We Had a Good, Old Fashioned Incident of Players Fighting Fans in the Stands in the Indoor Football League

Boston Globe. Getty Images.

You might be unaware of the existence of the Indoor Football League. And in a world where football leagues spring into existence and disappear faster than Netflix Original Series and the most significant thing to happen in any of them was Antonio Brown's short-lived and utterly bonkers reign as an owner in the National Arena League, you can certainly be forgiven. 

But millions who otherwise would not have the IFL on their cultural radar will become very much familiar with it, thanks to the greatest marketing tool ever invented: 

A crazy, out of control brawl in the stands between players and fans. Like sex, chaos sells:

12 News - The Arizona Rattlers clinched home-field advantage in the Indoor Football League (IFL) playoffs by beating the Massachusetts Pirates on Sunday at the Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix. …

With just 32 seconds left in the game, a fight broke out between some Massachusetts players and fans and it led to three players and a coach going into the stands. 

The cause of the fight has not been announced but it led to five Massachusetts players getting ejected from the game.  …

 Indoor Football League commissioner Todd Tyron announced that three Massachusetts players (defensive back Leon O'Neal Jr., defensive back Chris Ingram, and linebacker Charles 'Chucky' Williams) along with Director of Football Personnel Development Patrick Pass had been suspended indefinitely and fined. 

The IFL also said the Pirates organization was fined. 

First of all, get a load of Patrick Pass. Here's a guy with three Super Bowl rings he won with the Patriots jumping into the fray like he's stopping the 2004 Steelers from taking shots at Tom Brady and not 45 years old. I guess you can't take the ex-player out of the IFL Director of Football Personnel Development.

Second, to know me is to know I'm a lover, not a fighter. I haven't spent years as one of the world's leading advocates for the philosophy of "Use Your Words" to throw it all away over an IFL game. Simply put, nothing good has ever come from going into the stands to fight fans. It has been a bad idea from the time Ty Cobb beat up a crippled guy, to the Malice in the Palace, and every such incident in between. 

But you also can't convince me it's bad for business. The quickest way to generate buzz is to create a villain. Give the people what they want, which is a reason to care. To get emotionally invested in the action. Someone so despised and even feared, that people want to buy up tickets, take the family, and hope to see some mayhem. It's not only been the business model of the WWE since its inception, it's in the proud tradition of New England sports. 

After all, are the 2023 Masshole Pirates not the heirs of the legacy of the 1979 Bruins?

Peter McNabb, Terry O'Reilly, and Mike Milbury scaled the glass as Madison Square Garden like bugs climbing up a windshield, ripped off a man's shoe and beat him half to death with it. Two days before Christmas. As a result? McNabb remained the respected leader and top scorer on the team. O'Reilly got his number retired. And Milbury ended up as the No. 1 hockey analyst on TV. Again, I don't advocate what these Pirates did, but if Leon O'Neal Jr, Chris Ingram, Chucky Williams and Pass gain a little infamy and some notoriety for an obscure league, they benefit from doing the wrong thing. The only bad publicity is no publicity.