Daily News-Miner

June 14, 2007

Intense Football in Fairbanks?

By Danny Martin

It’s not every day that the Daily News-Miner sports department receives an e-mail from the owner of a professional sports league.

It’s rare, too, that such a person contacts us to gauge interest in his league bringing a franchise to the Interior.

Fairbanks, meet Chad Dittman, the owner of the Intense Football League, which includes the Anchorage-based Alaska Wild among its eight franchises.

He wants to know if you’re interested in sitting in the stands at the Carlson Center and watching eight men aside popping pads and scoring touchdowns on an 50-yard artificial turf field surrounded by padded dasher boards.

These are not the guys who you see Monday nights on ESPN, but the Intense League includes guys who aspire to play in the Arena Football League, and even beyond.

“About 80 percent of the guys in the league have played (NCAA) Division I, Division II or Division III football, and they want to get additional exposure in this league and move up,” David Weatherholt, president of Alaska Professional Sports and an owner of the Alaska Wild, said Tuesday from Anchorage. “A lot of them want to move up to the Arena League and some even hope to play in the NFL.”

The Intense Football League season runs from April to August and if a franchise in Fairbanks becomes a reality, it would play 14 regular-season contests, with seven of them at the Carlson Center.

The league added the Wild this season to go along with its one Louisiana team (the Louisiana Swashbucklers of Lake Charles) and the six franchises in Texas — the Cen Tex Barracudas of Belton; Corpus Christi Hammerheads of Robstown; Frisco Thunder; Katy Ruff Riders; Odessa Roughnecks and San Angelo Stampede Express. Dittman is also an owner of the Hammerheads.

Though the Wild are 0-9 with five games left in the season, Dittman is happy with the league’s newest member.

“It has been a tremendous success with them averaging over 4,000 fans per game despite not winning a single game thus far,” Dittman said in the e-mail.

Sullivan Arena seats about 6,500 for indoor football while the Carlson Center holds about 4,500.

Kirk Patton, general manager of the Carlson Center, enjoyed his first IFL game at Sullivan Arena in Anchorage on May 26, when the Wild lost 61-60 to Katy.

Patton also received an e-mail on Monday from Dittman.

“From what I can gather from the e-mails is that he’s taking a look at the market, demographics and trying to do a little research,” Patton said. “I think he sees potential because this is the second major city in Alaska.”

The Wild’s late May contest was one of two games at Sullivan Arena that the team brought in Bruce Cech from Fairbanks to do radio play-by-play.

“I was pretty happy with the product I saw,” said Cech, the longtime play-by-play announcer for the Alaska Nanooks.

“When I did the game against second-place Corpus Christi (a 62-32 loss last Thursday), the Wild came out smoking and took a 6-0 lead,” Cech said. “Even though the crowds had dwindled and they’re 0-9, those small crowds are part of the action. There’s tables right there by the dasher boards where they can eat, drink and be happy.”

It’s likely the atmosphere in the Carlson Center would be similar, particularly if the home team is winning.

If not, that could be a challenge, because it seems the biggest competition for an IFL franchise in Fairbanks would be weather, particularly in the summer.

If it’s sunny and 80 degrees here on a game night, indoor football may find itself in a goal-line stand against the great outdoors.

But before there can be any atmosphere at the Carlson Center, there has to be ownership and sponsorship for what would be the first pro team in Fairbanks since the Alaska Gold Kings, who played in the old West Coast Hockey League from 1995-97.

The IFL would be seeking a local individual or group to own and the operate the franchise. Weatherholt said he wouldn’t be involved in a Fairbanks team except to help its ownership get established.

“From my perspective, it’s mainly fun work,” he said, “but starting a football team takes a tremendous amount of work.”

A player’s salary in the league is low. The Wild, for example, carry 19 players on the active roster, and each receives $225 per week. When the Wild’s first victory occurs, there will be a $35 bonus for each player.

But there’s no low costs in the overall operations of an IFL team, and an owner, or owners, can expect to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that includes salaries, equipment and travel costs.

“When you’re trying to feed a 300-pound lineman on a road trip, it’s not cheap,” said Weatherholt.

Sponsorships can help offset expenses, and among Dittman’s fact-finding mission is to learn how much interest there is in local corporations and businesses to sponsor a team in Fairbanks.

“I think it would be great as long as the community supports it; but normally, pro teams take big sponsorships,” said Rudy Gavora, president of Gavora, Inc., whose holdings include the Gavora Mall and Shopper’s Forum in Fairbanks and the North Pole Plaza.

His company has sponsored local youth hockey teams, nearly a dozen squads in Interior Youth Basketball for the last five years, and will be a sponsor of this fall’s inaugural season of football for Monroe Catholic High School.

His company has never sponsored a pro franchise.

“It depends on what the sponsorship is,” he replied when asked if Gavora, Inc., would consider sponsoring an IFL team in Fairbanks. “It depends on what you get as a corporate sponsor. We’ve done a lot of amateur sponsorships, we’ve done tons of them.”

Chad Dittman hopes to learn soon if there’s tons of interest in Fairbanks to warrant him bringing the Intense Football League here.

CAMPUS TRAILS: Oregon State senior pitcher Anton Maxwell, an East Anchorage graduate, and Boston College infielder Joe Ayers from Juneau-Douglas were selected last week in the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft. The left-handed Maxwell went to the Texas Rangers in the 31st round and Ayers was taken by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 40th round.

Maxwell and Oregon State return this weekend to Omaha, Neb., to defend their title in the College World Series. The Beavers open Saturday against the Cal State-Fullerton Titans at 3 p.m. ADT.