"Where’s your gear?"
A Legends / Lingerie Football game is no friend to a print journalist. I could smell the astonishment of the Baltimore Charm staffer when I flashed my notepad. I was at 1st Mariner Arena Friday to see the hometown Baltimore Charm take on the visiting Cleveland Crush, and to inform the public about a sport where female players play tackle football in sports bras and power panties. Did I mention I love my job.
The assistant parked me by two photographers in the end zone.
"My friend played for Philly and called me after the season a year later saying Baltimore was getting a team and that I would be perfect for it. So I tried out and I made it on my first shot," three-year Charm veteran Kelly Campbell told me. Campbell is an all-star and a team captain and players like her make this whole women-in-lingerie-playing-tackle-football thing work. The spectacle can only be pulled off when the principals buy-in 100 percent.
And the spectacle is damn effective. Only in America would there be a market for athletic women to run fade routes in skivvies. There’s a certain appeal in watching Angela Rypien throw darts to Morgan Spencer. And let me spell that appeal out for you: The game combines football strategy with statuesque blondes and brunettes.
The LFL tops Minor League Baseball and Arena Football as a quality entertainment choice. But the league doesn’t quite rank with the WNBA. That may be a function of not having a farm system, though. So far as I know, there's no scholarship for female nose tackles / underwear models.
That intro was so hot, an elderly security guard had to be carried out of the arena when the lights came back on. The Charm gave him hypoglycemia.
The LFL has all the subtlety of a monster truck rally.
Yet the LFL also seems lost in time. Combining shapely women, tackle football, and Puddle of Mudd-style trailer park rock, the LFL seems better suited for 2003 than 2013.
The style of football also harkens back to a pre-concussion-awareness era.
LFL players run, pass, and tackle wearing what amounts to hockey helmets and shoulder pads. And the LFL girls are honorable pigskin warriors. Cleveland’s Tiffany Burton punished Baltimore in a way that reminded me of the old-time NFL.
The honor system of NFL athletes went out the window as soon they were issued the carbon fiber flak jackets that shield players from immediate pain but prepare the foundation for memory loss. All of the protection contributed to greater risk-taking and nastier play. If the NFL wants to reduce concussions, Roger Goodell might want to tell Clay Matthews and Aaron Rodgers to enter Lambeau Field in nothing but helmets and banana hammocks.
The Charm’s Kym Jack harassed the Crush backfield all night, and likely will live a long, fulfilling post-football life because she takes the field about once a month in the female equivalent of a jock strap.
I don’t know if this is limited to Baltimore fans or men in general, but even a glimpse of a smile from Angela Orsini reduced the audience to horny prepubescents.
Tasteful nudity aside, LFL games are fairly decent football. Penalties are practically non-existent, and on Friday there were more fumbles of beers in the crowd than of balls on the field. Everyone was so chummy, a security guard handed back the poor bloke his dropped Bud Heavy. Nothing like girls-on-girls having a well-played game of seven-on-seven football to help us set our differences aside.
According to LFL league commissioner Mitchell Mortaza, Friday was the first-ever sudden-death game in Legends Football League history.
The Charm botched its opening possession after an uneventful four downs, only to pick off Cleveland's quarterback as soon as the Crush took the field.
For the next series, the Charm phoned in Dillon High School's Coach Eric Taylor.
At this moment of American division and frayed consensus, lingerie football brings together men and women, the young and old, and people of all colors.
We’re all winners in the Legends Football League.