THE RAGE
BY MIKE THOMPSON
COME TOGETHER, RIGHT NOW
I was on the air doing my regular Saturday morning show at Oldies Radio 103.3 KLOU about three weeks ago when my cell phone rang with news from Coach Mike Wyatt that the annual NIFL meetings would be coming to the Gateway City. And I swear it’s true, the above mentioned headline title song, the Beatles number one summertime hit of 1969, was playing as I took the call. Really, I swear (hey, radio on-air people never stretch the truth...you know that)...anyway, I remember smiling as I considered the timing just right, the news exciting, and laughing out loud to Coach on the phone when I considered it best I found out this way than the fiasco played out just a week prior by our owner Tye Elliott. Oh yeah, you haven’t heard that one...get this...Tye leaves on a flight for San Francisco, where the meetings HAD been scheduled, when a call comes to Coach Wyatt at the Rage office informing us that the meetings have been cancelled! Apparently, too many owners from the south and especially the league office near New Orleans were having trouble getting flights out, and some even had to address issues more pressing at the time in regards to the Hurricane. Nothing we could do here at home but wait for the plane to land, get him on his cell phone with the bad news, and then it’s Tye back in the sky. At the end of the day, all told, it was nearly 7 1/2 hours of flight time for what seemed like nothing at the moment, but as I told Coach, the league ‘made up for it’ in awarding The Rage and St. Louis the annual affair.
And it’s like the week before the season opener, or maybe the first playoff game, around here at Rage Headquarters. The Adam’s Mark Hotel in downtown St. Louis will be center stage and host for the three day affair, and League President Carolyn Shiver will be presiding over a large contingent of owners, perspective owners, general managers, coaches and other individual team personnel, all focused on making season number six for the National Indoor Football League the best ever.
“The strength and the projected growth of this league is nothing but exciting,” said Shiver from her office in Louisiania early this week, “the main focus of our meetings will be to adress the area of expansion and I’m pleased to say their are many perspective owners who are eager to be part of this game, this league. Their applications will be voted on in St. Louis and it’s going to be great for the league to expand and then localize, while still keeping a national footprint, so to speak, in the eyes of the sports community.”
Expansion for the league, in it’s perfect form, would allow teams to reduce travel costs by lining up teams and division within certain geographical areas. The Rage, for example, would play
Dayton and Cincinnati, and travel wise, branch out as far as Huntsville, Alabama, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Fayetteville, North Carolina. But because the Tri-Cities Fever, located near Seattle, does not have as many regional teams in it’s area, if they were to play us and have to travel to St. Louis, The Rage would then, schedule wise, be obligated to make a trip to play a team travelling a similar distance. Complicated? Well, let’s just say I’m glad I’m not the schedule co-ordinator! But it’ll all be sorted out very soon and after expansion voting next week, it’ll all be in place to put teams to dates and 2006 will be on the sportsmap.
For those looking to buy an NIFL franchise, well, most are charted by a new astrological category. Namely, the dollar $ign! Not to suggest that shrewd business dealings and careful financial dealings haven’t been part of the plan with each individual owner or perspective owner. But it takes a big buck to get in on the fun in the NIFL, and that’s just for starters. As a rule, each application is launched with a $200,000 membership fee, coupled with a $100,000 line-of-credit. Granted, it’s not buying into the NFL, but it’s still not heading on down to the used car dealership! AND, that’s before you begin to calculate the cost of personnel, players, insurance, office rental, arena rental for games, travel costs, and oh, yeah, equipment...gotta have that. Footballs, shoulder pads, jerseys, pants, helmets, it doesn't take long to tug away at the debit side of the ledger. Some are individuals with a love of sports and money to invest, others form partnerships and split the costs, but they all have one thing in common. Rage owner Tye Elliott says it best, “it’s the love of the game for me, a chance to be a part of a first class organization and respected league, a chance to bring to people, especially kids and families, an exciting fan-friendly, fast paced brand of football, coupled with other game day activities that make a day or night at a Rage game a fun time. And, from a practical, business standpoint, it is a solid investment opportunity. Sure, there are struggles along the way, problems to iron out, sometimes on an hourly, if not daily basis. But both Scott and I agree that it’s worth it now, and will be more so in the long haul.”
Finally, the meetings will center also on the adaption of rule changes, if any, and will structure the formation of local and national public relations and media outreach, focus on both local and national sales for teams and the league as a whole, and concentrate on issues of travel costs, risk management and imaging.
Rage owner Scott Wilson is pumped up about the chance to show off the Savvis Center on Wednesday night when The Rage play host to the league officials at the Blues hockey game.
“Talk about fun mixed with business, “ Wilson mused last week, “not only do the Blues play one of their biggest rivals in the Chicago Blackhawks, but it’s a chance to take various owners and our league president up to our new home, introduce them, show them around and let them get the feel for where The Rage will be mixin’ it up come March. It’s a great chance to show them they made the right choice in coming here for the fall meetings, plus they’ll see when the Blues pound the ‘Hawks that St. Louis IS the best sports city in America. I want that roar of the crowd to ring in their ears for a long while.”
At the annual banquet, scheduled for Thursday, November 3rd at the Adam’s Mark Hotel, The Rage is up for the following awards:
Best Gameday Presentation
Best Stat Crew
Best General Manager
Most Fun
Coach of the Year
So, Tye and Scott....Morris, Coach Wyatt, and myself....we’re all ready to get it rollin’ come Tuesday of next week. And the good news for Tye, well, he’ll only have to hop in his car and drive downtown!!.
