Bud Center ready for some football

LOVELAND — Undisclosed investors plan to bring a professional indoor football franchise to Northern Colorado to begin play in March 2004.

Operators of the new Budweiser Events Center confirmed that they are in talks with a team that would play in the National Indoor Football League. The league includes 24 teams — largely in the Midwest — and plays its regular season between March and July.

The 3-year-old NIFL plays primarily in small-market cities. The closest franchise cities to Northern Colorado include Casper, Wyo.; Kearney, Neb.; Rapid City, S.D., and West Valley, Utah, near Salt Lake City.

The NIFL is not related to the older Arena Football League, which includes the Denver-based Colorado Crush.

Most importantly to the Budweiser Center, an NIFL franchise would add a third regular sports tenant to the $62 million arena, which opened for business last month. Sports tenants provide a reliable stream of rental income for the arena, in addition to concerts and special events.

The other two sports teams on board for the Budweiser Center include the Colorado Eagles of the Central Hockey League, and the Colorado Chill of the National Women’s Basketball League. The Eagles start regular season play this month. The Chill’s schedule runs from February to April.

Not counting playoffs, an NIFL team would play eight games each year at the Budweiser Center — one pre-season contest and seven regular-season games.

Eight football games would build toward the Budweiser Center’s total goal of 120 events during the year, said Jay Hardy, general manager of The Ranch — the official name of the Larimer County Fairgrounds — which includes the Budweiser Center.

Hardy said indoor football was part of the original plans for the new arena.

“We were about to go approach (the NIFL), but then four people in a month’s time frame literally contacted us,´ said Rick Hontz, assistant general manager for the Budweiser Center.

After consultation with NIFL president Carolyn Shiver, the Budweiser Center management whittled the candidates to two teams before settling on one in late September.

The new team is necessarily moving fast. The ownership has less than five months to organize a squad to play a preseason game in March.

“The ownership group wants to be unnamed at this time,´ said Hontz.

The ownership does not include Windsor-based real estate developer Martin Lind, who was instrumental in bringing the Colorado Eagles to Northern Colorado and is also behind efforts to recruit a minor-league baseball franchise to the area.

“I have no knowledge” of the indoor football possibilities, Lind said.

Asked if the team would be the relocation of an existing franchise or expansion team, Hontz said, “It’s sort of a little of both.” He declined to be specific.

“We would need time to market it and start selling tickets,” Hontz said. “(A decision) would probably have to be within the month.”

Management of the Utah Warriors, which joined the league last year, is hopeful of seeing another rival from the Mountain Time Zone.

“Having teams near to us is, financially, a big advantage to us,´ said Doug Jentzsch, assistant general manager for the Warriors, which advanced to the league championship game in its first season. “It also helps to build up rivalries.”

Utah plays in the E-Center, an arena built for the 2002 Winter Olympics hockey tournament. The team averaged about 6,500 fans a game in a 10,000-seat facility.

The Budweiser Center, which seats 5,300 for hockey, is well-suited for the NIFL, Jentzsh said.

“Ideally, you want to be selling out — that’s what builds value,” he said. “For that size of market (the Budweiser Center) would be perfect.”

A Northern Colorado franchise would likely join Utah in the NIFL’s Pacific West Division, which now includes the Wyoming Cavalry (Casper), the Rapid City Red Dogs, the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Storm, the Billings Outlaws, and the Bismarck Roughriders.

Jentzsh speculated that Northern Colorado would displace Sioux Falls in the Pacific West, which would then take the place of the defunct LaCrosse, Wis., franchise in the Pacific North Division.

NIFL games include eight players per side, with a total roster of 21 on game day. League rules limit salaries to $200 per game per player.

The league apparently has a colorful streak. For instance, the Omaha, Neb., franchise is called the Omaha Beef, and its fan club is called the Beef Jerkys. Other nicknames include the Landsharks (Lake Charles, La.), the Crude (Enid, Okla.) and the Fire Ants (Tupelo, Miss.).

The NIFL has also experienced some recent turmoil. An article that appeared Sept. 25 in the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal Gazette said the Fort Wayne franchise owner had threatened to pull out of the league and start a rival league. As of July, up to 17 teams were considering dropping out of the NIFL.

The discord appeared to be resolved at the annual league meetings in September.

“We’re getting some national recognition now, and I think the organization of the league is better than it was before,” Rich Coffey, owner of the Fort Wayne Freedom, told the Journal Gazette. “We’re happy we got a chance to say what we wanted to say, see where the league is going, and we’re buying into it.”

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