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Litaker's Fan Blog: Week 11 - Home Field Advantage is On The Line

The Turfcats have completed their inaugural regular season home schedule with a record of 5-1 and have three road games left.  Their only home loss was to the Acadiana Mudbugs in week 1. This week they travel to Acadiana with a chance to seek revenge, even the series at 1-1, and in all likelyhood tie up the right to host a home playoff game.

The T-Cats sit at 6-2 while the Mudbugs currently are at 5-3.  It would take a miracle finish for either Houma or Texas to move into the #3 seed, and one of them will miss the playoffs all together.  The Swashbucklers sit at 8-1 still having to play Texas and Houma, so it looks like they’ve secured the #1 seed barring an unimaginable collapse in the next two weeks.  The 'Bucs close out the regular season with a bye in the final week.

This, my friends, leaves the #2 and #3 seeds between Austin and Acadiana which will be decided this coming Monday. The winner of this week's game will secure the #2 seed and a home playoff game and then face each other once again in Round 1 of the postseason.

After this week's matchup, Acadiana will have their final two games against Houma and Texas, while Austin will play Texas twice in 5 days, both on the road.

The final playoff spot will come down to 1-7 Houma and 1-5 Texas.  Houma still has to play the Swashbucklers, Mudbugs, and Crunch, probably finishing at 2-9.  Texas also has to play the Swashbucklers, Mudbugs, and Crunch, along with the Turfcats twice.  The Hurricanes' toughest stretch will be playing three games in six days... luckily for them, all three are at home.  It looks like they could also finish the season 2-9, unless they are beat up and exhausted from the 3 game stretch in a week's time and the Crunch can pull an upset.

Upsets can rearrange this whole scenario as it’s built off the underdogs losing all of their games in the remaining three weeks of the season.

While a few people have been outspoken and negative all season, and a few others have puffed out their chest in ignorance to spout hatred towards the SIFL, all in all it’s been a normal inaugural season. Sure, the league has encountered some problems and growing pains, but what league hasn’t?

We all know about the AFL. They fumbled their game plan of becoming the 5th major league and priced themselves out of the 2009 season.  There is still an ongoing experiment of restructuring the business plan, but the ownership groups have barricaded themselves into small factions of dissent for each other.

The af2 currently seems to be the most stable as they finish up their 10th season, but they are not without problems of their own. The Quad City Steamwheelers just had to be saved long enough to finish the season and their long term viability is still under review.  Last season they returned to the Championship game being played at the home of the highest seed, this year they’ve flipped back to a neutral site game which has many of the fans in an uproar.

The Intense Football league and United Indoor Football league merged to form the Indoor Football league (IFL) and love to promote themselves as the “Premier” League.  Even though this is also their inaugural season it’s not your standard expansion league or start-up business venture.  Both leagues in the merger were existing, and it’s filled with existing franchises, not startups.

Some IFL fans, and even its commissioner Tommy Benizio, have taken pot shots at the SIFL - which is unprofessional and kind of funny.  You would think the commissioner of a league would be more concerned with solving their own problems instead of attacking others. Mr. Benizio has been unable to form a coherent league as of yet, while the Intense vs United is still an ugly sore festering under his nose as he thumbs it at others.

The IFL didn’t verify information on league franchise applications and ended up punishing one of their teams by turning 5 wins into 5 losses. That’s a pretty severe punishment while the league accepts no responsibility for the error. Then another owner grabs the facemask of an opposing player and tries to give him his full vocabulary of George Carlin’s words you can’t say on TV. Since this owner is a friend of Mr. Benizio, all he got for his actions were a slap on the wrist and a $500 fine.

Now, during this past week's games, one of their players sucker punches an official out of the blue and knocks him out. We’ll have to wait and see if the commissioner has the cahonies to deal with it appropriately. At least the player was arrested for assault and spent the night in jail. What can you expect from the players when owners play the role of Thug themselves?

These are only a few of the examples of difficulties going on in the 50 yard sport where many pretend to be perfect while throwing rocks at others. I could list some similar issues in the 4 major leagues also but there’s not enough room to do so.

That brings us to the SIFL... let’s look a few of the issues people attack them for. Using the Florida Kings as a “Road Only” team.  One forum poster tries to tell us how bad it is and the AFL never did it, when in fact they had more than one.  The reason - the owner of the Pasadena team had serious health issues and was forced to postpone joining the league. Season ticket packages had already been sold league-wide and the league wanted to give the fans every game they deserved, so a road only team was allowed to join.

Moving a team in midseason, another difficult situation that was handled well by the league. What is better, letting a team fold or finding an owner capable of improving the franchise? This also solved many problems caused by one franchise. Once again, the af2 had a similar situation this season with Quad Cities.

A coach pulling his team off the field with seconds left on the clock.  This was poor judgment by a good coach, a mistake he regrets and has apologized for. Still, it’s better than an owner assaulting an opposing player as has happened in another league.

We can debate these forever, and if people carry on an adult conversation in doing so, fine.  As to the haters, there’s no room for you here so move along. People need to climb down from their marble pedestals and accept a serving of reality.  The 50-yard game, no matter the alphabet soup listed in front of their name, are all just one part of a niche sport.  You can’t have a team in your area without a league, and you can’t have a league without several teams.

Fans of individual leagues need to wake up and support the sport itself, you never know when your local team will fold or move.  This sport is built around discretionary income from middle class fans and the economy is stretching all of our budgets thin.  Teams come and go, leagues come and go, all you’ve got left are the players, staff, and fans. We all need to support each other or possibly fold together. Most fans don’t choose the league they watch, they watch the league/team in their area. They’ve all got pock marks underneath their make up so you might want to look in the mirror before climbing up on your soap box of indignation.

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