Feb 21, 2022
We reminisce about the original
Arena Football League and its curious dalliances with the New York
metropolitan area, with veteran Newsday sports
writer/columnist Gregg Sarra - who not only regularly covered
franchises like the 1997-98 New York CityHawks and the Long
Island-based New York Dragons (2001-08), but also even played an
actual game with one of them - and lived to tell (and write) about
it.
After beat-reporting two woeful
seasons' worth of CityHawks games at the "World's Most Famous
Arena" (Madison Square Garden had hastily lobbied the league for
its own expansion club when it got wind of a team coming to the
nearby New Jersey Meadowlands: the Red Dogs) - Sarra was both
surprised and giddy when he heard yet another team would be coming
to the market - this time to his hometown Nassau Veterans Memorial
Coliseum.
The Dragons were actually the
relocated Iowa Barnstormers (1995-2000) - a smaller-market
sensation owned by league founder (and episodes
43 &
44 guest) Jim Foster - who sold the franchise to New York
Islanders NHL owner Charles Wang, with the blessing of an AFL
management eager to finally succeed in the nation's largest media
market.
On April 8, 2001, Sarra got the
literal "inside story" of the new club - when, at Wang's
suggestion, he suited up for and saw last-minute action in the
Dragons' first-ever home preseason match -
a Plimptonian participatory experience that gave his
Newsday readers a true sense of what the indoor game was
all about.
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