By Joe Hyde
Publisher
June 30, 2007

Three years ago, the San Angelo Stampede arena football team was in a heck of a bind. After the inaugural season in 2004, the team was still owned by an absentee owner in Lubbock, Neil Garcia. The Stampede were new in town, brought to the San Angelo Coliseum for the 2004 season. That was just in time for the Central Hockey League hockey team, the San Angelo Saints, to fold due to what the hockey team’s president Jim Cook said at the time was a lack of community support to maintain viability.

Darlene Jones, president of San Angelo’s Bug Express Pest Control, was a sponsor of Garcia’s beleaguered first football season here. After the season was over, Garcia knew he had to obtain local ownership of the Stampede so it could flourish. He asked Darlene to make an offer, any offer, to buy the team. “Mom told him she didn’t want to insult him with an incredibly low offer,” general manager Bridget Jones said. But Garcia insisted. Darlene made a ridiculous offer and Garcia accepted. Now the pest control lady, and her partner Patsy McIntyre, were in charge of a fledgling arena football franchise in a town snake-bitten by minor league failures.

Meanwhile, Darlene’s daughter Bridget was climbing the career ladder in casino management in Las Vegas. “I started in Vegas dealing blackjack, and then I was a pit boss on the craps tables,” she said. “Eventually, I was selected to teach people how to run various casino games,” Darlene explained. The training position was another rung on the ladder towards casino management, a field of work that can easily earn a seven-figure salary. But Bridget was miserable and her life was having less and less meaning. “I saw people bet and lose $500,000 in one hand of blackjack. I saw unbelievable sums of money getting thrown away every day, like it was nothing,” Bridget explained. “I just started thinking I wanted to come back home,” she said.

Darlene, faced with the daunting challenge of running her rapidly growing pest control business (her pest control business won recognition from the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce as one of three businesses of the year at the 2005 Diversity Awards banquet), needed a general manager for the team. “She flew me down to San Angelo for a week-long interview,” Bridget recalled. Bridget insists that it was a genuine interview. Her mother wanted to make sure Bridget was up for the task.

“I thought about it for about two days after I went back home to Vegas,” Bridget said. “You know, my whole family is from San Angelo, and the way I was raised was really family oriented. I wanted to come back home. But jobs are really hard to find here,” Bridget said. And then there was the challenge of making the Stampede a viable and sustainable business that attracted her also.

“On the business end, it wasn’t doing much. I think it survived on just 300 season tickets being sold the first year. It only had 60 sponsors. There was no face or spokesman for the team and there was really no target on the advertising campaigns,” Bridget said. Darlene called her daughter and offered her the opportunity. “I packed up my car and drove back home right away,” Bridget said.

Bridget went to work on the second season of the Stampede. “We gave the games a real homegrown feel,” Bridget said as she recalled her first season as GM. In 2005, season ticket sales more than tripled to 1,100, and she added more than 30 additional sponsors. “I think we also managed to get a better feeling for the Stampede around the community,” Bridget said.

She did it primarily through viral marketing. “San Angelo is so family oriented, so we focused on community involvement,” Bridget said. The Stampede players welcomed involvement with area youth and the Stampede sponsored the San Angelo Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program. As specific example of involvement with area youth, Stampede star running back Demont Burdine volunteered to help coach the Christoval Elementary School YMCA football team for one practice. The kids loved it and they all received a free ticket to the next game if they brought a parent. You should have seen Burdine getting chased around the practice field by a pack of 3rd and 4th graders while they learned how to do kick returns.

This year, more than 1,300 season tickets were sold and there are 116 sponsors. The Stampede are not out of the woods yet, but they are making giant strides towards becoming a successful franchise.

“What we really need right now is a winning season,” Bridget said. “West Texans always love a winner,” she quipped. Bridget is brutally honest about meeting her goals. “Right now, I’d say our attendance is fair. We average about 2,400-2,500 people per game,” she said. Looking around the San Angelo Coliseum, Bridget pointed to the blue seats that ring the upper tier. “I want those seats filled,” she said. But league constraints on when they can play a game often interfere with other entertainment. “Concerts, festivals, prom, graduations, and all can cut into our crowd size,” Bridget said.

Controversy at the beginning of this season caused a distraction for the team. The head coach, Johnny Anderson, was fired after he allegedly had an altercation in a bar with two young women. The team owners came under intense pressure from community leaders to do more than just suspend the coach pending an outcome of the investigation. The allegation was that the coach assaulted the two young women. Hitting ladies doesn’t fly in West Texas. Bridget found that with or without an investigation, the coach violated team policy by fraternizing with the team’s players who were at the same party where the altercation allegedly occurred. “Sure, firing the head coach hurt, but we didn’t lose one sponsor over the mess,” she said. Stampede defensive coordinator and player Wali Mumin was named the new head coach.

Bridget said she demands that those associated with the team be good role models. “Dennis Rodman or Terrell Owens couldn’t work for me,” she said. “I had a player who was using bad language in public places. We sent him packing,” Bridget said. And while the drama surrounding the coach firing was widely reported at the beginning of the season, the good deeds go unreported. “I just got a call today from a secretary at a local church to tell me how respectful and polite our guys were at a public gathering,” Bridget said.

The Stampede were renamed the Stampede Express last season. “Well, you have to understand. Mom owns Bug Express. So…” Bridget said.

A Stampede Express game is among the best family entertainment venues in San Angelo. Even if you don’t enjoy watching football, you will have a great experience. “We have two media timeouts each quarter per Intense Football League (IFL) regulations,” Bridget said. During the timeouts, between quarters, and halftime, there are games that require audience participation. Papa John’s sponsors pizza races, where each contestant runs back and forth from the goal line to midfield balancing a stack of pizza boxes. The winner who crosses the finish line without dropping the pizzas gets a prize. They also have stick horse races, Albertsons sponsors a shopping cart race, kids can compete in field goal kicks, and there is a very challenging football throwing competition.

Arena football is fast-moving and up close and personal. Because of the proximity of the fans to the playing field, the actual game ball can fly into the stands about every five or six plays. You get to keep the ball if you catch it. There are also giveaways just for attending the game. At most every game a sponsor will give away door prizes to the first 1,000 through the gates.

And then there are the awards the team gives to members of the audience. Two to four people are selected to sit in the best seat in the house, a sofa at the west end zone where the team owners are. Aaron’s Rentals sponsors the Armchair Quarterback Award for a fan to try to throw a football through a target while fully reclined in a chair recliner. The fan gets to keep the recliner after the game if they hit the target. Cookies by Design sponsors the “Kookiest Kid of the Game” award. But the most coveted award by some is “The Jerk of the Game,” sponsored by Greg Nicholson’s Meat Company of Mertzon (they sell beef jerky, among other meats).

When the Louisiana Swashbucklers rolled into town and defeated the Stampede Express on one June evening, Bridget said that the worst heckler was the Swashbuckler’s owner, Thom Hager from Lake Charles, Louisiana. “It was all in great fun, but we gave him the award,” Bridget said with a laugh.

Head coach Wali Mumin is hooked on arena football and the camaraderie among the players. “We feel good whether we win or lose because we feel like a family. And sometimes, the only people you have around you during the season are the people on your team,” he said. Mumin also stresses that the IFL and the Stampede Express encourage good sportsmanship. It is not uncommon to see members of the team helping opposing team members up off the Astroturf. “Sure you can be an all-star, but if you don’t have character, you aren’t going anywhere,” Mumin said.

Mumin, who is originally from Englewood, California, has played all sides of the ball in arena football. His experience as a pass defender has given him insight giving his receivers more flexibility than before. “I am giving the receivers the opportunity to run their own routes,” he said. Instead of forcing the receiver to rigidly follow a post route, for example, he wants the receivers to make decisions mid play to get away from the defenders. “I want to make the defense think,” he said.

“I want to work towards having a winning season,” Mumin said. To get there, Mumin wants to finish out this season strong and that will help attract more talent to build a great team next year.

The 2007 season ends July 26. As of June 25, the Stampede Express are 3-7, but they are competing well, and the games are exciting. Come out and support San Angelo’s arena football team. The last home game is July 21. For game schedules and more information about the San Angelo Stampede Express, see www.stampedeexpress.com.