The wife and I attended our first Tennessee Valley Vipers arena football game tonight.  Yes, I am fortunate enough to be married to a lovely lady who is passionate about football.  Be jealous.  We weren’t going to go since I was a bit under the weather today, but date opportunities are few and far between so I cowboyed up.  We went and had a great time.

The Vipers were playing the Florida Firecats in their first game of the playoffs.  Although the game didn’t start out very well for the home team - they went down two touchdowns after a pair of turnovers - they turned it around to soundly defeat the Firecats.  The Vipers effectively won by three touchdowns, although they gave up a garbage score on the last play to make the game appear closer than it was.

My wife noticed before the game that one of the visitors who came out for the coin flip refused to shake hands when the Viper players extended theirs.  We marveled at what a jerk he was.  We made a note of his number (#5) and saw that the fat fellow was playing on the offensive line.  It should come as no surprise that he was talking a lot of trash during the game.  Midway through the fourth quarter the Firecats, down by three scores, were driving in what was likely their last chance to get back in the game.  On second and short from near the Viper’s endzone one of the defensive linemen absolutely blew up #5 on the Firecats, ran right over the top of him, and sacked the quarterback.  It was the first of three straight sacks that sealed the game.  I thought it was quite appropriate to see that jerk laying on his backside while his quarterback was getting creamed.

I have to mention the halftime entertainment, which was provided by the Madison Mission church.  Their youth has a drum line that was fantastic.  They definitely got a great response from the crowd and gave the game the infectious feel of a high school or college game with their periodic brief routines between plays.

All in all it was a great experience, one that I look forward to repeating.  If you like football and live in the area then I would highly recommend trying to make it out to a Vipers game.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Huntsville, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.