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Punting Is for Pansies

A league that always goes for it on fourth down hawks February football in Kansas City.

By David Martin 

Cornrowed linebacker Chris Morant feeds a dollar bill into a vending machine in the bowels of the American Airlines Center in Dallas. A spiral turns. A brightly colored pouch falls. "Some Skittles to ease the mind," Morant says.

Two hours remain before the 2 p.m. kickoff. As Morant buys candy, several of his Kansas City Brigade teammates loosen up on the field in preparation for the season opener against the Dallas Desperados. The rituals look familiar to football fans. At midfield, two coaches watch lineman Michael Landry make sharp cuts on the turf, testing an ankle he sprained three weeks ago.

This being an Arena Football League game, a high-scoring version of the sport played indoors on fields the size of a hockey rink, some of the pre-kickoff routines appear out of kilter. Backup quarterback Chris Sanders, for instance, drops back from an imaginary pass rush in his bare feet.

Square-jawed and wavy-haired, Sanders looks like a quarterback ordered from central casting. He's 28 years old, in what should be the prime of his career. Yet as with every other player in the Arena Football League, some deficiency in size, skill or pedigree has kept him out of the National Football League. So he toils for workingman's wages in a league with padded walls for sidelines and a 1-to-1 player-to-cheerleader ratio.

Now in its 20th season, the Arena Football League has grown from an idea scribbled on a manila envelope into a major minor league. Promoting itself as the fan-friendliest sport, the AFL has increased in wealth and visibility. Games now are broadcast on NBC. Franchises sell for eight figures. Seeing opportunity in the league of touchdowns galore, four NFL team owners now operate arena clubs. League investors also include rocker Jon Bon Jovi, Missouri billionaire Stan Kroenke and former Denver Broncos star John Elway.

As late as last August, the group of investors bringing arena football to Kansas City planned for an expansion team in 2007. Then Hurricane Katrina hit, leaving the arena football franchise in New Orleans homeless. The league needed a team to take New Orleans' place in the schedule. Expansion into Kansas City commenced immediately. In just four months, the Kansas City franchise had to pick a name, fill its roster and hire a full staff, from coach to cheerleaders. That left little time to sell a city on the idea of playing football on carpet.

In some ways, Kansas City seems an ideal place for arena football. Rabid fans blanket Arrowhead with a sea of red even when the Chiefs stink. Then there are the Interstate 70 fanatics driving for college football in Lawrence, Columbia and Manhattan, no matter that their teams are just going to get pounded again. Add in the fact that we're the undisputed home of tailgating (screw you, Green Bay), and you've got a town crazy for all things football.

But Kansas City also has rejected professional sports. Eleven pro hockey teams have come and gone. Minor-league basketball has twice failed, and the NBA's Kings fled to Sacramento in 1985. Indoor soccer's Comets bit it, and the outdoor version, the Wizards, have been short on fan support. Even the Chiefs and the Royals are threatening to pack up if we don't spend half a billion dollars on a stadium spring-cleaning.

In this climate, the Brigade's investors agreed to cough up $18 million just to get the rights for a team, not to mention the costs of assembling the franchise — players' salaries, workers' compensation, hiring someone to design a Web site. Now that's pressure to succeed.

For Tyler Prochnow, the principal owner, the challenges are nothing new. As a lawyer, he represented a most unpopular client: the telemarketing industry. Prochnow could not keep the "do not call" registry from becoming a reality, but signs indicate that he knows how to run an indoor football team. Prochnow says he'll be disappointed if attendance doesn't exceed 12,800 a contest, the league average in 2005. It helps that one of the investors in the team is the popular former Chief Neil Smith. With his name attached to the team, the Brigade has already sold 8,400 season tickets for its slate of eight home games at Kemper Arena. And last weekend, the Brigade managed a sell-out crowd of 16,523 at its home opener, in which Kansas City lost 37-33 to the Austin Wranglers.

A few fans of Kansas City's latest professional sports team refuse to wait for the February 12 home opener. Darrin Butler, a maintenance man who lives in Kearney, Missouri, made the drive to Dallas with a friend and her daughter. Butler, a Brigade season-ticket holder, wears camouflage pants and a Brigade T-shirt. On his head is a leather aviator cap, which he has topped with the Brigade's logo, a stealth bomber. "When I heard they made the name and everything, I was like, 'I want to be one of them goofy guys with a costume on TV,'" Butler says.

When Butler spots Smith, who played in six NFL Pro Bowls, standing on the turf looking resplendent in a checkered blue suit, he calls out, "Neeeiiilll!"

Butler is in row 20, which in NFL stadiums would put him far from shouting distance of the sideline. But arena football brings fans close to the action.

From his spot on the turf, Smith turns to Butler. "I like your hat," Smith says. "It's tight."

Brigade players suit up for the Dallas game in a room that has no lockers. Sitting on folding chairs in the cramped cinder-block room, they pull their equipment from bags strewn across the floor.

In one corner of the room, Cliff Green listens on headphones to the Young Jeezy and Akon song "Soul Survivor." He blurts out the occasional yeaaah in time with the beats. Next to him, Chris Pointer struggles to pull up a pair of tight silver football pants.

"I told you, boy, get some mediums," Green says to Pointer.

"I got biker pants on," Pointer says, examining himself.

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