WEEKEND OBLONG SPHEROID REPORT: 2/22 - 2/24: RETURN OF INDOOR FOOTBALL

Deciding to bring this back during baseball season was probably a mistake. Oh well. Quick and dirty again this week.

• The eternal struggle that is life as a Memphis Express fan continues as the boys head down to UCF’s Bounce House to face probably the best team in the AAF, Steve Spurrier’s Orlando Apollos. Injury reports have our hero Zach Mettenberger out with “illness”. He’s as sick as the rest of us are with seeing Christian Hackenberg CONTINUE TO DESTROY THIS TEAM BENCH HIM SINGLETARY WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!? After Week 1 games on CBS and Week 2 on TNT, the AAF settles into it’s regular TV rotation for the remainder of the season: 1 game on CBS-SN, 1 game on Turner’s B/R Live service, and 2 games on the NFL Network. And please, don’t be fooled by lazy reporting like I was. The AAF is doing just fine.
• Women’s Aussie Rule continues this weekend, but the AFL has a special event on Friday morning: The AFL-X Tournament. It’s almost impossible to explain in a few words, but imagine if the NFL had an all-star game where the field was shrunk to fit on a playground, scoring rules were exponentially increased, and 4 teams drafted by all-star captains played six 20-minute games and a tournament final over the course of 5 ¹⁄₂ hours on one night. Aussie Rules is insane and I love it.
• A galaxy of Rugby from all 4 corners of the globe, though your LEAGUE LEADING NEW ORLEANS GOLD is on a bye this weekend. The highlight of the weekend has to be the next round of Six Nations Rugby, carried on NBC-SN.
• Your big story of the weekend is the return of arena football (little a, little f) with Week 1 of the Indoor Football League. If you were unaware, arena football has had a few years of turmoil this last decade that resulted in a geographic split, with the East Coast teams remaining in the Arena Football League (big a, big f) and the teams in the Midwest and Western states, including stalwarts of the sport like the Iowa Barnstormers, breaking off to join the formerly lower-level Indoor Football League. Both leagues are still in the regrowing pains of that split, but seem on stable ground today. AFL doesn’t start play until late spring, but the IFL returns to the indoor gridiron this weekend. All of their games stream free on YouTube.