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IFL Indoor Football League

Over a Cup of Coffee

by Jerry Hewitt
March 15, 2010 - Indoor Football League (IFL)


Attendance, Chest Beating, & Websites

This morning I'm forced to go to the OSC message board for content. Actually the board may be the one place to find real info on the leagues and teams, although finding unbiased opinions there is not easy.

Attendance

In their ten plus year history the Sioux City Bandits have an over all record of 71-81 including the play offs. In ten seasons they have made the playoffs only half of those times. They have a 3-5 lifetime playoff record. The Bandits could never be called one of the great indoor teams, but they have been a solid part of the indoor football landscape.

What I'm getting to here is that there are those that say winning is the key to success and great fan support. I beg to differ and use the Bandits as my example.

It is my understanding that the Bandits have a strong fan following no matter their record, but more do seem to come out when they play Sioux Falls.

Chest beating

Next, there has been a number of fans on the message board debating who is the best league and have been upon occasion figuring in the "new" AFL at times. This has been a very biased thread with mostly IFL and AFL fans going at it.

To my way of thinking its a moot point. Comparing the AFL to any of the indoor leagues is like comparing apples and oranges. Outside of the fact they both play indoors and use the same type of ball, they aren't the same game. I'm not talking who has the big tv deal or who's players are paid more, but that the rules of the game and field equipment just different enough to say not the same.

Even the on going battle of which league, AIFA, CIFL, IFL, or SIFL, is better is a matter of personal opinion. Most opinions come down to which league the posters team is in. To my way of thinking more relevant to debate which are the better teams in any one particular league.

Websites

While my coffee is still hot, here is my all time favorite subject, league and team websites. I can appreciate a killer website as well as anybody and have even designed a few myself, but design isn't as important as it having the information fans and the media want and that information updated as needed in a timely manner.

This may apply to league sites more than their teams sites since it is or is supposed to be information central for the teams and the league. Sad to say I sometimes find more up to date information on OurSports Central. I'm not saying OSC doesn't deserve credit for being on top of the news, but realistically the leagues ought to beat them out.

The games

Last this morning I need to recap in my own way yesterday's games. In the AIFA, New Jersey visited Baltimore for the Mariners home opener and Harrisburg was at Erie. Over in the CIFL no games were scheduled, while the IFL featured two, Tri Cities at Billings and Austin at Corpus Christi.

Austin, 0-1, lost to Corpus Christi,1-1, 51-36 bringing up the question of quality of teams in the SIFL since Austin came over to the IFL this season from the SIFL. They finished second in the league last season while Corpus Christi was but an average IFL team.

In the other IFL game Tri-Cities, 0-2, fell to Billings, 3-0, 64-50. Billings broke the game open with a 27-10 second quarter explosion. Billings still has to be the odds on favorite to win it all, but tri Cities in two losing efforts has put a lot of points on the board. The Fever are still inexperienced at the indoor game and I think once they get it all figured out will be a force in the Pacific Division.

Both home teams did ok with the Pointstreak scoring system except the clock in both games remained at 15 minutes from what I seen. It was nice to know the finals immediately upon completion of the games. One problem in the Billings game, they didn't load the Fever stats into the box score section or hadn't an hour after completion. That problem was corrected by the time I checked this am.

There was no updating of anything on the IFL site over the weekend other than the Pointstreak system. That to me is a big disappointment as in my opinion there are no weekends off during season. Although OSC does a good job in getting information posted 24/7 it is still not right that fans have to rely on a 3rd party site to find the latest news. The AIFA and CIFL seem to find time to update their sites, so why not the league that wants to be considered the leader in indoor football?

In the AIFA Harrisburg, 1-1, downed Erie, 1-1, 56-42. The Baltimore Mariners remained perfect at 2-0 in defeating the New Jersey Revolution, 0-1. Stats were posted very quickly on the Baltimore game, but were not posted on the Harrisburg/Erie game when I checked Sunday evening at 8:30 Eastern. Also there was no score report on either game on the AIFA home page. Again that all was corrected by the time I checked this morning.

Other stuff

When I first came up with this idea of a daily piece on indoor football and approached Paul here at OSC on the idea, he commented that it should be balanced, not leaving out the negative, but not focusing 100% on it either. I couldn't agree more, but my ten plus year history of the sport has meant dealing with negative issues more than positive ones, so I'm more used to finding the bad and talking about it. That's what five years in the NIFL will do to someone.

At times I say I see shades of the NIFL in all these leagues meaning little has changed, but I know that's not 100% true, there has been improvement, more accountability and over all better, more solid teams. Is it perfect, no. Are they headed in the right direction, most of the time. But this is the minor leagues and the nature of the sport at this level to find the ugly as a way of life at times. I think what will make a big difference will be that time when those who lead the league and own teams are not in it for what they can get out of it. That may be too harsh, but sometimes that's how I feel.

This article and more archived at The Indoor Football Report located at www.IndoorFootballNetwork.com Comments about this article or suggestions can be made to indoorbowl@yahoo.com

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Indoor Football League Stories from March 15, 2010


The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.


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