Okay. I am a NIFL whore.

It took me a little time to come to terms with this, but I think the trip to Austin (two weeks ago) comfirmed it. The game between the Austin Knights and the Houma Bayou Bucks was out at the Travis County Expo Center. Travis County being Austin's county. Of course this also means it's way the heck out of town. Several yonder away at least, and out past the refinery (which really is how I imagined every set of directions in Texas should be.) And setting the stage for this dip into the bowels of minor league American sports, one of the turnoffs could best be marked by saying, "Turn right when you pass the bar called 'This Is It'."

We (Myself, Byko, and three NIFL virgins, Hight, Steinhauser, and Weiner) get to the arena, and are met by someone wanting us to pay $5. The weird thing about this is that we haven't seen a parking lot yet, and really, we haven't seen an arena, just an arrow telling us to get on this road. We actually do get to a parking lot. Still, we have this feeling running through us all night that they were camped out that far because they knew they couldn't be seen from the arena.

We're running late, because it was so far out of town, so we run up to buy tickets. At first we don't go up to the ticket booth, because it looks unoccupied (well actually it looked abandoned.) I do notice something that looks like movement inside, and I call the guys over to buy tickets. Now we can see the guy in the ticket booth. It was Cletus the slack-jawed yokel was running the ticket booth, and it looked like he was doing it because they were letting him stay there. Tattoos, overalls and a white tanktop. Matt noted it might have been better if the public relations people didn't employ stereotypes just in public relations.

We then wander (I don't think we were fully inTexacated to be up to a mosey at this point) over to the gate, and the woman taking our tickets helpfully notes to us that we can go over to the Beergarten and pick up some refreshments before entering the arena. More helpfully, we notice that the coupon printed on the back of our tickets expires December 31, 2001. This wouldn't bother us so much had they not just printed the tickets in front of us.

Okay. At this point we're pretty maxed out on our NIFL fun. We had paid $10 for the seats, which were not the cheapest seats in the building, about on the 10 yard line. This is differentiated from the premium seats, only by position. We're still in the bleachers. In fact, everywhere here appears to be bleachers. It also appears that when they're not playing NIFL, or letting the ice hockey team play, it's a rodeo ring. Welcome to the NIFL.

It's got all the acoutrements one expects in a NIFL arena, a previously used astroturf surface with the old NIFL website not completely removed. A strange stain rather than a midfield logo, sideboards with random companies like TEXAS FOAM, which drove us nuts trying to figure out what it was, and a semifunctional scoreboard, still telling us the Riverbats are playing the Visitors.

Houma is somewhere in Louisiana. I mention this because when I tell people we watched Houma play Austin, the first question is "Where is Houma?" and the second is "Do they have an arena there?" I can't prove that second one. Neither could I establish the answer to "How do you pronounce Houma? Nobody at the game could either. I did not check with the team to find out.

S'anyway, Austin had made news the day before by announcing that it had come up with a solution to their special teams woes. Rather than having to do a new uniform every time the team hired a new kicker, they would simply sew one jersey with the name on the back being "KICKER". I found this amusing, but even more so when I realized that like most NIFL teams, half the team doesn't even have their name sewn on their jersey. Then they copped out on it by allowing their defensive line to kick. What did shock me was the presence of our former Bridgeville Trolls coach Calvin Schexnayder, apparently part of the offense of Houma. Yeah, threw me too.

Halftime consisted of several contestants attempting to throw footballs into the back of a speedboat. Not nearly as cool as it could have been, as they didn't have a moving speedboat, and they didn't really bring the speedboat out onto the field, just sort of backed it up onto the field, and left it in the endzone, with the pickup that was towing it down in the rodeo dirt. We went looking for something else to do at this point and were shocked by the prices of everything. If I wasn't a NIFL whore, I would have balked at paying what I did for the T-shirts I bought. I blew way too much for them, but I could have been worse, they were selling jerseys for $68 (NIFL jerseys, not NFL jerseys.)

It was your typical NIFL game, no defense, a sort of aimless back and forth battle with occasional failures on the special teams, leading to quick capitalization by the other team. It was even more typically NIFL than that, given the bad kicking game (I'm apparently spoiled by the powerful defense the Ohio Valley Greyhounds put on the field.) At least three cases in the game where the kickoff was returned to the 2, and driven in the next play. By doing this twice in the last quarter, Houma actually managed to prevent Byko from warning that they left too much time on the clock. Hard to say you left too much time on the clock when you were up by three scores. Final Houma 53-Your Austin Knights 42.

I only mention two other things from the game, One, the ultimate sign of being too far in the boonies of sports has to be that your arena is infested with sparrows, as the Travis Country Expo Centere was (why couldn't it have been bats! I would have been able to scream Hunter S. Thompson comments about bat country. C'est la vie...) The other is, we probably can't have me attending any more tournaments in Austin. I thought it would funny to greet the mascot with a hearty "What's up, Knight?" I was apparently wrong. Apparently Texas Tech fans spread a little farther than Lubbock. I'll think we'll just stay clear of the jurisdiction until the statute of limitations on mascot assault are expired.

If you'd like to write questions about the NIFL, first go to http://www.nationalindoorfootballleague.net/, then please remember to get your entire head in front of the shotgun. Seriously, what are you thinking?