Sorry to have dropped off the blogosphere of late, but I was back in Myrtle Beach this weekend helping out at the NAQT High School Championship Tournament, which will merit its own recap in due course. However, I have to first address the most surreal event of the weekend, which is saying something considering I spent most of last night putting 18 at something called Mt. Atlanticus Minotaur Goff.

I am speaking of the National Indoor Football League tilt between the Myrtle Beach Sting Rays and the Houma Bayou Bucks.

Now, I like to think of myself as being geographically astute, but I shared the question that many of you probably have now: Houma? Houma is apparently a city located 57 miles southwest of New Orleans, a positional fix taken of their tourism site. That same site noted that the city is "[s]urrounded by the lush bayous, wetlands and swamp formed by the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River Delta," making sound like the sort of place that was fighting spontaneous cholera outbreaks into the 1970s.

I will say that I was surprised to find that there was any land 57 miles southwest of New Orleans. I figured that at that distance, any freestanding structures would be rooted to some sort of barge or oil platform. But it's apparently a very real place that has a lot to offer... though the Bayou Bucks home games are listed on the tourism site's events page, making me think that the bar to being listed as a special event is set low.

(To forestall those who accuse me of Houma-bashing, I freely admit that this is all first impression. I'd be happy to write glowing things about your locale if you'd host me for a week or so.)

Getting back to the game, the Sting Rays play in the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. It is somewhat fitting for this league that they have a team (and, really, probably more than one) play in a space that is otherwise dedicated to flower shows and national gatherings of bathroom fixture salespersons. Impressively (for the convention center) the field and seats all fit nicely into one exhibit hall with room to spare. That is if you don't count the ceiling, which was low enough to cause kicks to hit various girders and speakers (which, on a kickoff, put the ball at midfield).

We bought what I took to be the cheapest seats available, with a face value of $10 but actually sold for an impromptu group discount rate of $7. While we could have easily found ourselves into more expensive (and less populated) areas that offered seat backs, we stayed put, sort of self-quarantining ourselves from locals who were there to root for loved ones, honor a business sponsorship, or cut three hours off of a community service sentence.

The NIFL field would be familiar to anyone who's seen an Arena Football game: 50 yards long, end zones truncated by hockey boards (though there's no ice set-up for the convention center), and narrow goal posts hanging from the roof. Unlike Arena ball, there are no nets. This led to several field goal and extra point attempts landing among the crowd, resulting in (as in Arena) a lucky fan getting a souvenir. One of our group got so lucky, but was asked to donate the ball back during the game by the owner. Apparently they were afraid of running out of balls during the game. A scoreboard malfunction led her to dismiss our hero, considering one good scan of the crowd would let her find him later if needed.

Myrtle Beach took to the field wearing blue jerseys and a blue-green helmet that is apparently the city color; the minor league Pelicans of the Carolina League also feature the shade prominently. Houma had a blue and gold ensemble going, thus furthering the spread of metallic hues apparently inspired by the Tampa Bay Bucs' pewter helmets.

The field itself appeared to be on its fourth legs, after a life as part of a major college football field, a Czech second-divison soccer team's pitch, and practice turf for the Sri Lankan national field hockey team. The turf in the back of your average perv's El Camino is less worn out.

The sparsity of the crowd and seediness of the proceedings were immediately thrown into tumult by the night's ceremonial ball hand off, performed by former Bengals and Bucs head coach Sam Wyche. The appearance of someone with at least a modicum of pro football legitimacy alternately stunned and enthralled us, and we gave Sam a rousing ovation, which he recognized. Sadly, he left soon after handing the ball to the Houma kicker.

Considering that Myrtle Beach recently replaced its coach, my theory is that Sam came around cold calling for an interview and got the handoff job as consolation for being too late.

The other sad thing about Sam's handoff was that it probably ranked in the top quarter of plays if they were ranked by skill of execution. I used to think that, with over 110 division 1-A college programs, there would be a sea of at least proficient players out there who could populate leagues such as this. Either I was dead wrong about this, or most of those players gave up on the dream and went into auto sales.

Consider this: in a sport known for a wide-open passing game, Myrtle Beach ran the ball on every play of its opening drive. This did lead to a field goal, but you got the sense that the coach wasn't all that confident in his QB, or his wideouts, or all of the above. Houma's offense didn't fare much better, but they did at least seem to think that going to the air could lead to something.

It was also telling that a number of players on both sides listed no college affiliation, suggesting that the either were high school players working a summer job that they hoped the NCAA wouldn't notice or that they weren't quite at the level to hook on to any of the thousand or so programs in the NCAA, NAIA, NJCAA, or CIAU. Some players listed something called "Powsom" as an affiliation. Considering that a web search leads to only 4 sites split between Belgium and the Netherlands, our theory that it is actually a huge misspelling of Towson looks better and better.

I will note that my characterization of the level of play was colored greatly by the game's second half, in which Myrtle Beach failed to score after putting up 30 points in the first half. They apparently lost a running back and their best reciever during the game, so I should cut them some slack. Houma, on the other hand, only managed to muster 97 yards of offense, perhaps a record low total for the indoor game. They capitalized on turnovers and a kickoff return for TD to get the win.

Outside of the game there were some of the usual trappings of minor league sports, such as the blaring music between plays and the ministrations of a PA announcer who was trying to pump life into a crowd that was clearly pining for the fjords. The Sting Rays cheerleaders, or dance team, or jail bait, put their heart and soul into every routine, often using both of the moves they were taught. I shouldn't be too hard on the girls, though. They came over unbidden when we went to take a group photo after the game and asked if we'd let them in the photo, too. Hard to believe that sixteen or so guys would assent, but that's just the sort of gentlemen we are.

The other moment to remember would be how two of our group wound up on the chain gang after a third member went to the PA guy to ask for a shout out to NAQT based on our large group. I don't know exactly how this transpired (I was hunting down sustinance and souvenirs), but it did make first downs, on the occasions they occurred, that much more exciting. I fear to think what would have happened had the game had the expected level of offense; the tournament would have lost a third of its moderating crew from all the cheering.

Speaking of that halftime hunt, I was successful in getting a hot dog, but not successful in getting a hat. They apparently didn't have any hats. They had t-shirts, but only up to XL. I'm not sure they have a real good grasp on sports marketing or the size of the average indoor football fan. Given what my hat purchases have done to the Daytona Beach Breakers, the Chesapeake Ice Breakers, and the two Arena teams that have called Hartford home, not having hats may have been a strategic decision.

But it appears that my killing power may be on the rise, as there are reports of the NIFL filing for bankruptcy given "cash flow problems," a term which seems misplaced given that it suggests that there was enough cash that it actually flowed at some point. In any case, the ESPN.com article on this isn't loading. It's either in limbo between initial post and archiving, or it was of such scant interest that it got purged to make room for Indonesian badminton scores. Either way, it's apparently a good thing I got my NIFL experience when I did.

Sadly, this does scotch plans to place an entire six-team division in Boston. So much for the Back Bay Plutocrats and the Allston-Brighton Grit. I suppose they can wait for af5 or the New NIFL (to be shown on Spike TV, of course).