Last night I went to a Peoria Rough Riders game. My buddy at work won front row tickets and took three of us. It was a blast, even though there was uncharacteristically low passing and scoring (41-13). They played Ft. Wayne Freedom, which is funny for us because we've each spent at least a month there building prototypes with an average of 80 hours a week, so we don't like that place. Rocky Harvey plays for the Freedom, he used to play for my alma mater University of Illinois and was really good. The crowd gets to keep any ball that goes there way, there is no space between out of bounds and the stands. Brian Urlacher'* brother Casey, that used to play for Peoria, for some reason signed the wall pad directly in front of my seat. I considered cutting it out, but noone around had a pocket knife. There was a kickoff blocked and sailed right over my head to the kid a few rows behind me. The refs were trying to decide where it went out, they all looked at the head judge, and he just shrugged, it was hilarious. Several players ended up in the seats, one crowd member ended up in the game. We took a liking to heckling a particular large Freedom lineman named Martin. Any time he came near, I offered him beer and chicken. At one point someone came in for him, and my buddy yelled "where ya going, to get a cheeseburger?" He responded with "I'm getting 2!" He later got called for motion before the ball was snapped, I yelled "he couldn't help it, his gut just wouldn't stop jiggling!" He pointed at me. At the end of the game,he came over to us. "Where'* my beer?" "Sorry man, I drank it. If you came at halftime, I had two here" "Next time then." He shook our hands and thanked us for coming out, which I thought was a little wierd for a visiting player.

All in all it was a great time.

Not too long ago I read something in the paper about an arena football player who actually died while playing. He went to make a tackle and broke his neck on impact. Never thought it could happen until it actually does.