The Arena Football League was designed for people who can’t get enough football. Its 20th season began, strategically, the weekend before the Super Bowl, when no other football was scheduled, and the local franchise, the Chicago Rush, opened at home two days before the big game, thus setting itself up as the only football in town for the next three months. The Rush caters less to football’s fans than its fanatics, such as the guy in front of me as I pulled into the parking lot of Rosemont’s Allstate Arena. He had a Bears window flag on one side of his car, a Rush window flag on the other, and various Bears- and Rush-related decals on the back window. There was one of an unlicensed Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes pissing on a list of the Bears’ division rivals, and another of some other character taking a dump on a Green Bay Packers logo. I’m sure that inside the arena this fellow felt right at home.
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Arena football is played on a 50-yard-long field not much wider than a hockey rink. The boards are cushioned and the fast surface complements the players, who tend to be quick and fleet (even the linemen), most of them former college players too small for the NFL. Nets rise at each end of the field, and the kickoff, from the opposite goal line, typically bounces off the netting and into the hands of a receiver, who skitters off and eventually crashes into either the boards or an opponent. It’s football with the look and feel of pinball. Eight men play on a side, with the pass-oriented offense consisting of three down linemen, a blocking back, a quarterback, and three receivers–one of whom is permitted to race at full speed toward the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped. As for the defense–well, let’s just say there was more defense played in the NBA back in the cocaine-crazed 70s.
The game wasn’t without its moments, but the “exceptional” plays felt like something pulled off in a rec room with a Nerf ball. Falling down in the end zone, New York wide receiver Angel Estrada caught a ball that had caromed off the sideboard. You don’t see that in the NFL.
