A League With Interior Designs

Challenged to increase their fan base, bring live pro football to the masses and, in some cases, prepare their children to take over the family business, some NFL owners are thinking inside the box.

As in arena football.

Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones has bought an Arena Football League team. So have New Orleans’ Tom Benson, Detroit’s William Ford Jr., Washington’s Dan Snyder and Jacksonville’s Wayne Weaver.

“I’m fired up about this,” Jones said. “It was a real challenge for me and a real hurdle for me to agree to involve our organization in something other than the Dallas Cowboys. This is a great way for us to create an opportunity for more people, younger people, people of different demographics, to get more excited about football.”

Not only does the NFL oversee all arena league officiating, but it has an option to acquire 49.9% of the league within the next eight months. There is talk of an AFL all-star game to be played as part of Super Bowl festivities.

“Sometimes it feels like the NFL treats us with more respect than we treat ourselves,” said arena league Commissioner Dave Baker, whose league has survived 15 seasons. That’s a longer life span than the United States Football League and XFL combined, and longer than the Canadian Football League has had U.S. franchises.

The NFL helped Jones’ yet-to-be-named Dallas team design a logo and choose a color scheme. Not surprisingly, Jones wanted uniforms that look similar to those of the Cowboys, whose special-teams guru, Joe Avezzano, will coach the arena team.

Other NFL owners reportedly interested in buying arena teams include Tennessee’s Bud Adams, Pittsburgh’s Dan Rooney and Kansas City’s Lamar Hunt.

Since the NFL added an “AFL recaps” link to its Web site, there have been three times as many visitors to the arena site.

“Everyone in the AFL is feeling very positive about the NFL getting involved, especially from the marketing end,” said Chris Mara, general manager of the New Jersey Gladiators and son of New York Giant owner Wellington Mara. “It can do nothing but help the AFL.”

The way Jones sees it, arena football has a place on the international stage as an Olympic sport.

“I can envision a great competition in Japan, Mexico, South America, Europe,” he said. “The venues are there. The skill sets are there for those athletes to compete.”

Jones and other AFL backers are quick to point out theirs is not a minor league for the NFL. Yes, Kurt Warner’s staggering rise from arena star to Super Bowl MVP gave the league credibility it could not have bought. True, there were 46 former AFL players, coaches and officials in the NFL last season.

But arena ball is a different game, played on a 50-yard field with nets and padded walls, with the same players lining up on offense and defense.

“It’s football played like we used to play it when we were kids,” said former UCLA receiver Michael Young, director of corporate relations for the Denver Broncos. “You score a touchdown on somebody, and then you’ve got to flop around and play defense on the guy you just burned. I find it very intriguing.”

So does his boss. Bronco owner Pat Bowlen is seriously considering buying an arena team with Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway and Stan Kroenke, who owns the Denver Nuggets and the Pepsi Center and is co-owner of the St. Louis Rams.

Young and Elway recently met with Baker and Casey Wasserman, owner of the AFL’s L.A. Avengers, and talked about the future of the league.

“We both walked away very impressed,” Young said. “With a commissioner like Dave Baker and owners like Casey and Jerry Jones, this might be an opportunity to catch this thing right as it’s about to explode.”

Forgive those in the AFL if the notion of exploding makes them jumpy. They have seen too many start-up leagues vanish in a poof, the latest being the XFL, which fizzled, then folded in one season--even with the backing of NBC. That league’s brief and bizarre life had a mixed effect on the AFL.

“At first, I think the XFL made the NFL pay more attention to the AFL because it heightened the awareness of alternative brands of football,” Wasserman said. “But because of the XFL’s failure, it makes the NFL much more careful about their connection to us. Like, ‘Wow, look how much bad can come out of something like that when things go wrong.’ ”

The XFL encouraged smack talk, wired players and coaches with microphones and resorted to desperate measures in an attempt to lure fans, once promising a halftime visit to the cheerleaders’ locker room. In the end, the XFL was little more than second-rate football steeped in silliness.

Over the years, the AFL has grown more serious about its product.

“As the number of hot tubs on the sideline has gone down, the quality of football has gone up,” Baker said.

Still, shtick sells, and Baker calls an AFL game a drink-from-the-firehose experience. Fans are allowed to keep footballs that fly into the stands. Rock ‘n’ roll music punctuates every play. Players stick around after games to sign autographs. Whereas NFL tickets average $49, AFL tickets average $17.

That’s mere pennies per touchdown. The New York Dragons set a league scoring record Saturday with a 99-68 victory over the Carolina Cobras.

“Players go both ways and it’s very high scoring, but it still has the fundamentals of football: You still have to throw the ball, catch the ball and hit somebody,” Baker said.

“And the worst seat at Staples Center is going to be better than the best seat at the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl. It’s a tremendous opportunity not just to see the game, but to feel the game.”

Baker said an overwhelming majority of NFL fans will never get the chance to see a game live. There are 24 AFL teams, including five expansion teams to begin playing in the next two years. Many are helping to bring pro football to smaller markets.

Coming soon to a small town near you is “af2,” arena ball’s minor league. There are 28 af2 teams playing this season, and Baker said there will be as many as 48 within a year. Wasserman has purchased af2 franchises in Fresno and Bakersfield.

“There are 150 minor league hockey teams playing in the U.S., and we think there could be 150 af2 teams playing in those buildings,” Baker said.

Although Baker has praised NFL Europe, the NFL’s minor league system, there is speculation in the AFL that the European league might move to an indoor format. The AFL has played 21 international games, all of which were sellouts or near sellouts.

NFL Europe has struggled to fill seats, and no one argues that a crowd of 15,000 looks much different in an arena than a soccer stadium.

To supplant NFL Europe, though, the AFL would have to make significant rules changes. Arena ball hones the skills of quarterbacks, receivers and defensive backs. But what NFL owner wants his up-and-coming offensive guard doubling as a defensive tackle?

Wasserman, 27, understands versatility, both on and off the field. He has gotten a crash course in marketing a product, hiring and firing coaches, dealing with the media, evaluating talent, etc. Many people in pro football believe Wasserman will be the next owner of an NFL franchise in L.A., assuming there will be one.

Apparently, his initial investment in the AFL has paid off handsomely. He bought the Avengers in 1998 for a record $5 million, and the cost of a new franchise has since doubled.

“There is no business school for running a team; experience is all you have,” said Wasserman, chairman of the AFL’s property and negotiating committees. “The only way to do this is to do it.”

In Dallas, Jones has put control of his AFL franchise in the hands of his sons, Stephen and Jerry Jr., and son-in-law, Shy Anderson.

Owning an NFL or arena team, Baker said, “is all about the same, except for the zeros at the end of the numbers.”

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League of Their Own

* NFL owners who also own AFL teams are Jerry Jones of Dallas, Wayne Weaver of Jacksonville, Tom Benson of New Orleans, William Ford Jr. of Detroit and Dan Snyder of Washington.

* Other owners considering buying AFL teams include Dan Rooney of Pittsburgh, Lamar Hunt of Kansas City, Pat Bowlen of Denver, Robert Kraft of New England and Bud Adams of Tennessee.

* Chris Mara, general manager of the New Jersey Gladiators, is the son of New York Giant owner Wellington Mara.

* Through April 2002, the NFL has the option to buy 49.9% of the AFL.

* An AFL all-star game is being considered as an annual part of Super Bowl festivities.

* The NFL oversees all AFL officiating and reviews the crews.

* Last season, 46 former AFL players, coaches and officials participated in NFL games.