There’s a mystique about football played on rugs under a concrete sky. From a sufficient distance it is resplendent in its furious pace, wide open action, and those quivering dasher boards after a hard hit, so you think, hey why not? Worst case, it’s just one night. But you’re bewitched by the possibility that it can grow into a meaningful relationship bringing you comfort through the summer in a way baseball cannot. And as with any blooming courtship, you want to know everything there is to know about your newfound passion.
For many, it’s a journey that leaves us disappointed because, under its lustrous surface as a professional sport, you find that arena football is saturated with an amateurism that has diluted this game you were initially seized by. You wonder how you got this far off the road of mainstream sports. You’ve worn a tux to a tractor pull, and now you feel duped.
It’s the classic definition of a ‘fifty yarder’: pretty from afar, but far from pretty up close. It’s only fitting that it should be played on a field of similar dimension. And the thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way.
That’s why we’re here: to reclaim arena football’s first-night beauty by distilling it drop by drop from the solution in which it has been diluted. This game is more than just something to quench the die-hard football fan until Labor Day. It has a uniqueness and pageantry all its own, and the way to showcase that is by weeding out the elements that pull it to the mean, whether they are wearing cleats or a headset, sitting in a front office or behind a camera. In this process, we demand one thing: an accountability by those who are watering down this product.
We welcome all, and we pledge a thicker skin than those sites out there devoted to arena football. We will celebrate the game’s virtues and we will call out its vices. You are free to do the same to us.
Fifty Yarder: 