On Saturday night, I had a chance to take in the home finale of the Dallas Vigilantes‘ first, not exactly successful year in existence. The Vigilantes, if you don’t know — and you probably don’t, since there weren’t many people there, and it was the biggest crowd of the season — is Dallas’ new entry in the Arena Football League, after the much more beloved Desperadoes folded in 2008. After the jump, my report.
Pre-game, the Stratoblasters performed. I had the vague notion that the Stratoblasters were a sort of generic blues band. Their first song proved my instincts correct. But then they started their second song. The back-up singer who didn’t do much during the first number took over. The song she sang was not blues-based in any way. It was a straight-up Christian worship song — all “He lives inside of me” and so on. Toward the end, she instructed the crowd to help her out with an “Everybody!” into the mike. Now, I would have to assume that of the few thousand people in attendance, maybe a handful of people knew the song she was singing. And they were all on stage with her.
Anyway, I thought with a name like the “Vigilantes,” the team would play up some sort of bad-ass image. But no. Next up on the pre-game itinerary: Team Impact, the group of Christian strongmen who tear phonebooks in half and break aluminum baseball bats in two, powered by God’s love, I suppose. They didn’t really preach too much, which is good, because my son would have done pretty much anything they said after one of them broke the bat. Maybe the Vigilantes are going for some sort of bad-ass Christian thing? I don’t know.
Now then, the game: coming in, the Vigilantes were 2-12; the Blaze, 1-13. So, not exactly the best of the best. But that did allow one fan from my section to get into with a Blaze lineman, I think over who sucked the most.
At least on the Vigilantes’ end, it was easy to tell why: they fumbled snaps, they fumbled interceptions, they fumbled my drink order, they fumbled everything. The whole point of Arena Football, as far as I can tell, is someone scores every few minutes. This is difficult when one of the teams can’t even run plays without giving the ball up. That’s pretty much all my analysis, as I checked out after the third fumble. Oh, the Vigilantes lost, 51-41.
But! They get to go out on a high note this weekend against the Bossier-Shreveport Battle Wings!
The whole production is pretty low rent, from the graphics on the scoreboard to the dance team’s hand-me-down costumes, to the playing field, which has unsightly patches where Desperadoes logos were cut out and removed.
Speaking of the Desperadoes, former quarterback Clint Dolezel was in attendance. Why? For one reason, the Vigilantes, in a naked grab to get more people there, which worked in a very loose sense, decided to retire Dolezel’s No. 13, in a short, seemingly thrown-together ceremony at halftime. A banner with Dolezel’s name and digits now hangs in a very unobtrusive corner of the AAC. But also, team owner Peter Kern — who will never be confused with a dynamic public speaker — announced that Dolezel would be the coach of the team next season. Dolezel approached all of it with a kind of “Eh, what the hell?” look on his face.
Anyway, all of that happened.
