Avengers Hope to Make a Name for Themselves

They come from all walks of life.

Some are active or former schoolteachers. Another owns a real estate investment company in New Jersey. Another appeared in the film “Any Given Sunday.” Another is an Orange County truant officer. Still another was a volunteer at the Vancouver Aquarium, leading children’s tours and teaching them about rain forests.

Collectively, they are the Avengers, the newest pro team in Los Angeles, an expansion entry in the Arena Football League.

They play a game--football--that everybody knows. They play a brand of that game--indoor Arena eight-man football--that few people in Los Angeles, besides the 15,982 that came to Staples Center two weeks ago for the Avengers’ exhibition game, have seen.

There are questions about the Avengers, who make their regular-season home debut tonight against the Arena league’s other expansion team, the Carolina Cobras. For example, can they keep up in a league whose scores rival the NBA? Will L.A. fans starved for pro football support this summer game during baseball season?

But the most important question is this: Who are these guys?

Tonight’s game is more than a chance for the Avengers to rebound from their season-opening loss Saturday at Grand Rapids. It’s a chance to start connecting with their home city.

“The identity we’d love to have here is to be a high-scoring offense with a defense that doesn’t give up a lot of big plays,” said quarterback Scott Semptimphelter, who has played in the league four years and also has been an assistant coach at his alma mater, Holy Cross High in Florence, N.J. “I think that’s what we will grow to as the season goes along.”

Lineman Victor Hall, a six-year Arena veteran who chases quarterbacks when he isn’t sending truant kids back to school, has a different idea. “For the fans, we want to be a hard-nosed team that plays with reckless abandon,” he said.

Lineman Rob Stanavitch, the budding thespian who didn’t exactly play against type in Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday,” saw enough fan reaction at the exhibition to believe city sports fans will take more than a courtesy look at the Arena game.

“Hopefully, people will be able to see the Avengers are not just an expansion team but a good team,” Stanavitch said.

While the Avengers haven’t been in town long, they already know the score. In Los Angeles, it’s win or be ignored. And sometimes you’re ignored even if you do win.

It’s one reason Coach Stan Brock, who has owner Casey Wasserman’s blessing to run the team as he sees fit, went after Arena veterans more than brand-new faces. Some of the rookies are also uncommon; Todd Marinovich may be a reserve quarterback behind Semptimphelter, but he played in the NFL with the Raiders.

Brock coached the Arena team in Portland, Ore., for three seasons before it moved to Oklahoma. In Portland he took over a team that had lost 24 consecutive games and brought it back to respectability. The Avengers presented a similar challenge. “But it’s different in that I have a whole lot more veterans here than when I tried to start in Portland.”

The Avengers report a 4,800 season-ticket base, and they have television dollars coming from KCAL, Fox Sports Net and The Nashville Network. But to stay in the game for the long run requires continued investment in ticket buyer devotion.

So the players understand they not only have to become familiar faces, but they must educate fans about their game.

“I think at the preseason game the fans didn’t know what to expect,” said receiver/defensive back Aman Abye, who has taken leave from his teaching job at Pasadena Marshall High to play. “I remember one point in the game, when during a kickoff the receiver was tackled in the end zone and everyone was expecting two points, thinking it was like regular football.”

What the Avengers don’t want is to give the same kind of performance against Carolina they gave against Grand Rapids.

“To win [tonight] we have to play harder and cut out mistakes we made in the previous game,” Hall said. “And send out a statement to the rest of the league that we’re not just an expansion team but a real football team.”

Abye was more direct.

“We’re . . . the new kids on the block,” he said. “And nobody wants to be the bad new kid on the block.”