The Flow of Consciousness

I went Friday night with Stacey, Mark, and Ian to see a Mahoning Valley Thunder arena football game at the Chevrolet Center in Youngstown, Ohio. They played the Manchester Wolves, a team from New Hampshire.

I was impressed, very impressed. I had no idea that arena football had quite the following it does. There’s some one million people who attend the games yearly, and it’s growing very quickly as people realize how cool the sport is.

It’s pretty much the same as outdoor, NFL football, except a few things:

• The ball carrier can roll off a wall, but if he’s tackled against the wall or the ball touches the top of the wall, it’s out-of-bounds.
• Fourth-down punts don’t exist, but the kicker can drop-kick for a two-point conversion or a four-point field goal.
• The field is only 50 yards long and 85 feet wide. This makes for a pretty quick game, as the drives and possession times are shorter.
• The play clock is 25 seconds instead of 35 seconds.
• A receiver can move forward before the snap. In NFL, this would be motion in the backfield (I think).
• Eight players are on the field instead of 11. There’s less field to cover, so it works out.
• The uprights are considerably closer together. The kicks are never more than 50 yards away, so even mediocre kickers can hit it.

I was also impressed with the sportsmanship of the two teams. During one play in particular, one of the Wolves knocked the helmet off of a Thunder man. Rather than get all macho and offended, the Thunder man and the Wolf shook hands and both screamed, “AWESOME!” The Thunder man walked to his helmet, picked it up, and got back in the game. You don’t see that in NFL ball.

The tickets were cheap, too. Stacey’s brother bought them for her for her birthday, but they’d have only been $40 had we bought them. The seats were really good, too—the equivalent of the 40-yard line at an NFL game. The $15 seats would probably suffice, and if the seats aren’t filled up, the ushers don’t seem to mind people moving into the center once the game is underway.

The bad things? As always, alcohol was expensive. It was $5.50 for a 10 oz beer. That’s it. That’s all that was bad. The restrooms were close, there wasn’t any stupid players doing stupid things.

OK, the referee sucked. He sucked a lot when he counted a touchdown that was clearly fumbled. Instant replay even showed it. He got booed a lot throughout the game for making pretty awful calls.

Here’s a play from the game:

Would I go back again? Hell yeah. The Thunder plays at home the Quad City Steamwheelers on June 16, the Albany Conquest July 13, and the Green Bay Blizzard July 28.

They’ve also got some cheerleaders