Punting Is for Pansies

Ten days before the season began, the Brigade office on Shawnee Mission Parkway in Shawnee was a riot of cardboard boxes and streaks on dry-erase boards. "In a perfect world, I think you'd want at least a year, probably 18 months, to put an organization like this together," Prochnow says, sitting at a conference table. The details were overwhelming. "When you buy your football helmets, helmets come without decals, and they come without face masks. Somebody has to sit down one night before our players show up and screw in all the face masks in every helmet and put the chin straps on. Those are very time-consuming things that have to be done before anybody can ever step on the field. There's thousands of items just like that that are small issues in the grand scheme of things but very time-consuming and very labor-intensive."

In preparation for the halftime show, the Desperados Dancers make a costume change. Off come the matching spangled chaps and short shorts; on go the leather pants and plaid miniskirts. The dancers take the field and contort to a medley of rock songs, the arena lights catching their orange tans. The commissioner's pledge of wholesomeness notwithstanding, the routine celebrates T&A. It offers a small preview of what fans can expect of the Brigade's own dance team.

After trailing by 12 points at the half, the Brigade manages to narrow the Dallas lead in the third quarter. With 1:56 remaining in the quarter, Andy Kelly connects with Calvin Spears on a 10-yard touchdown pass. Dallas 37, Kansas City 30.

The touchdown is the 720th of Kelly's arena football career, good for second on the all-time list. It's not a record Kelly expected to hold. After leading the University of Tennessee to three bowl games, Kelly participated in NFL training camps in Arizona and Pittsburgh and played in NFL Europe. But he never made it onto an NFL roster. In the midst of his job search, Kelly played part time in the arena league. By the time he hooked up with the Nashville arena team in 1997, he figured the indoor league was his destiny.

Indicative of a man who has quit worrying about impressing NFL scouts, Kelly sports a second chin and a paunch that hangs heftily over the shorts he wears during practice. He'll turn 38 before the season ends. Kansas City is his sixth AFL city. "Maybe that's why I've never been married," he says.

One of the former members of the VooDoo, Kelly evacuated New Orleans before the storm hit. When he returned, he recovered the belongings he had left in his apartment. But just a few miles from where he lived, the destruction was evident. "You could see people's homes where they had gone back and just taken everything out of their homes and piled it in the front yard," he says. "You could tell there was nothing in those houses. It was pitiful. They couldn't save hardly anything. It was sad — really, really sad."

Cohen, who also came from the VooDoo, was supposed to fly into New Orleans from Atlanta on the day the hurricane landed. He pushed his flight back a day, and the airport closed. The images of the hurricane and its aftermath haunted Cohen. A newspaper in Atlanta ran a picture of a New Orleans man holding a baby in one arm and draping a blanket over a corpse with the other. The man was wearing a VooDoo jersey with Cohen's number.

Cohen entered the arena league in 1999. He made $800 a game in his first year, but his play drew the attention of NFL scouts, and he spent four weeks on the Oakland Raiders' practice squad that fall. Like Kelly, a full-time NFL job never materialized. Instead, Cohen has built a solid career in the arena league. Last year, he made the All-Arena team. "I just love the game," Cohen, 30, says. "I feel like I'm in a position where I'm established. I'm not in the NFL, looking over my shoulder every week, [thinking] 'Oh, I missed a tackle. They might cut me.' Or 'I missed a block, I fumbled.' Here it's like I'm able to relax ..."

Cohen is able to relax but not live in splendor. The average AFL player makes $40,000 a year. The highest-paid "star" earns less than $200,000. Most players take other jobs in the off-season. Cohen has tried his hand at real estate and the hauling business. Yarnell, the veteran lineman who looks like he swallowed a sea turtle, spent three months in 2004 as an extra on the Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard. "They were looking for guys to fit certain roles," Yarnell says. "I guess 'big fat white guy' was the role I fit."