Although the Arena Football League (AFL) season is over, it doesn’t make the guys from It’s Still Football any less hilarious. Not only do they have the funniest blog dedicated to the AFL, they took it to the next level and got legit media credentials for the Arena Bowl! Talk about a coup for bloggers everywhere. Definitely check out their coverage of the event… after you read the interview, of course.
Propose a fight for Fracas Friday.
Joe: Michael Vick versus PETA would be interesting.
TC: Ha! I’d like to fight Bill Wirtz to the death with his franchise on the line. The undercard could be the rest of the remaining hockey fans vs. Gary Bettman.
3 best games you’ve ever watched (in person or on TV).
Joe: 3. 1982 NFC Championship game (49ers and Cowboys) – Fine, technically speaking, I wasn’t “born” when this game was played, but I grew up watching the Niners with my father, who has a huge collection of illegally recorded game tapes stored in the house, yet I’ve never found any porn. Every time I see The Catch, I almost pee myself a little.
2. Game 7 of the 1991 World Series (Twins and Braves) (TV) I still have my Homer Hanky on my wall. I love the Twinkies almost as much as reminding TC how bad the Sox are this year.
TC: Shut up. They’ll be better eventually.
Joe: 1. October 2nd, 2004 – Northwestern upsets #7 OSU, 33-27 (OT). An upset 33 years in the making on a perfect October night. The electricity that was in the air that night is what’s great about being an underdog. When RB #33 Noah Herron made his 33rd carry of the game to sail into the end zone untouched to put NU up 33-27 following Mike Nugent’s wide-right field goal, Ryan Field erupted. There is nothing like silencing a crowd of 35,000 visiting fans that are used to winning.
TC: This was going to be one of my choices, but it would’ve made for three Northwestern games, and even I’m not that big of a nerd. In no particular order:
Northwestern at Minnesota, 2001: About 80 of us make the trip from Evanston to Minneapolis, and we’re getting killed for most of the game. Some random ladies (and maybe a dude), ravaged by middle-age, kept coming over to sing the Minnesota fight song at us whenever Minnesota scored. Suddenly, late in the third quarter, they stopped coming by, as we started coming back. Between scrappy play from The Mighty Zak Kustok (who went to my high school. I had some classes with his sister. She works for ESPN now, I think. The Kustok family is from superior genetic stock), and some gutsy play calling from the late Randy Walker, and some remarkable Glen Mason brainfreezes, Northwestern climbs back into it, ties the game, and DRIVES AGAIN. Not content to go into overtime, Walker calls for Kustok to buy some time and launch a 50-yard bomb downfield to be tipped into the air like a volleyball by Kunle Patrick and be caught by Sam Simmons. We, of course, do not know this plan, so there’s a half-second after the ball is tipped by Patrick, where we all die inside, and then freak out when Simmons comes up with the ball and streaks into the tunnel. The rest of the Metrodome is deathly silent, but there’s one corner, up in the ass-end of nowhere, that is absolutely freaking out. I almost fell out of the Metrodome that night, as we’re jumping on chairs and hugging each other. We still call Victory Right in pickup football games. It never works, but we call it. I’ll try to make the rest of these a little less wordy.
Michigan at Northwestern, also 2001: You can mention the score 54-51 to certain people, and they’ll cheerfully recount the whole thing. I’ve never seen a more ludicrous back-and-forth game of anything in my entire life. Like the OSU game that Joe mentioned, somebody must’ve known something was brewing, because they made it a night game on ESPN, and the atmosphere was alive. Damien Anderson gets himself alone in the end zone and has a pass bounce off his forearms, killing us – but NOBODY gave up, everybody’s still screaming – and then Anthony Thomas fumbles on the next series, when all Michigan would’ve had to do is get a first down to run out the clock. I think that may have been the first time I’ve been involved in rushing the field, though technically the band just crunched together to to let the student section go first, and then played at them from the stands.
Game 3, 2005 World Series, Chicago at Houston: Not only was I watching this game alone, as I watched the previous two games as well as the last two games of the ALCS – because I was too nervous to watch with any other human breathing in my vicinity – and it lasted what seemed like days. I was thisclose to buying a Geoff Blum jersey the next morning. Fortunately, I couldn’t afford it. Going up 3-0 let me watch the Sox clinch the series with friends, which was, you know, nice. I actually think I was more actively excited about the end of this game than I was the next game, because I was dancing for about half an hour at, what 3 AM? I think I just wandered around like a zombie after game 4, saying things like “We did it? We won? They aren’t going to make us play any more games, right?”
What teams do you follow? Sports?
Joe: Twins, Bears, Cubs, and Northwestern Wildcats.
TC: White Sox, Bears, Northwestern, Blackhawks, Rush (the sport’s sucked us in!), Bulls, but I’ll follow pretty much anything. I followed/vaguely follow crew because my sister coxed for Purdue while she was there and is the athletic trainer for Alabama’s crew team. I just like sports. To be perfectly honest, I’m kind of cool towards the NBA, though.
Joe: Oh, and in the AFL, I suppose my favorite teams to watch this year were the Chicago Rush, the Philly Soul, and the Brett Dietz-led Tampa Bay Storm – he came in mid season and won 8 of their last 9 to get them to the playoffs with a 9-7 record. Amazing.
TC: Yeah, we like Brett Dietz.
What is your greatest athletic achievement?
Joe: In a high school gym class, we were running a basketball drill where you had to rebound your own shots and outscore your opponent in three minutes or so. I’ve never been much of a baller (see how awkward that sounded when I wrote it?) and one of my shots bricked hard off the rim – I caught up with the ball in the next court over, and out of frustration, put it up from about 30 or 35 feet out – swish.
TC: I’m not tall or sturdily-built by any stretch of the imagination, so nobody ever took me seriously in gym class or pick-up games. So there are a number of times when I’ve taken advantage of that by blooping a hit over a right fielder’s head and stretching it into a triple, or breaking tackles in pick-up football or something equally amusing. Those are always enjoyable. It’s the little things…
What is your worst athletic moment? Most embarrassing?
Joe: More than once I’ve struck out in slow pitch. That always bruises the ego a bit.
TC: Like I said, I got picked last-or-late a lot of times. I’m an embarrassingly bad basketball player. Every time I’ve tried to get fancy and ended up throwing an interception or grounding out on a dribbler to the shortstop is kind of disappointing. But, like I said, the stakes have never been really high, so I get by.
Why do you blog?
Joe: It’s a great outlet, and it’s helped keep my mind sharp and improved my writing. I specifically wanted to write with Tom because he’s a genius. He is, and I make no exaggeration, operating on the same level as Stephen Colbert.
TC: I’ve never considered myself much of a writer, and I wanted to do something that could get the words out of my head and into the open in a coherent fashion. I’m an actor and – though less so recently – an improviser, so I figured it’d behoove me to brush up on my writing. It’s a good creative outlet, and the more of those I have, the happier I am. This gig came about because I was looking to collaborate with Joe on something – I worked on a couple of his student films, as well as knowing him in NUMB – and really enjoyed his style and tone. I think we’re a pretty solid team.
Joe:I’ll second that.
TC: Annnnnnnnd… after reading what he wrote, I’m really flattered. I don’t think I’m at that level, but I do think that Joe doesn’t give himself enough credit for the skill that he has.
What do you want your blog to be known for? What do you personally want to be known for?
Joe: For anyone that stumbles by It’s Still Football, more than anything I hope they have a laugh reading it. I never expected us to have readers beyond the two of us and a scant handful of personal friends, so knowing that there are a few regular readers out there is gratifying. So long as the people that know me personally think I’m a good-natured and decent person, I’m happy. So far as the blogosphere’s concerned, I guess more than anything I’d like to be known as the guy that started out with a fucking ridiculous handle. Had I predicted anyone would have read anything I’d done, I probably would have started out with something not, in the words of Precious Roy on Kermit the Blog, a nickname that suggests I’m an anchor on the White People Co-Opting Black Culture Network. Don’t be surprised to see the “J Fizzle” phased out in favor “J” or “JM”.
TC: After the love-in of that last question, I hope we’re not known for throwing out our rotator cuffs patting each other on the back. I’m just happy to be known, to be perfectly honest. If a few people read it and laugh, I’m thrilled. I was going to make a joke about becoming The Conscience of the Blogosphere, but it wasn’t terribly funny. As long as nobody takes us too seriously, I’m happy. We’re just here to goof off.
Do you want to do this for a living?
Joe: If someone was willing to pay me a good wage, I suppose I wouldn’t turn them down.
TC: It’s fun, don’t get me wrong, and if someone wanted to pay me for it, I’d cheerfully take it, but it’s not going to be my living. There are things I’m passionate about that I need to do, and while this’d be a far sight better than my current day job, I don’t think it’d get beyond “supporting my other interests.”
Thoughts on the present and the future for the blogosphere. How does it fit with the mainstream media?
Joe: I think a lot of fuel for the sports blogoshere comes from poking fun, if not outright ridiculing, the mainstream media. So long as “ironically detached” is in, the blogosphere will be out there on the fringes throwing their jabs. It isn’t often something like YWML or Shrutebag actually affects the mainstream.
TC: It’s never going to supplant the traditional media structure. As much as the Internet as an collective seems to want to say, “We’re the future, old man,” and kick Professional Journalism in the groin, its role is kind of necessarily that of the minority opinion, the dissenting voice. It’s going to become a reasonably well-articulated voice, because it’s also getting better at self-correcting, but it’s going to be the medium for speaking out against The Establishment. Eventually, the blogging world is going to be a much better tool for the mainstream media to use to gauge the temperature of the average person. It’s easy to criticize, and now that we have the tools to criticize really, really easily and anonymously, blogs on the whole have a tendency to just be screaming “No, no, no! Everything you’re doing sucks and is wrong! Blow it up! Start over again! I could do better!” and I’m not sure that reflects reality really well. It’s an extraordinarily useful medium, but there’s a lot of noise.
The question on everyone’s mind is: how in the world did you decide to start an Arena League Football blog?
Joe: It was as simple as wanting to collaborate on something together. The 2007 season happened to begin right around the time TC and I decided we wanted to work on something together. I thought the whole aspect of ESPN buying a share of the league and almost forcing it on their viewers, at least in SC highlights, was fascinating, and I was curious to see if it would take a hold.
TC: Yeah, pretty much. We were looking for an excuse to write about things, and nobody else was doing this. Nothing like a niche market… Also, I know I was curious to see if I could write coherently about a sport I had essentially been introduced to when we decided to write the blog.
What is the best thing you’ve discovered about AFL since you’ve started?
Joe: When we first started ISF, Tom and I took a fairly disparaging angle on the league; however, as this season has come full circle, I really appreciate the players and coaches for their love of the game. They’re not paid huge salaries, many (if not most) of the players have normal jobs in the off season, and there’s something very pure in that these guys don’t seem like they’re in it just for the money. Couple that with the fan-friendly nature of the league, and I think there’s something to be said for the AFL that I didn’t see at the beginning of our endeavor.
TC: I think the fact that most of the players play because they love the game of football bears repeating. We cracked wise early (I can’t find the post, maybe we did it privately) about the fact that these guys are making a living playing bad football, and that was a regrettable mistake. The football that they play isn’t brilliant, and Jon Gruden’s Bucs would murder Jay Gruden’s Predators, but they’re still in the top 5% for athletic ability, and they make exciting plays, and it’s a competitive sport. I’m surprised that I’ve been sucked into as many games as I have been – I’ve found myself being surprised that it was the fourth quarter on more than one occasion. I’d like to say that we’re still working under the “Ironic Detachment” banner…
Any suggestions for a future interview?
Joe: He doesn’t write about sports, but Joe Mathlete (Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke in 500 Words or Less, Joe Mathlete’s Great American Blog, and Joe Mathlete will Draw Anything You Ask Him To) is brilliant.
http://marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com/
http://joemathlete.blogspot.com/
http://joemathleteart.blogspot.com/
Thanks, JP!
Wow, MV7 is timely. If you asked me again today, I’d have to go with Tiki and Tom under the lights of the Meadowlands.
Not enjoying the hiatus, but thankful for increased productivity at the office,
JM
“So far as the blogosphere’s concerned, I guess more than anything I’d like to be known as the guy that started out with a fucking ridiculous handle.”
Well, I’ve got to be in that conversation as well, if we’re having it.
“Hey, I think I’ll call my blog Extrapolater”. Thank god Brian from Awful Announcing shortened it to Extra P.
By the way, I loved the videos from the Arena Bowl. Great stuff.