Again I consider myself fortunate not to be one of the handful of people who went to the game to watch the Chicago Rush tromp the Kansas City Command. Instead, I fired up Nifty-Tv on my little Acer netbook, and worked on other projects on my main laptop while giving the game my divided attention. What I got to see was ... Chicago almost, almost skunking the Command through the first half. There were only seconds left on the clock when the Command scored their touchdown to finally get a score on the board. Then they managed to get a safety. Then, just when I was about to wonder if the Command were going to wake up, the Rush kicked one into the net, the Command muffed it, and Chicago scored. This all took place with only seconds left on the clock for the first half.
Again, the Command failed to convert possessions into points. An interception, a missed field goal, just to mention two of them. Chicago, on the other hand, came out in the second half and put the game away. Yes, the command managed to score 21 points in the second half, but the Chicago Rush came out and put 35 points on the board. Now, you can make excuses, say its a new team, say that Chicago is the division leaders with a record of 9-3 coming into the match-up, but the simple truth is that the team needs to work on their skills, they need to stop making stupid mistakes, like Face-Mask penalties, muffing kick-offs, etc...
And now for my favorite part ... attendance. Again, I will have to go to Arenafan Online sometime over the next week and get the attendance for the game. There is no way that Sprint Center is going to admit that this may be the worst attendance yet this season. Excuses? Yeah, there are going to be excuses. The last really bad showing was on a Friday night, and Friday nights are always bad for game attendance. This game it will be that they were competing against the big NASCAR race out at the Kansas Speedway. How about there was the marathon on Hospital Hill this morning as well? The truth is that the fans in Kansas City are fickle. They are not going to support a losing team. Add to that group of people the ones such as myself who simply aren't going to go to the Sprint Center and watch a losing team. Hell, I would find it hard to go to the Sprint Center and watch a winning team, because I know for a fact that if the team was winning, and attendance was up, the cost of parking would be up again as well. Right now, the concessions are working hard to get people to spend money on their highly overpriced products.
Let's face facts. The Kansas City Brigade blew their first season in KC. But they made the games fun to attend, the price was right, and parking was cheap. The upper level seats were not sitting on top of two levels of suites, and the perks that were being given away were making it up into the upper levels as well as the lower level seats. Yes, the audio sucked in Kemper, but I don't go to a football game for the sound quality. The Brigade moved to Sprint and attendance started to drop almost immediately. The people who were in the upper deck immediately realized that the 'similar' seats were not similar. There were a lot higher up. The perks were gone, parking ranged from 10 to 25 dollars, and the deals that the Brigade made with the people at the KC Power and Light District (who eventually turned their backs on the Brigade) took players away from the after game autograph sessions mandatory by the AFL rules.
Yes, I know, I've covered all this before, but NO ONE SEEMS TO BE LISTENING! Sprint Center isn't working for the Command. The Arena Football fans do not like Sprint. But there are other problems, such as the "Red Capper" that brings play to a stop, sometimes breaking momentum, so that someone can run their damn commercials. The perks are only making to the people who can afford the premium seats or are in the give away seats on the corners of the end zones. A lot has changed, and none of it anywhere need being an improvement.
So ... I will stand my ground. I will remain a FORMER season ticket holder that is unwilling to spend the money for the product being offered. Besides, why should I pay to attend a Command game when I can watch them make mistakes and blow games on Nifty-TV for free?
Oh, and for the people providing the feed out of Sprint for Nifty-TV. I have watched a number of games, in particular, the Chicago Rush, this season, and the feed for the Command is the most problem plagued channel I've been on. And for a final note, if you like watching the Command on Nifty, you might like to use the Channel for the opposing team. Its fun to listen to them complain about how they are sitting just under the Stratosphere, and talk about how 'no one' appears to be showing up for the Command home games.
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