While we wait on hockey, Huntington this past week added ANOTHER indoor football team. This one will be in the brand-new Ultimate Indoor Football League, run by the founders of the AIFA that the old Heroes were in; presently the league ranks include just Huntington and Johnstown, but they still have a ways to the season opener (early next year, to be precise).
This--the West Virginia Wild joke nonwithstanding--would be the third indoor football team in Huntington in a decade. Needless to say the cost factors are significantly lower in this sport than in hockey, but how much so? Former Heroes GM Chip Rossetti went into hockey after leaving the AIFA, taking the GM reins for the Evansville Icemen; he says the annual budget for indoor football and low-level-A hockey is about the same--$300,000 per season. For comparison's sake, the SPHL (high-A) strives to keep its budgets in the $1,000,000/season neighborhood.
Then there's equipment. AJ Boleski, who will be landlord (or super I guess would be more accurate) for this newest endeavor at the BSSA, puts the cost of turf at $50,000 new, boards and pads for the boards (the pads basically go over conventional hockey boards) totalling a shade under $100,000, and the goalposts--well, THIS explains everything--$400 of PVC pipe and yellow paint. Total. For both of them. No, really.
All this is dwarfed by the cost of an ice surface, not counting upkeep. Sucks to say it, but hockey is a rather expensive sport.
1 comment:
lenny fun side note... when the AIFA added the Harrisburg Stampede they bought the old Heros turf. When they opened with the "all-star game" you could still see the double H at mid field
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