Can the Heartland Compete

Well we are a week away from the leagues first pre-season game featuring the Arkansas Warcats vs. Southwest Missouri Venom. With the season fast approaching there is one question that is on everybody’s mind. Will the new teams from the Heartland division be able to match up with the returning powers? The Iowa Sharks seem to be the most likely contender. The Sharks won the 2008 CSFL championship and have compiled quite a recent resume. The rest of the division is kind of a mystery. The Iowa Eagles have a long history but have struggled in recent years. The Raiders, Stallions, Diamondbacks, and renegades are unknown commodities. Can these teams realistically hope to compete with Oklahoma, Austin, Dallas, or even SETEX? I think not. I hope I’m wrong, but I think 2009 is going to be a harsh learning experience for most of those teams. The Sharks bring in a solid reputation but outside of that there isn’t much to hope for. With an improved Arkansas team along with the addition off Shreveport an Oklahoma City, both of which were league champions in 2008 the league is deeper than it has ever been. It’s going to be tough for any first year team to compete for championship honors this year. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t see it happening. I guess we will find out June 13th when the River City Raiders travel to Tulsa to play the Oklahoma Thunder in the first inter divisional game of the 2009 season. That should give us a good idea as to whether the new teams can compete for a title or if they should just take notes.

WFL Banking on Unique Gameplan

James Ashford knows he is fighting an up hill battle. “People in this business are clamoring for change. The problem is no one wants to try anything new.” Ashford explains “It`s the definition of insanity: continually doing the same thing but expecting a different result.” He is describing the business of minor league football. As the new president of the WFL, He is hoping to change the face of the sport. His efforts have met with some mixed opinions. WFL member teams love the idea, teams on the outside see it as too big. “We are trying to change what I call the semi-pro mentality. We want to get away from that small time way of thinking.” He`s not just talking the talk he is walking the walk. He is so confident in his plan that he will guarantee it`s success. “If your a member team and you follow our program, and don`t make your nut, we will wave all of your fees. You won`t get that guarantee anywhere else in our business.” Ashford explains. He knows it`s not for everybody. “If you play in a league or on a team where it`s just for the love of the game, everybody pays to play, and you just want to get together on saturdays to have fun, thats great. That`s not what we are doing here though. We want to build solid team businesses that can offer their players legitimate benifits for playing.” WFL champion Oklahoma Thunder owner and WFL board member Bruce Brooke explains “We are trying to build a brand of minor league football, where our players have legitimate benifits. We want to create a true minor league for football where guys can develop, get legitimate coaching, and pursue a job in this great game. We know we are not the NFL, and we don`t want to try to be. The Nfl wasn`t the juggernaut it is now when it first started, it grew to be what it is. We want to grow and continue to be innovative as well, although on a much smaller scale.” So, could it be that simple? Could good business sense trump the backward good ol` boy network holding our great game back? The WFL is banking on it.

It’s a Players Game Treat Them Right

Hello WFL fans. Todays topic is the importance of player treatment.
At the minor league level there is nothing more imprtant than your teams talent level. I’ve always tried to build my team by treating my players better than they could get treated anywhere else. I’m not talking coaching style but i am talking about trying to provide benefits no one else can or is willing to for guys that play on my team. Some owners or coaches take the oppossite approach and feel like their guys should just be thankful to have a place to play. My answer to that is, “good luck”. I feel they are lucky to have a place to play. However, I also feel that I am as lucky to have a team as they are to have somewhere to play. My players work hard. They workout three times a week for me in our off season conditioning program and they bust their ass for me from the day they come to camp to the day we hoist our championship trophy. They go above and beyond alot of the time in their dedication, and really take ownership in our team. I appreciate that from them and feel like it is my job to provide every benefit I possibly can for them. When we joined the WFL we joined the league because of all the benefits we were told our players would have. Now to be fair the previous ownership of the league kinda sold us a bill of goods on that and left us looking like a-holes to our players when the league didn’t come through with most of it’s alleged benefits. That is a lesson for all of you guys out there running your teams: don’t represent that you have something to offer your players until you have it in your hand. Unless you have seen a contract or an agreement then don’t even mention it. Nothing destroys credibility faster than a player thinking you are being dishonest with them. It doesn’t matter to a guy why something isn’t happening he just knows you told him it was and now it isn’t. It doesn’t matter if the league screwed it up, because the league didn’t tell him about it you did. So when it doesn’t happen he won’t blame the league he will blame you. I learned that lesson last year and I will never forget it. Now, the WFL’s new leadership has taken great measures to insure that kind of thing never happens again, and I applaud them. I wouldn’t be singing their praises weekly if I didn’t believe in them whole heartedly.
That’s lesson one: Get it in writing before you promise it. Lesson two: Any benifit is a good benefit. Any thing you can do to benefit your players is probably better than what a lot of teams are doing. Things as simple as providing pre-game meals or transportation are affordable and a huge help to our players. It’s as simple as this, A guy that wants to play for your team is going to preform better than a guy who thinks he has to play for you because their are no other options. I played minor league ball for several years for teams in Texas, norhtern Virginia, and Oklahoma. My focus in owning a team has always been to treat my players the way i wanted to be treated. I don’t mean by coddling them, but I think it’s not too much to ask for the team to provide competant coaches, adequate facilities, a pre game and post game meal, and transportation to away games. We try to do these things at no cost to our players. i know that sounds kind of expensive to most people in this game, but I think it’s incumbent on us as owners to do these things as owners. if you can’t afford it then do the leg work and make the phone call to get sponsorship for it. It can be done. We provide a lot   more than that but i think those things are the minimum a team should do. When you do these things you have a happier player and you will attract a higher caliber player in recruiting. That is really what it is all about. With our limited practice time if you have talented well trained players then you are ahead of the game, because you don’t have to spend as much time on creating a football player. You can spend more time on installation and execution. At this level the team with the better players wins 99 out of 100 times. I would love to attribute my teams success to my brilliant coaching. However the hard simple truth is it is a direct reflection of our players talent and willingness to do the work. With that being said you can’t attract the best players without having the best program. I’m not gonna say we have the best program in the country because i haven’t seen everybody else’s setup. I do know however that we have best setup in our state. Therefore we have the best team in the state by a huge margin. I know also that Austin, Dallas, and Arkansas in our league have the best programs in their respective areas.The men that run these teams aere forward thinkers and on the cutting edge of the business. I whole heartedly appreciate being able to do business on a daily basis with these gentlemen. Because we have these kind of people here we have a different kind of player here also. As I’ve said before I have seen alot of the top tams in the country play, to include 7 of the top 10 in the MLFN summer /fall rankings. Five of those seven wouldn’t finish in the top five of our league. I’m not putting those teams down, rather illustrating the point that our league has some great programs in it. We don’t all do it the same, but we understand the basic principle that the best players are gonna win 99 times out of 100.
That’s it. It’s a players game. If you want to win in this game do the things you have to do to attract the best players. If you do that then you will have the best team. It’s that simple.

Why Play for no Pay?

Good day sir or madam! Today we tackle the age old question of why would you play minor league football for little or no pay? I have to say that this is one of my favorite arguments about our sport. I understand it from both sides but I think too much is made about the money. I know that NFL players make exorbitant salaries to play our great American game, bur outside of that, the money in this sport is not great. Arena football average Joe’s didn’t make millions, and neither do most Canadian ball players. Most of the guys in  those leagues have day jobs and work all off season. Even so minor league players aren’t taken seriously because they don’t make allot of money. I think this is disturbing. I hear it allot “They should quit this kid’s game, grow up, get a real job”. Would we say that to a guy pursuing a college degree? I think not. What I’ll hear undoubtedly is that “Aneducation can open doors for you your whole life”. So can football, basketball, chess, or almost anything else if youare good enough at it. Now so you know, I’m not picking on academics here. I recently recieved my bachelors degree only ten years after I took my first college class. Not bad. Any way what I am saying is college isn’t for every body and is no more noble a pursuit than sports. So if college isn’t for a guy and he still wants to play football professionally, why shouldn’t he follow that dream. I know the NFL is a long shot for any player, especially one of mine. It does happen however. Just this year the Fred Jackson made the Buffalo Bills after playing two seasons for an indoor minor league team. Eric Swann was drafted sixth overall, and was an all pro after skipping college, playing  instead for the Bay State Titans. He hauled pipe for a power company during the day and honed his skills with the Titans until being drafted by the Arizona cardinals.  These kind of things can happen. So what if they are one in a million. Making an NFL team or even a Canadian team would be like a lottery ticket for most of these guys. Is signing an NFL contract for a million dollars any less valuable than a diploma or degree that would lead to a lucrative job offer? I think  not. Maybe most of these guys will never make it to the NFL. Maybe none of them will. But I would say ” Who are we to determine how long a guyshould pursue his dream?” Why is pursuing your life’s ambition only ok if  it’s a quote-unquote real job? Also, who is to say what a real job is? Why is a guy pursuing a pro football career different than a guy spending ten years piling up student loans to become a doctor? Why is my guy’s dream less valuable than anybody else’s? I know my guys have a minute chance of making it to the next level, but does that mean he shouldn’t try? We used to tell people that nothing worth having was easy to obtain. We preached hard work was the key, with it you could do any thing, or if it was easy everybody would be doing it. Nowadays in our everybody is the same, competition is bad, soft, gotta be fair to everybody society, it’s more accepted to tell a guy to give up and join the 9 to 5′rs. Why? I encourage any guy out there who has an ambition to do anything, to pursue that ambition until he is physically or mentally incapable of doing so. Don’t let anyone tell you when to give up your dream. Whether it be football, chess, science, writing, welding, truck driving, or computer programming, you follow that thing until you’ve given everything you can to obtain it and then try some more. Don’t be the bitter middle aged guy working some job he can’t stand for pay that doesn’t cover your blood and sweat. If your gonna work a job for crap pay it may as well be one that you want to be doing. The whole perspective of a 9 to 5 somehow being more noble and responsible than trying to make it in something that is less lucrative or requires a sacrifice, is un- America at the very least. What’s more noble than a guy loving something so much that he is willing to do it for little or no money, risking injury, on the off chance that somebody will see them and give them a shot. A wise man once said, I’m paraphrasing, ”if you want to be happy then find something you love, and find someone that will pay you to do it”. Truer words were never spoken. The world would be a better place if more people didn’t crumble under the pressure of society and followed their hearts to what they really wanted. What is a greater test of ones character? Giving up a life long dream to follow the crowd and do what everybody else does or following your heart to the very end to achieve a goal against all odds. The latter says more about a man’s character than the former. So to all those guys out there playing our great game, despite the wave of ney sayers that tell them to grow up, give in, and quit, I say keep playing as long as you can. Chase the goal as long as you can.  One day you won’t be able to but it won’t be your choice. Until that day I say chase it.

The New Year

Well it’s that time. The WFL has closed expansion,and we have doubled in size. i would like to welcome our new member teams and wish them luck in their innaugural seasons in our league. 2009 promises to be a groundbreaking year for the WFL and I’m excited to be apart of it. I guess the question now is: can anybody dethrone the Oklahoma Thunder this year? With our expansion adding two teams that were champions in their respctive leagues last year the competition promises to be tighter. Add to that the continued development of the Gamebreakers, Demons, Diesel, and Warcats then you have the recipe for an exciting 2009 campaign. Im anxious to see what happens in our pre-season. By the way the Oklahoma Thunder are trying to fill their last pre-season date for the weekend of May, 9, and I’m sure they would love to schedule another NAFL beat down for this year’s pre-season. The WFL was 7-0 vs NAFL teams last year in non league games and they would love to continue that streak. So there it is. Can the new teams from Nebraka, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas compete with the current league powers? Or will this year turn out to be business as usual with Austin and Oklahoma dominating again? I have a feeling the team from Port City will have something to say about the World Bowl trophy before it is all said and done but I don’t know if it will be enough to upset the Thunder. I’m gonna go ahead and predict another World Bowl title for the Thunder but with a lot tougher road than it was in 2008. Thunder 35 Gamebreakers 31 in World Bowl III it’s way early but i’m calling it now so I won’t be accused of jumping the bandwagon later on. What do you guys think? Feel free to post your thoughts on the upcoming season here and let’s gety the conversation started.

Don’t Embarrass the Game

Hello again. It’s time for my weekly rant. This week we discuss the lack of competant coaches/owners in minor league football. I know that some of you out there are just in it to play and have fun. Thats great, this is not for you.

I have been a coach or owner in minor league football for twelve years. The one thing that has always struck, me is the serious lack of basic sense and competancy  of alot of owners in this business. Don’t get me wrong there are some fine owners in this business Jewell Portwood, James Burkheart, Charlie Hudson, James Ashford, Jordan Taylor, Jeff Scott, etc.. I could go on and on. The problem is that for every one of them there is a Mike Hilbert, Shannon Mayfield,or David Harris. All short sighted men who think with their ego, holding back their teams. They hold back their leagues, and give the sport we love a bad name.

I went to watch one of the teams owned by one of these men play last week and it just showed me again why it’s so hard to build a successful program in this business that is supported by the community. I have watched this team play four times in the last year and every time there has been some kind of incident like this.

Secondly the level of play was horrible. The visiting team was well organized and looked like a football team. Their coaches obviously had a plan and stuck to it. The problem was that the home team was pathetic. They had no sense of what kind of team they wanted to be, no leadership, and nothing that resembled competent coaching. They looked like a bunch of guys who got together with their own gear from whatever high school team  they played for ten years ago and decided to play a pick up game. We all know what playing a team that has no idea what they are doing does to your team. It makes you sloppy. So both teams played a sloppy unwatchable game. Now if you were a prospective sponsor would you want to be part of this? How about a prospective fan, do you want to pay twelve dollars to watch this thuggish garbage? As i said in my previous blog I travel around and watch these teams on a weekly basis. It’s my job. The things I see all too often resemble this game. It’s my contention that if you own a team in this business it’s your responsibility to the game to put out a watchable product. If you want to play rec-ball that’s fine, I would respect teams more if they would just say that. However, don’t advertise the same product that legitimate minor league programs have, if you don’t provide that product.

I have a team in a City of roughly four hundred thousand people. There are two other teams here. They are horrible. Now I don’t say that to disparage their good name, I say it because it’s the truth. I will also say we are in no danger of being confused with them,we all play in different leagues and there is plenty of room in our city for all of us.Instead of fighting the existence of these teams we have started trying to help. We offer advice, we offer to lend them players(they play at a different time of year than we do), we have even offered to lend our coaching staff. None of our offers have been accepted. we have offered to partner with these teams for one reason. If we are all going to be lumped in the minor league barrel together then it would benefit all of us if we each had a watchable product.

That brings us to the crux of the matter. The owners of these teams don’t care if they have a watchable product. One of these guys actually told me ” I don’t care if we win a game I just want my guys to have fun. I want to have a team for the guys like me that were never good eneough to play in high school and let them have a chance”. This is fine. I would even call it noble. But what is that? It’s rec league. If you want to be rec-league be that. Don’t advertise the same product other teams have. I have seen this same thing in almost every part of the country. If you are going to own a minor league football team it is your responsibility to the game, your, players, your sponsors, and prospective fans to put the best team possible out there. If you want to put a team together because you love the game, great. Be sure you have competent people to run it. Be sure you have competent coaches and that you know what you are doing. If you don’t, then don’t put a team out there. It’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to your players, and it’s not fair to the game. Believe me nobody on your team is having fun getting beat by seventy points.  

Having said that I want to encourage teams in an area to work together. If you can form solid partnerships in your area with other teams, do it. We will all benefit from a Little mutual cooperation. Have an open mind, and be smart enough to know you don’t know it all. If this sport is going to survive at this level it has to be something that people want to be a part of. Don’t embarrass your self by putting out an inferior product and most of all don’t embarrass the game.

National Champ or Chump?

     My name is Bruce Madden. I will be publishing a weekly blog for the World Football League, with my thoughts on the climate of minor league football. Each week will be a different topic that I think is relevant to our league and our game. This weeks topic is minor league”national championships”. 

     How in good conscience can you claim to be the best  if you haven’t played the best? How can you crown a national championship if you haven’t seen anybody play? I’ve been in this business for twelve years, and I’m tired of seeing this happen year after year. There are more national minor league football organizations handing out national titles than there are boxing governing bodies. The worst part is most of these organizations haven’t even seen the teams they are putting in their “National Championship” games play. That’s not good for our sport. I want to give you a couple of instances that have happened to my team just this year.

     I coach  the Oklahoma Thunder. it became apparent mid-way through our season this year that we were gonna be pretty good. We weren’t seriously challenged through most of our season, and only had one game closer than three touchdowns. I’ve never payed attention to the various national rankings out there, but you know players, they do.  At the mid point of our season our guys were talking about one of these ranking services. We were undefeated and had beaten a couple of teams that are pretty respected nationally, and had just beaten our last opponent 84-12, We weren’t ranked. I didn’t care, but our guys had some questions about how these team’s rankings are determined. I told them I would find out, so I called the ”organization” to ask some questions. What followed was comical if not disgraceful. They didn’t even know our team existed despite having another team in our league ranked in their top 25. I talked with them and directed them to our website while we were still on the phone. They were impressed by our scores, and the following week we went from being unranked in their top 100 to being in their top 3. We moved up at least 97 spots without anyone seeing us play. How does that happen? Because they looked at the scores on our web-site? How can you make that determination? I know that it is impossible to see every semi-pro team in the country play. What you can do though is eliminate the rec- league teams, and watch a good sample of true minor league teams. I know you can do this because I did it this past year. After this incident I became curious, traveling to watch other teams in our off time and continued until present. More about that later.

     After the rankings incident we  moved on  and finished our season undefeated and ranked in just about everybody’s top five. We were invited to play in various post season “bowl” games and a regional tournament. we decided on the regional tournament because there were a lot of highly “ranked” teams in it. Of course it folded, so we went to plan B. We started contacting  these highly “ranked” teams about the possibility of playing them in post season exhibitions. If a team didn’t want to travel we offered to, if they couldn’t secure their field we offered to host and pay for their travel, we offered money if that wasn’t good enough. We just wanted to play and see how we stacked up. Nobody wanted to do it. a month later no less than three of the teams we contacted had agreed to play other teams in various organizational championship games. What a joke.

     I am not arrogant enough to get on here and claim my team is the best in the country. I am however well informed and educated enough on the subject, through traveling and watching these teams play over the last few months, to know there are only 25-30 teams in the country on our level.  That’s not arrogance that’s education. I’ve seen the best teams in Texas, California, Florida, Virginia, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Ohio, etc.. I’ve seen them in person or on game tape, not highlight reels, game tape. I’ve found out that our league though small stacks up in quality to any league I’ve seen. I’ve learned that the top four teams in our league can play with all of these teams, and beat seventy-five percent of them soundly.

     Most of these teams are comfortable playing in regional leagues that they can dominate and rack up championships. then there’s the NAFL teams. I don’t want to even get on that soap box. I’ll just say that I know the best team in that league didn’t get crowned champion. Can you really take a league seriously when their playoff is decided by whatever team gets screwed the least financially in playoff travel money. You ever wonder how a league that collects at minimum two thousand dollars in league fees on one-hundred and twenty teams can’t afford to pay for playoff travel? Do the math on that. I guess I got on my soap box any way. More on that at later time.

     With all that said, the World Football League is doing something unprecedented. We are trying to put the best teams in the country together in a league. We want the best teams from around the country. We want the owners out there that are forward thinkers. Get this, our league actually has a business model. A real business model led by a real business man that is already successful, that doesn’t need these teams money. Our league actually offers revenue streams away from game day. I would say revenue streams you can’t find in any other league, but I’m not sure any other league offers anything other than their name , so it would be redundant.

     In closing   I know there are owners out there with similar thoughts. I know there are teams out there that want the challenge, want better quality of play, want to be able to run their teams in a quality league without going broke. If you have a team and think it is a top team nationally then apply. Let’s crown a minor league “World Champion”. Become part of the top run minor league for american football in the world. That’s what our league is and that’s not confidence or arrogance. That’s education.