Indoor football club set to kick off at Bud Center

LOVELAND — Indoor football is coming to Northern Colorado.

A yet-to-be-named National Indoor Football League team will begin playing at the Budweiser Event Center in March, the ownership group for the new franchise has confirmed.

The deal is almost completed and according to league officials they are just waiting on final paperwork to approve the new Northern Colorado franchise.

The 4-year-old NIFL plays primarily in smaller market cities that are located largely in the Midwest. The new team will play in the Pacific West Conference of the NIFL; the closest franchise cities to Northern Colorado include Casper, Wyo., Rapid City, S.D. and West Valley, Utah, near Salt Lake City.

The Northern Colorado franchise is owned by Tri-State Indoor Professional Sports, which also owns the Greenville Riverhawks of South Carolina and another NIFL team based in Waco, Texas.

The ownership group transferred the Tennessee RiverHawks of Knoxville to South Carolina and purchased the defunct Bismarck Roughriders of Bismark, N.D., moving that team to Waco this summer. The Northern Colorado team is a pure expansion franchise this year, along with the Staten Island Xtreme of New York.

The group chose Northern Colorado because of the area’s recent growth and the completion of the Budweiser Events Center. Tri-State Indoor owner John Candish picked up Northern Colorado on his radar screen in November 2002, but he was hesitant to commit to a team here because he didn’t know whether the area could support three expansion minor league teams at one time.

At the time, the Colorado Eagles hockey team of the Central Hockey League had announced its franchise and the Colorado Chill of the National Women’s Basketball League was rumored to be interested in the area.

“We looked at the numbers for potential growth and decided, ‘let’s move,'”said Garmez Parks, a partner in the Tri-State Indoor investment group and co-owner of the Northern Colorado team.

According to Tina Johnson, operations manager for the National Indoor Football League, the team has filed most of its paperwork but has until the end of November to complete the process.

The NIFL is a 26-team league that plays indoor football from March until the beginning of August. While the game is played indoors, Parks is adamant that the play style is dramatically different from that of the more established Arena Football League. The Colorado Crush, which is owned by John Elway, Pat Bowlen and Stan Kroenke, plays in the Arena Football League.

“The AFL plays by different rules — one major difference is that our players don’t play both offense and defense,” Parks said.

The team also plays without nets, so footballs that stray into the stands become souvenirs for fans.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.”

Parks said the team’s first home game is in April. They will play seven home games during the regular season.

This will create some scheduling dilemmas for the Budweiser Events Center. The Colorado Eagles will be ending their regular season in March and the Colorado Chill will begin playoffs at the end of March.

“We may play our first game with the field over the ice, but that happens a lot in this league,” Parks said.

Parks said the team does have a coach and a general manager, but plans on holding a name-the-team contest to find the appropriate nickname for the team. Team colors and mascot will also be chosen shortly.

He also hopes to fill the field with local football talent from around the area. This should not be a difficult task with former players from the University of Colorado, Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado in abundance. Former Colorado State defensive end Geoff Graue is currently with the NIFL’s Sioux Falls (S.D.) Storm.

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

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