steelers jersey.

See? Better.

There were no lame stand-up comedians mucking up Media Day. In fact, there wasn’t really much media. The medium you’re reading now actually missed Media Day, mostly because he didn’t know there was going to be one.

See? Better.

So ArenaCup 2006 – and not only because it involves a team from Spokane – is everything a championship football game should be. And less.

Alas, this could also be true at the box office, where the tropical depression that’s supposed to be some 300 miles out to sea may have already hit, if the brief survey I took out on Isla Verde Avenue on Friday is any indication. Acutely aware of my role in the language barrier – Mr. Oke, my high school Spanish teacher, once cheerfully assessed my classroom efforts as debil in la cabeza – I decided to bring along visual aids to facilitate the process. I clipped a picture of the Coliseo de Puerto Rico from a magazine and snatched a plastic cup from the hotel bathroom.

“Are you going to the ArenaCup?” I asked a man, ingeniously flashing first the picture and then the cup.

I got just the response I was looking for.

He put a quarter in the cup.

OK, I made that up. I didn’t think about the visual aid thingie until later.

But of the people I did ask, while several had heard of the event or seen a television commercial, none had plans to attend. Then again, there are so many other things to do in this city.

For instance, my hotel is next door to the Club Gallistico de Puerto Rico, which bills itself as San Juan’s “premier cockfighting venue.” There’s even a cute rooster on the sign.

For a minute, I thought it was a Chick-Fil-A.

But attendance doesn’t seem to be a pressing concern to the officials of arenafootball2. League spokesman Marc Lestinsky said the event has been sold to local promoter Enrique Cruz, who recently staged the successful World Baseball Classic. That makes Cruz responsible for ticket sales and af2 happily out of the pregame estimate business.

“Mr. Cruz, however, did promise he’d bring 8,000 fans for the event,” Lestinsky said.

Wow. Hope he remembered to put the rear seat back in his minivan.

The league has tried to help Mr. Cruz’s efforts by publicizing on its Web site that the game starts at 6:30 local time, though kickoff is actually 30 minutes later (4 p.m. PDT). This, according to the af2, was done so ticket buyers wouldn’t be fashionably late or something, though it recalled Frank Layden’s favorite line back in the attendance-challenged early days of the Utah Jazz.

“What time is the game?” a fan would ask.

“What time can you be there?” Layden would reply.

Not that there hasn’t been a promotional effort. On Thursday night, Shock players Charles Frederick, Rob Keefe and Ed Ta’amu were whisked off to the studios of Telemundo Puerto Rico to appear on the variety show “No te Duemas,” or “Don’t Go to Sleep” (take that, Mr. Oke).

“It’s like a ‘Regis and Kelly’ kind of thing, but at night, so it’s a lot crazier,” Keefe said. “They had music acts and contests.

“It was such a party atmosphere I don’t think they understand how intense the game is going to be, so they were asking ‘What are doing after the game?’ and ‘Are you partying?’ and ‘You going dancing’ and ‘Have you met the women yet?’ It was hilarious. There were guys with tambourines running around, and clown horns.”

Hmm. Sounds like a Shock midgame promotion.

But since the players and coaches will certainly take care of the game faces, this otherwise casual – even comic – approach is something to appreciate in the increasingly self-important world of sports.

Only in the pick-up-game world of af2, for instance, could a player be added to the roster on the eve of the championship. Spokane coach Chris Siegfried snagged veteran af2 lineman Voncellies Allen to replace Jerome Stevens, who’s getting married today in Ocean Shores, Wash.

“This is an offer you cannot refuse,” Allen said. “These guys did all the work to get here. I don’t know Jerome, but I thank him for the opportunity. I wish him well in his marriage. Hopefully, we’ll pull this off and he’ll get a ring out of this, also.”

As he said it, workers finished installing the field at the Coliseo, though in fact it’s a borrowed rug. You’ll notice on TV that “Macon Knights” is stenciled in the end zones.

But don’t think for a minute that this isn’t a big deal to the Shock and the Blizzard, even if it’s the same $200 – or $250 – paycheck. There’s a championship at stake. It’s on national TV. It’s in a hot, exotic locale.

“This is as big as it gets for our league,” said Siegfried, who knows exactly how big that league is and how big it isn’t, but defends it vigorously in any case. “This is our Super Bowl.”

Only better, I tell you.