2011 Week One

The 2011 Sioux Falls Storm season kicked off in insanely bizarre fashion this past Friday when your Storm defeated the Kent Predators 105-71. Yes, that’s right. In the interest of time, I’ll spare you a game recap with the exception of a few random comments. The Storm offense looked smooth, and the Kent defense looked bad. The Storm defense looked decent; they gave up a TON of points, but were on the field a TON thanks to a whole host of 1 play scoring drives by the offense. I’d be happy to tell you exactly how many, but the league again has failed to bring its team statisticians up to speed on how to properly use the Pointstreak software/interface.

New Storm QB Chris Dixon looked sharper on his passes (once he got settled down) than I’ve ever seen him. It’s still a bit strange to be using Dixon’s name without some form of expletive preceding it after having watched him go all Chris Dixon on the Storm defense. In his own “Blue 5 to Red 2” blog on the Storm website Dixon says “Many may know me as the Billings Outlaws quarterback. Others may know me as ‘Enemy #1.’ ” Sports is one of the only places where “hate” and “love” are subject to change depending on the color of that players jersey, and I need go no further than NFL Sundays for you Vikings fans the last two years. Imagine having obtained Brett Favre in 1999 instead of 2009, “I’m just sayin.”

So, while I cannot speak for all 4700 fans I hope are at the Storm home opener in March 14th, I can speak for myself and welcome Mr. Dixon and all of the new players who played in Billings, Wichita, La Crosse, or wherever to the Storm family.

Around the league in this second week of IFL action (Chicago and W. Texas won a week ago) the only competitive games were in Chicago where the Omaha Beef survived a scare and a short 55 yard FG attempt as time expired to hold off former QB Ben Sankey and the Slaughter 39-36. In Colorado the Ice shut out Amarillo in the 4th quarter to shock the Venom 37-26. Colorado has in one week reached half as many wins as they had in all of 2010. Late on Sunday, F.O.T (Friend of Texxx) coach Robert Fuller returned to coaching indoor football in Fairbanks, Alaska but the Grizzlies could never overcome two Wenatchee defensive touchdowns in 14 seconds early in the 3rd quarter and fell to the Venom 45-37.