Red Zone
06-24-2006, 02:05 PM
I'm disappointed about a lot of things concerning the league. First and foremost is the fact the league message board is shut down for renovations. I agree with some other folks who have posted that this appears like an attempt to stamp out a fan uprising about the Richmond forfeit scenario. I have tried to think of a logical explanation why the league would shut it down going into the week of the conference championships. I've come up with three reasons: 1) the league didn't want the Richmond situation to take away from what's going on on the field with the conference championships. 2) the league wants to make sure the intelligent fact finding questions the fans had about Richmond's forfeit didn't catch on like a western brush fire and take over a life of their own. 3) fans and media covering the expansion teams (Tupelo, Danville, and others to be announced) don't see what's going on so they don't form a bad opinion of the league prior to their new team even getting a nickname let alone take the field. So the media won't ask those same hard hitting questions of league's management that the fans began to do.
AIFL management, don't give me the answer of "we're trying to give the fans a voice and have the new fan advisory board run the new league message board," or "we're in a growth spurt and we needed to do it at this time." I don't buy any of that and you should give your hardcore fans more credit than that. There are a lot of fans who have gone out and talked this league and teams up, worked countless hours (mostly as a volunteer) for their respective teams to do all they could to see their team and the league succeed.
This week there should have been lots of smack talk between Canton and the Raleigh and Rome fans about who is the better team, arena, and who has the better fans. Instead we are left with an empty void. OSC has a nice message board here, but it's like a 5000 seat arena with only a couple of hundred fans in it. You look around for the fans that you have begun to know and respect their ideas and comments, and they are no where to be found. Are they just fed up with what has happened and blew this whole thing off? Do they not know about this board or choose not to participate?
Mr. Haines and the rest of the AIFL management team - you have a lot of hard work ahead of you to repair the image of this league. Harder work than dealing with expansion issues and the championship game.
AIFL management, don't give me the answer of "we're trying to give the fans a voice and have the new fan advisory board run the new league message board," or "we're in a growth spurt and we needed to do it at this time." I don't buy any of that and you should give your hardcore fans more credit than that. There are a lot of fans who have gone out and talked this league and teams up, worked countless hours (mostly as a volunteer) for their respective teams to do all they could to see their team and the league succeed.
This week there should have been lots of smack talk between Canton and the Raleigh and Rome fans about who is the better team, arena, and who has the better fans. Instead we are left with an empty void. OSC has a nice message board here, but it's like a 5000 seat arena with only a couple of hundred fans in it. You look around for the fans that you have begun to know and respect their ideas and comments, and they are no where to be found. Are they just fed up with what has happened and blew this whole thing off? Do they not know about this board or choose not to participate?
Mr. Haines and the rest of the AIFL management team - you have a lot of hard work ahead of you to repair the image of this league. Harder work than dealing with expansion issues and the championship game.