Dayton Warbirds

[marlthom]

I may be crazy but this guy may have insulted his fans before the first game:

Pewonski said the Warbirds might not play any road games this season. Whether they would be eligible for the playoffs is yet another unknown.

"We're not sure we can pull a whole season off," Pewonski said. "We may just do the home games. To the Dayton people, I don't think that would make any difference."

http://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/content/sports/daily/0325warbirds.html

If I'm going to support a team, they should play a full professional schedule.

[nksports]

This is a looney toon situation that really threatens the stability of what could be a good market. I'm a native of the area (grew up in Huber Heights before it was an actual city). While minor league sports are always a crap shoot in regards to whether a team makes it or not, when leagues don't do their jobs (like checking up on if franchise owners actually have the resources to operate a team — or, acording to one of the Dayton Daily News articles, one of the team operators did prison time for financial misconduct), it really looks bad.
This is a black eye to both leagues. Boy Howdy.

[Jamie]

Its a black eye, no doubt. But they finally played their game in front of a suprisingly large crowd.

It appears they now have solid commited ownership and a league that wants them.

I think the Warbirds are going to be OK, but it will take some time to rebuild trust in the community.

[plbell627]

The schedule shows that the Dayton Warbirds do have road games however some of them are going to be very hard to do. Already this league the NIFL has made a team play 2 games on 2 straight nights. This team was the Montgomery Maulers and the played Sat. 4/9 in St. Louis then traveled to Dayton and played the Warbirds on Sun. 4/10. I don't care how good your team is you do not play football 2 nights in a row.

The Dayton warbirds go to Montgomery play a road game on Sat. 5/7 then come home and play Cincinnati in Dayton on the following Monday 5/9. Later they go Tri-Cities for a game on Fri. 5/27 and play in Billings on Sat. 5/28. Who ever came up with these dates knows nothing about traveling after a football gameand then having play another game the next day.

This is how screwed up the NIFL is I know because my son played on a team that was in the NIFL last year and they did a lot of things that caused the better teams to form their own league the UIFA this year. People believe this league is better than the UIFA, but you can see from the above examples it is not. Also the new owner of the Dayton Franchise also owns 3 other teams all expansion teams, Lakeland, Kissimee and I believe Daytona Beach.

[nksports]

Dayton may not be out of the woods yet. There were some stories in the Daytona Beach paper that the ownership group which currently runs rhe Warbirds is having problems in Daytona Beach (unpaid rent to the arena) and Kissimee (unpaid players and coaches). According to the paper, it seems the GM and the entire coaching staff in Kissimee called it quits due to not getting paid for several weeks. It said Kissimee would be using semi-pro replacement players. It said the Daytona Beach team got locked out of its arena for almost a week and couldn't practice.

Hmmm.

(Note: Those stories are linked on the OSC site under the Daytona Beach team)

P.S. Add Cincinnati to the list of endangered teams. It seems the Cincy franchise is being sued by its bank for overdrafted accounts.

[ChampionOfSteel]

Dayton may not be out of the woods yet. There were some stories in the Daytona Beach paper that the ownership group which currently runs rhe Warbirds is having problems in Daytona Beach (unpaid rent to the arena) and Kissimee (unpaid players and coaches). According to the paper, it seems the GM and the entire coaching staff in Kissimee called it quits due to not getting paid for several weeks. It said Kissimee would be using semi-pro replacement players. It said the Daytona Beach team got locked out of its arena for almost a week and couldn't practice.

Hmmm.

(Note: Those stories are linked on the OSC site under the Daytona Beach team)

P.S. Add Cincinnati to the list of endangered teams. It seems the Cincy franchise is being sued by its bank for overdrafted accounts.

The only thing the NIFL has going for itself is it defensive design for regular scrimmage plays -- middle linebacker 5 yards away from the line of scrimmage, and 4 other defensive backs. This opens up an exciting running attack which the AFL/AF2 lacks with its jack linebacker design. I'm bored to death with the AFL/AF2. I wish the AFL would get its act together and copy the NIFL (and UIF?) design for regular scrimmage plays.

The action that occurs on a regular scrimmage is the ONLY reason why I would go back to see a NIFL game in my area.

Question: Do the players know the unstability of the situation BEFORE they commit themselves to play for this poorly financed league? Do the players and coaches know from the start they will get paid only if the money is available and have agreed to this?

Do we have any players on this website that can answer these questions?

I'd hate to think the players are hurting for their money in order to pay for their apartment rent, etc.

Having a bunch of players and coaches quit doesn't sound like being paid is optional or part of the understanding at the beginning of the season to me.

You just can't keep declaring business bankruptcy and expect to get away with it. Someone MUST lose their home/property (lien) if players/coaches/civic arena rent/football equipment companies/parking lot personnel/arena janitors don't get paid for services rendered.

If you guys in charge can leave the situation unscathed by using everyone else's money except your own, I'd like to know the law firm that represents you in court.

If you guys in charge can get away with this, I don't want to get an expansion team in your league, I'd like to own your accountants and lawyers that make this happen.

My hope is my town gets a AF2 team that has adopted the NIFL rulebook changes for scrimmage plays next year.

Anyone that wants to debate my points...bring it on! Just don't make lame comments without supporting your comments. Saying I'm negative is lame. My comments are for positive change that will involve some parties being removed from the situation as cancers. I expect them to play the negative card in their responses.

Let's see what they say.

[Tombor]

Sort of relating to the story about the Kreatures coaching staff and players not getting paid I heard Dayton players weren't getting paid until about a couple weeks ago and that the leader of the dance team quit because she wasn't getting paid, but I'm not sure how much validity there is to either of those claims.

Also the guys that do the games, I'm just their stat/spotter for home games, said the team didn't even rent a BUS for the River City game-- the team went down in seperate minivans and they drove seperate.

As for the Arena situation like the one in Daytona Beach I guess the Warbirds lease was paid for at Nutter when Joadway (sp?) was running the team and they were still in the UIF. In fact their old UIF schedule is pasted everywhere in the arena...

[plbell627]

Unfortunately all 3 teams that are having money problems are owned by the same person. When he came to the rescue? of the Warbirds he was the shining white knight. Now that he has found out that it is a lot tougher to run a football team than you may believe it to be he has had a rude wake-up call. As I first said the Commisioner of the NIFL Carolyn Shiver will take anybodys money so the league looks good, but now that it's not looking good gor at least 3 teams now what? And I would bet you Carolyn Shiver has no answers either.