SaberCats, We Hardly Missed Ye

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It seems like yesterday that the San Jose SaberCats were the Bay Area's most successful professional anything. It didn't stop us from whining about how the 415, 650, 408 and Nickel-Dime had become a wasteland for pro jockery, but when the SaberCats called it quits after the 2008 Arena Football season, we had run out of teams to ignore.

Well, the 'Cats are back, after a two-year "hiatus" (from the Latin for "doesn't exist but insists it does") and scheduled to pick up where they left off when Jon Bon Jovi's Philadelphia Soul put a beatin' on 'em in the 2008 championship game. The Soul (and hell beckons whoever thought of that nickname) returns as well, but without Bon Jovi, who has moved on to whatever former Arena League owners move on to when they haven't gone bankrupt.

We know why the Arena League took a powder after that game -- the economy for rich folks tanked. It has picked up for many of them, while still stubbornly resistant to the entreaties of the not-so-well-to-do, and owner John Fry is willing to restart the enterprise. We'll leave the matter of "why" for another day, though we do not believe that fear of the San Jose Wolves (who play at the Cow Palace and lead the Western Division of the American Indoor Football Association) is a motivator. The link with the NFL can't hurt, of course, but even with that, these teams are still mostly money-burners.

Or, as the folks who run the league would call it, "labors of love."

The most interesting development along those lines is that successful SaberCat coach Darren Arbet is now considered a part owner (let's hope he doesn't have to help cover the losses), but we suspect that his main duty will be to reassemble as much of the old band as possible.

Whether he can make the fans the league discarded renew their ardor remains to be seen, but for now, they're back, and ready to get stuck into the Soul, Vipers, Rattlers, Battle Wings, Rush, Gladiators, Vigilantes, Barnstormers, Sharks, Iron, Predators, Shock, Storm, Talons, Blaze and Yard Dawgz.

Yeah. Yard Dawgz. No wonder you didn't miss the league all that much.

Posted By: Ray Ratto (Email) | June 17 2010 at 12:34 PM

Listed Under: Resurrections