Written by Ashle Norling
Indoor Football Weekly (IFW) is back. I took all of last season and off-season off to take care of some personal things, but now the regular piece is back, this time with LWOS Indoor Football. This will be a regular and permanent piece of the site during the regular season and an irregular piece in the off-season. Don’t expect me to hold any punches on any team, league, or person. Just as anyone who read this regularly knows this is news, sarcasm, and swearing all rolled into one.
The Games (Home in Bold)
Champions Indoor Football:
Texas Revolution 67, Salina Liberty 60
Wichita Force 42, Oklahoma Flying Aces 32
Sioux City Bandits 43, Omaha Beef 32
Indoor Football League:
Green Bay Blizzard 53, Quad City Steamwheelers 47
Sioux Falls Storm 64, Bismarck Bucks 31
Arizona Rattlers 91, San Diego Strike Force 58
Nebraska Danger 53, Tucson Sugar Skulls 47
Iowa Barnstormers 59, Cedar Rapids River Kings 48
One of the pluses I have always liked/preferred about the CIF over the IFL is that most to all of their games are competitive, and that proved the case this week. No CIF game was separated by more than 11 points, which is much better than the disaster in the IFL. I’d say go watch the CIF games on archive but I’ll get into that later.
Green Bay and Quad City opened up the week, in a rematch from the March 29th game in Moline as the two former af2 rivals, and now IFL rivals, matched up again. And yet again Quad City played a team and a game that they should’ve won but instead, for the second week in a row, handed it to Green Bay.
I want to see Quad City competitive in the league and maybe this is just on coach Cory Ross having an issue adjusting from the CIF style to the IFL style but we’ll see more in the coming weeks.
Sioux Falls/Bismarck and Arizona/San Diego both had something in common, an ass-kicking. I can’t even bring myself to watch these games because of their scores. Neither of these two games had an option of being anything but massacres from the moment the schedule came out (which I also have my issues with) and shows a glaring issue in the IFL, the lack of parity.
Last, and sadly I mean last, was Iowa-Cedar Rapids in another rematch of last week, and the second of the three Iowa Bowl games between the two this year. This game was ugly with a capital U. Yes the score says an Iowa win by 11 but it was by sheer, dumb luck. Iowa attempted to hand the game to Cedar Rapids in the 3rd quarter but the River Kings just couldn’t finish. This wasn’t an Iowa win it was a Cedar Rapids loss.
The “News”
I mentioned the CIF’s archive earlier and just streaming services in general and it is by far the WORST in the entire sport. The IFL and NAL both use YouTube and while the streaming service does have its issues, they aren’t even close to what the CIF deals with.
The CIF uses Pluto TV for it’s live-streaming and Eversport for its archival services. Pluto for one is nowhere near as accessible as YouTube and finding a game to watch On Demand is even less possible. Outside of the CIF TV page on their website, fans can’t actually access the games via Eversport. They can’t even full-screen any games either.
On top of all of that, the Salina-Texas game wasn’t available on Pluto but only on the CIF site. Why?
Here’s the CIF’s official statement: “Internet issues are making it impossible to see in Pluto.tv however you can see the game on the website. Be advised the quality may not be the best as the internet is being shared with a wrestling event at the same place. This is not a Pluto.Tv problem it is an internet problem at the stadium.”
Bullsh*t, absolute f*cking bullsh*t. The arena can’t control what internet company can be used because in most areas you’re lucky if you have more than one option. This is flat out an issue with how much bandwidth Pluto TV uses because neither YouTube nor Facebook would have issues sharing bandwidth with LITERALLY ONE OTHER EVENT. Pluto sucks and the CIF was stupid for getting into a Five Year (yes FIVE) contract with them.
The NGL
I want to touch on the sh*t-show that was (or if you’re still believing their bullshit is) the National Gridiron League. The NGL was supposed to start this spring playing a 16 game schedule with 12 teams stretching from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to Albany, Georgia to as far west as Topeka, Kansas.
Just before the “scheduled” start of the season the league moved the start out a few months and reduced the season to 12 games. But, last week they finally announced they would be postponing the start until 2020 due in part to the folding of the Alliance of American Football.
What a load, because the folding of a league that was mismanaged from the start affected a league they had never even heard of. Yeah uh huh. This isn’t the worst excuse I’ve ever heard either but this league ain’t coming back.
