Arena Bowl Doesn't Measure Up

As an AFL fan, I was looking forward to the game even if the Chicago Rush weren't involved. I expected an exciting game between the San Jose SaberCats and Columbus Destroyers that would make up for the poor coverage ABC would clearly deliver.

Unfortunately, the only thing I got right was how bad ABC's coverage was. We'll get into that shortly. But first, Columbus clearly was not in San Jose's league today. It was clear from the first quarter that San Jose would win this game. Mark Grieb, the quarterback of the SaberCats who would go on to win M.V.P, picked apart the Destroyers' defense all game long. The defense may have collectively deserved the M.V.P even more. If you want to see good defensive back play, look no farther than the Cats. They hounded the Destroyers' wideouts all game long.

And quarterback Matt Nagy losing his composure in the second quarter – when the game was still close – did not help Columbus either.

The big story here is that San Jose has established a mini-dynasty in the AFL: three Arena Bowls in six years. While they aren't the sexiest city or the media haven of a New York, they are a quality franchise; and with Coach Darren Arbet leading the team to the future, there's no reason to think they won't win another one.

The coverage of the game itself was quite atrocious. There were a great deal of technical problems with the microphones. Also, if you're going to have the players mic'd up, then either let everything go or dump the mics. Moments of silence because a player or coach swears is extremely distracting. There were also replays that were cut short by the start of the action. Skycam was not used near enough on replays. The "player tracker" lines were essentially useless, because we can all see where the players are going and didn't need to see lines showing that.

Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic do a pretty good radio show, but they call a horrible game. They seemed way too concerned about explaining the rules of the AFL, something that I don't need to know because I watch games every week. This is a league that's been around for 21 years and has had national coverage for most of that time. I'm sure people have at least a decent understanding of how the game is played, and instead of hearing about the rules, I want to know what is going on in the game itself. If people are sampling the game, then let them figure the rules out for themselves. Also, they can go to wikipedia, arenafootball.com, or arenafan.com to get the rules if they're that curious. No other network spends that much time explaining the rules of a sport. ESPN should stop treating fans like morons and just show the games.

Overall, this season has been a frustrating one. ESPN did a terrible job covering the league this season as games were buried in poor time slots. Not to mention only having one national game per week. They had no decent pre or post-game coverage to give fans a taste of what's going on in the league on a consistent basis. The four letter network can spend hours and hours debating "Who's Now?" or "Who's being arrested?" but they can't spend more than five minutes on a decently run league with a fans' bill of rights and games that are usually very exciting.

It's too bad Arena Bowl XXI couldn't show what this league can be all about.