Sports: Arena's power picks up steam

TAMPA -- Say what you will about the Arena Football League -- it's a gimmick, it's indoors, it's not real football, it won't last -- but 15 years after it started, it's still here.

The XFL is not.

"We have not been booted off the island," commissioner C. David Baker said.

The league has fortified itself with constant expansion, a developmental league -- Arena Football2 -- that has exceeded expectations and a six-year collective bargaining agreement. The NFL's involvement could take the league to a new plateau.

One NFL owner has a franchise in Detroit, and four others will field teams in the next few seasons. Baker said another five owners have applied for teams.

The NFL is considering exercising its option to purchase 49.9 percent of the league in March, prompting most associated with the indoor league to believe it could be on the brink of something big.

"I don't think there's been any secrets, but there have been a couple of reasons, and No. 1 is the product," said Baker, commissioner for five years. "I think that it is a strong, fun, exciting close-up product that has survived gross undercapitalization and some mismanagement and not only survived but thrived. ... We'll have 70 teams (including AF2).

"Secondly, I think at its core has been a philosophy, a grass-roots philosophy. Unlike other leagues grown from the top down, ... ours has grown from the fan up."

None of the original four franchises -- Chicago, Washington, Denver and Pittsburgh -- still exists, and the league had to survive a bumpy beginning.

Without a solid television deal or national sponsor, it survived one season (1989) in which it played a series of barnstorming games while it sorted out the business side and another (1990) when the league considered suspending play before trudging ahead. It escaped near disaster last year when the season was canceled because of labor strife but eventually was reinstated.

"I look at the NFL as Neiman Marcus and AFL as Wal-Mart," Baker said, "not so much in terms of quality but distribution system. We've been built with the care of a lot of Sam Waltons who made sure the shelves were stocked right.

"I'm really thankful for how this league has been built."

The ill-fated XFL -- with network television partner NBC -- posed a threat this year, with bombastic Vince McMahon driving the marketing machine and NBC giving the league a forum.

The fans didn't buy it. They continue to buy the Arena League.

Average attendance leaguewide is higher than 8,000, a figure distorted by woefully drawing Florida and Houston, which barely attract 2,000 per game.

As opposed to trying to compete with the NFL, like the XFL did, the Arena League is trying to forge a relationship. Detroit Lions chairman William Clay Ford Jr. owns part of the Detroit Drive. Redskins owner Daniel Snyder gets a team in 2003, and the Cowboys' Jerry Jones, the Saints' Tom Benson, the Jaguars' Wayne Weaver and the 49ers' Denise DeBartolo York are scheduled to field expansion teams in the future.

The NFL could give the Arena League the one thing it has struggled to attain, though former Iowa Barnstormer Kurt Warner did a fine job of it in his 1999 MVP season: credibility.

"The NFL has helped already," Baker said. "I think our challenge is for more people to see and understand Arena football."

The league has added teams in major markets Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles the past two seasons, and it moved struggling Albany to Indiana and Iowa to New York. It also upgraded to deep-pocket ownership with Ford and Jones.

It is also adding AF2 teams every year in smaller cities, including Peoria, Ill., and Augusta, Ga., and will have 42 teams next year. Baker also touts this statistic: 11 of the 28 coaches in AF2 are minorities (as are two of 19 in the Arena League).

Though there are still rough spots -- the need for a better television deal and a national sponsor -- Baker thinks the league grows more stable each day.

"It didn't happen overnight," he said. "It's been an evolution. And really, just a great success story."

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