Spokane Shock headed to championship game

In case you didn't hear... the Spokane Shock are going to the AFL Championship game. Just how big of a deal is it? Let me spell this out for all of you people.

Spokane has long had little-man syndrome. We've been the little guy to Seattle. Our Cougars have been the little guys to the Huskies. Our Eags have been the little guys to the Montana Grizzlies. Our sports teams have been minor league compared to the bigger cities, but they've always been well-supported and well-attended.

Ask the Spokane Indians, who have led the Northwest League in attendance for how many years? Ask the Spokane Chiefs, who on a sell-out night have the best atmosphere in junior hockey. Period.

And Ask Spokane Shock fans.

Dare I say, Spokane has had the best game-day atmosphere out of any Arena Football team. The Shock from the start have been the top standard in the af2. But it was the af2. Minor-league. Not in line with all the bigger cities.

Now that they're part of the AFL, this team from Spokane is beating up on cities like Jacksonville, Chicago, Milwaukee ... you know, big markets. I know the AFL isn't the NFL, but pound for pound the Shock are showing that this city can support a big boy sports team.

And they belong in the big boy sports discussion.

The Arena Bowl will be insane on Friday night. Insane! I've been to one arena cup and I've never heard a crowd more behind it's team. It just doesn't get loud, it gets eardrum busting. It gets to the point where the hair on the back of your neck starts to stand up, your mouth starts to drop wide open and you ask yourself "I'm really part of this, wow!"

You know when you watch a sports moment and you get a "chill" during the real dramatic scenes. You'll get more than a few chills this Friday at the Arena Cup. You'll see a team in love with a team, and a team that appreciated the support they get from the crowd.

Either way, Orlando and Tampa Bay are in some serious trouble right now.

Shock members of new arena football league

Arena Football has been resurrected, say hello to Arena Football 1...

Tulsa, OK: Arena Football 1 was officially introduced this afternoon at a press conference held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With this announcement, it is assured, the game Jim Foster invented will be competitive and above all fan friendly. Long serving arena football executive Jerry Kurz was introduced as Commissioner of the newly created league that will unite former AFL, af2 and other indoor football teams under the Arena Football 1 banner.

As of right now three markets from the AFL will be business: Chicago, Phoenix and Orlando. One of the smaller markets will be none another than Spokane, meaning the dream of the Shock becoming an AFL team has kind of come true.

While I'm assuming there will be some sort of tier system, here's the other markets they'll have in the AF1.

The initial sixteen teams and their respective markets are: Arizona, Arkansas, Bossier-Shreveport, Central Valley (Fresno, California), Chicago, Iowa, Jacksonville, Kentucky, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Spokane, Tennessee Valley (Alabama), Tri-Cities Washington, Tulsa, Utah (Salt Lake City). Additional teams will be announced by October 9th.

Wait a minute! Tri-Cities gets an AF1 team? Weren't they like the worst market/team in the af2? Oh boy... let's hope they're put in Tier 2 and ran out of the league in a year or so.

The AFL probably won't return

Apparently Spokane is the last, great stronghold for Arena Football.

The president of the Tampa Bay Storm announced (via Facebook) that the AFL "will not be returning." Probably ever. Surprisingly, not playing the 2009 season didn't help to turn things around! Does this mean they file for Chapter 5.5 bankruptcy?

I was worried about this. What does this mean for the Spokane Shock of the af2? The minor-league for the AFL is strangely still alive a kicking (probably because they have a much more realistic financial model) but now where the heck would their players go from here?

Obviously there needs to be a minor-league system for the NFL because they just disbanded NFL Europe, so does the af2 tweak some things and become the main feeder league? Or is that crown for the UFL?

Interesting news, I think this really puts in the af2 (are they the af1 now?) in a strange situation.

Hansen Shock: the noisemaker ban

There's been a lot of controversy about the recent decision by the Spokane Shock to ban artificial noise-makers from games. Largely die-hard fans have hated the decision and think that its just a measure by the front office to not alienate the casual fans.

Having met plenty of the members of the Shock booster club, I can say that they're a great group of people that are very committed to their team.

HOWEVER,

I don't think I can get enraged about the noise-making ban for a few reasons.

1. Cowbells and horns are for cow-towns like the Tri-Cities and Sacramento (that was a really annoying NBA Western Conference Finals in the early 2000s against the Lakers. when the Kings would fill their arena with cowbells). Personally I find those kind of noisemakers cheap ways of drawing attention to yourself and not actually adding anything to the fan experience except annoying people.

2. Many teams have already employed this ban. So don't single out the Shock and their ownership for being big and bad. They've received complaints and they've had to change it. The casual ones are the ones that teams have to go after to succeed as a business. Simple economics.

3. It's called yelling. Did it all the time during EWU men's basketball games when I was a student there.

Alright Shock fans - still love you all - and you can send all hate mail to Casey Knopik. That's K-N-O-P-I-K.

Spokane Shock Weekly Update: Bringing in the local guys

The Shock have brought in some Vandal-ade for the upcoming season. Idaho DBs Stanley Franks and Herbert Cash were signed by the team.

Franks and Cash both played collegiately at University of Idaho. Cash, 6-0 195, tallied 30 tackles – including 1.5 sacks - with two interceptions in two seasons as a Vandal.

“It wasn’t his numbers that jumped out at me, it was his film. Sometimes, when you don’t have very good numbers it’s because offenses don’t want to throw it your way,” Head Coach Adam Shackleford explained. “He did a lot of different things on his film that were very impressive. He definitely deserves to come into camp and compete for a spot on our roster.”

The Shock have also added Indiana quarterback Blake Powers, which sounds like an awesome name for a quarterback. Hands down. I'm not even going to look at his stats. Powers is just instantly a badass.

Sad news though, Spokane did release former University of Washington WR Sonny Shackleford, who was instantly snatched up by the Mahoning Valley Thunder, which is apparently located in Serbia.

Things seem to be shaping up though, any thoughts on the roster so far?

Spokane Shock Weekly Update: The Thrill is Back!

We're going to do a new feature here on Just South of North. With plenty of local teams to cover in the Pacific Northwest, we've decided to pick some of them that matter the most to you, the readers, and do weekly updates.

First up? Spokane Shock Saturdays. The af2 dynasty sitting next to the river in the Lilac City and since the AFL has cancelled the season this year, will probably be the best place to watch Arena Football now.

While it's rather strange for the main league to cancel a season but the feeder leagues to keep going, that's exactly what is happening and while many AFL players are out of work, they won't be playing in the af2. The big change will be players looking to move to the AFL from the af2 will probably return to their former team for another year.

One of those players? Raul "The Thrill" Vijil, one of the best wide receivers in Eastern Washington University history and the best WR in the history of the Spokane Shock. Here's his stat line from Kevin Maloney's release on the Spokane Shock website:

After three seasons with the Shock, Vijil is the franchise’s all-time leader in receptions (223), touchdown receptions (62), reception yardage (2,454) and all-purpose yardage (4,164).

Kevin also gave us an interesting number to ponder coming into the 2009 season:

Vijil, 5-10 190, is the 11th member of the 2008 National Conference Champions to re-sign with the Shock.

We're going to see a lot of familiar faces this season, meaning that the team wont have to spend as much time trying to mesh, meaning that the players wont have to spend as much time adjusting to the indoor game, meaning that the rest of the af2 is basically screwed.

Woo hoo! Is the Ninth Man ready to ride again?

Party like it's 1947

I used to hate Kurt Warner with a passion.

Used to.

Mainly because the Rams were the toast of the NFL and he led them over my Titans for a Super Bowl Championship.

Then after a few years, he sucked and tumbled off the face of the football world and right into the lap of the Arizona Cardinals.

And now I find myself rooting for the guy. After reading this piece about just what kind of guy Warner is, I couldn't root against him. And if you really think about it, Warner has never put himself in front of the team and has been extremely gracious during the downturn of his career.

That being said, with the Cardinals going into the playoffs, I figured that they had no chance whatsoever. Much like no one gave Warner a chance - he was bagging groceries and had to work his way up through the AFL to the NFL (beginning as the third stringer). However, Arizona, which was hosting its first playoff game since 1947 when they were the Chicago Cardinals, beat the upstart Atlanta Falcons 30-24 today.

It's kind of strange how sports can change your mind.

Powder Blues rule the night again

So fellow blogger Casey tells me. After various texts back and forth about how terrible Madden is at commentating a game, he called the game with that bold prediction about the jerseys.

Badass jerseys + winners of the previous four must win games = upset over the Colts and ... yep, it's back... THE MANNING FACE!

For the second straight year, Eli Manning will be in the hunt for the Lombardi trophy longer than his brother. How ironic is that? Who saw that coming? Will Eli turn out to have a better career than his brother?

ESPN, thanks for burying this story

The AFL has officially canceled the 2009 season.

Here's the story buried on ESPN's website.

I understand that the AFL is secondary to the NFL but there's still a fan following and it's been around 22 seasons, the longest tenured football league besides the NFL. It's a different but still a pretty interesting product out on the field and the fact that their season has just been canceled is troubling.

The worst part, nobody is making a big deal about it. This has been the biggest underreported story of the year. It's like the league and its owners don't want anyone to know that they're canceling the season.

ESPN has a minor, nonmanagement financial interest in the AFL.

Oh... well that makes sense. Way to be transparent ESPN! I'm glad you put that in the article that was burried in your headlines section. By the way, I'm watching you're channel right now and they're showing Bucs-Falcons highlights. Not a sniff of AFL news. Hmmmmm....

By the way if you're worried about the af2 Spokane Shock, the league will be running since it's seperate from the AFL. While I don't think a whole lot of the upper league players will try and play for af2 teams, I do see a lot of players from last season returning.

Which is actually a good thing in the short term but it will be interesting to see what happens in the long term.

Livin' on a Prayer

As many as you know, Bon Jovi is pretty much my all-time favorite musician. So when the AFL had their Arena Bowl in New Orleans today, I had to root for the Philadelphia Soul, since it's owned by the Livin' on a Prayer maestro.

And they didn't disappoint, beating the San Jose Sabercats 59-56 (who have won three AFL championships) in a very entertaining game that went right down to the last possession. And even the last possession was entertaining because the Soul had to run out the clock and instead of taking a knee (which would just stop the clock), the quarterback ran off the final 15 seconds of the game by dropping back three times for roughly 30 yards and heaving the ball into the stands.

Don't forget that former Spokane Shock player Rob Keefe was also on the squad.

One thing that I did like about the broadcast was the fact that the players and coaches were completely miked. So if something was said on the field, you heard it. Now I'm assuming their was a five-second delay so they could bleep out profanity (which was a jarring mute of all sound on the television), which would be the most interesting job in all of sports: listening for player and coach profanity.

Now if Dennis Green were involved in the game, it probably would be the worst job in all of sports.

What are your guys' thoughts on the AFL?