The Day I Accidentally Went To The Arena Bowl

As some of you may know, and many of you don’t, tomorrow, the San Jose Sabrecats will be playing their first playoff game of the season in the divisional round of the AFL playoffs. They’re up against Colorado AKA the team the John Elway has investment in. I guess it makes sense though. First the Bay Area destroys him in his NFL career, and then the Bay will destroy him in his AFL career. That’s what you get for going to Stanford, asshole.

For those who aren’t familiar with the AFL, fear not, because I’m in the same boat as you! Guess Bissinger was on to something when he claimed all blogs were poorly researched and written!

If you’re an AFL fan, then you’d be hard pressed to find any Arena Football blogs out there, and if you do find one, it’s probably really shitty. Thus, this blog is your best shot. I can’t tell you about stats and key players and strategy or any of that jazz, but I can retell a little story about a first handed Arena Football experience that was encountered by yours truly:

The year was 2002, and it was a hot hot day in San Jose. This was before people were paranoid about global warming, so it probably wasn’t as hot as it is today. Me and my friends were pretty bored out of our minds on Saturday afternoon. We were too scorched to do anything, but we were too droned out to want to do nothing. Then, out of the blue, I get a call from my friend who works at the San Jose Arena. For the purposes of this story, let’s call him RTJ.

Usually back in the day, RTJ would give us tips about special deals that were going on at the Arena. On this particular day, he told us about some cheap Sabrecats tickets that were available for the game. I asked my friends if they were interested, and the answer was pretty much a flat no. However, I figured it was time for me to get out of the house, so I told RTJ to save me a few since I was going to call around and see who else was down for it.

Apparently, not many people were as interested in me. After about 10 calls, I only got one measly person to go. Yes, things were pretty much as pathetic for Arena Football as it is now. On the plus side though, the person who did want to go was a girl, so I suppose it wasn’t a complete disaster, though I don’t really think AFL is high “things to do to impress a girl” list. Whatever, I was in high school at the time, and more importantly, I was broke, so these cheap tickets were win win for me.

Ten minutes before the game started, I picked up my friend and we met up with RTJ to get our tickets. As I walked into the Arena, I thought to myself “I hope they’re playing someone good.” I didn’t really bother to check who the Sabrecats were playing that day, since my interest level was as low as the average attendance at an AFL game. That’s pretty damn low.

So about five minutes later, we found our seats on settled down into our seats ready to watch/sleep through the game ahead. As I prepared myself for a quick snooze, I was quickly startled by the loud bang of pyro and flashing lights.

Jesus Christ, I thought to myself, the Sharks don’t even get this much hoopla, what’s the big deal?

Then I saw it in large words as it flashed before me on the big screen:

WELCOME TO ARENA BOWL XVI: The Sabercats vs the Arizona Rattlers!!!!

Holy shit. As it turned out, RTJ had hooked us up not for a regular season game, but an actual Arena Bowl. If I had bothered to pick up the news or even read one article about the AFL, I would’ve had realized that the regular season was long gone, and it was playoff time. The reason the Arena Bowl was in San Jose was because back then, there were no such thing as neutral sites, instead it was just home field advantage.

Once I realized I was sitting in the middle of something historic (uh, kind of), my attention level shot up faster than Roger Clemens at warehouse filled with Winstrol. I was super pumped and ready for the kick off to start so I could welcome myself to the stage of history. Nothing is going to bring this high down, nothing!

….then they played. The Sabrecats scored on a pass. The Rattlers got picked off. Sabrecats score on another pass. Rattlers throw again. Sabrecats throw again. Yeah, that’s all that pretty much happened. It was a pass riot.

There was no running, no quick jukes, no hard tackles because well, they just didn’t have enough space to do it! It was pretty much pass after pass after pass. Sure, this sounds fun, but in actuality it really isn’t. It’s just like if you’re watching the Slam Dunk Contest, and Nate Robinson is trying his dunk for the 20th time. The same dunk, over and over and over. That gets pretty boring pretty fast.

Needless to say, after one quarter, me and my posse of one person left the game. That’s right, after one quarter of the ARENA BOWL, the championship game of the AFL, we walked out of the Arena because we were bored. And that story pretty much sums up my experience with the Arena Football League.