Rocky Mountain high

Adam Candee

Monday, June 13, 2005 | 9:45 a.m.

Here is what commissioner David Baker knew about a decade's worth of ArenaBowl games: Sellout attendance and just six days to plan his league's biggest event.

He gambled that strong fan turnout in order to get rid of the headaches of short planning time in the host team's city that prevented the Arena Football League from setting up the immense corporate party that is next-generation sports business.

Baker succeeded in creating a well-oiled party machine in Las Vegas, selling an extra $2 million in sponsorships with more time to set up a week heavy on concerts, galas and hospitality for the big-money backers of the league. He also moved his crescendo game to a more natural neutral-site format that teams mostly prefer.

And at least for this year, the AFL took so bad of a beat on that attendance gamble that it is no guarantee the league will continue its renewable three-year agreement to come back here in 2006 for the big party.

That is no fault of the game itself. Colorado's Clay Rush kicked a 20-yard field goal as time expired to vault the Crush to a 51-48 win against Georgia, giving co-owner John Elway's franchise a championship in just its third year of existence. While the first three quarters played tediously slow, the rapid-fire fourth quarter featured as exciting a product as the AFL can produce.

Just 10,822 fans showed up Sunday afternoon at the Thomas & Mack Center to see it, though, even with some charity giveaways and discounted tickets for sale around town. Large swaths of empty red seats marked the upper deck and the lower bowl would have looked the same if not for the colored covers the league put on every seat back to help shield the appearance of low attendance for NBC cameras.

The turnout fell more than 2,000 fans short of the league's average attendance for a regular-season game in 2005. Baker proudly touted that league-wide attendance figure while trying to explain the poor turnout for the championship game.

"We're trying to make this a game that's not just for the winning team," Baker said.

The league hired an outside company to produce a sort of mystery shopper report as a fan about the Las Vegas ArenaBowl experience. That will be part of the evaluation to determine the future of the title game that Baker and the league board of directors begin in a conference call next month.

Baker called the ArenaBowl week "a win" for Las Vegas, but stopped short of committing to re-upping for the final two one-year contracts of a three-year agreement. He mentioned other cities that are vying to host the game as well.

"I'd be very happy to be back," Baker said. "But sooner or later, we're going to be in New Orleans and Orlando."

He abhors being measured against the NFL and the Super Bowl, but both Baker and a number of league officials have reminded for weeks that the first Super Bowl did not sell out as a means of bolstering their cause.

"We're not the NFL. This is not the Super Bowl," Baker said. "We're the Arena Football League and we're darn proud of it. We're proud of this weekend."

Ticket prices for the ArenaBowl, which featured halftime and postgame concerts, started at $40 and Baker understands that might have been a problem for local fans that pay about a third of that amount for the same seat to a Gladiators game.

"This was an expensive ticket, by far the most expensive ticket we've had for an ArenaBowl," Baker said. "We'll evaluate that."

Decent supporting sections for both Colorado and Georgia showed up, clad in jerseys and hats and giving the game at least something of a title-contest atmosphere. The final quarter of the game was also championship quality, as the teams scored 41 of the 99 total points in the last 15 minutes.

Colorado, just two years removed from a two-win expansion season, got the ball with 18 seconds left to play and the game tied at 48 after Georgia's Chris Jackson made a sliding one-handed catch in the end zone for a 20-yard score. Starting from his own 5-yard line, Crush quarterback John Dutton, a UNR alum, found Kevin McKenzie for a 37-yard pass to set up Rush's winning kick.

Rush joked about the trick he uses to block out the pressure and the noise of the moment.

"I wear earplugs," Rush said. "It's not my first rodeo. I've been here seven years."

Elway, a two-time Super Bowl winner with the Denver Broncos, said his franchise's rapid success is a surprise.

"Did we really expect to be here after three years?" Elway said. "Not after (a) 2-14 (expansion year)."

Elway spoke highly of both the neutral site and the Las Vegas experience for the ArenaBowl, saying he likes where the AFL stands after 19 years compared to a similar amount of time for the NFL. Crush coach Mike Dailey is also fond of the new format.

"I liked it a lot," Dailey said. "I think our league is moving forward to becoming a major league. It was inevitable this was going to happen. I think it's good for our league and it worked out real well."

Whether it worked out well enough for a return trip to Las Vegas in 2006 remains to be seen. Baker said that decision could be made in as little as 30 days, but more likely would not be fully addressed until the league's next in-person owners meeting, scheduled for August in Atlanta.