Arena Football - Other Media

Other Media

Even though arena football is a relatively young sport, it has appeared in other forms of popular culture over the course of its existence. It has appeared in films, television, literature, as well as video games (about the sport, as well as referenced in others).

• In the television sitcom Reba, where the character of Van Montgomery (Steve Howey), played for the Arizona Rattlers (based on the gold helmets and ArenaBowl XVI banner seen when Reba visits the coach) and later the Colorado Crush.
• In Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects, a 1989 film directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring Charles Bronson. One scene takes place during an AFL game, with the Chicago Bruisers visiting the Los Angeles Cobras.
• In the 2005 film White Noise. In a scene where the character of Mike Rivers (Nicholas Elia) is flipping through the channels on television, he pauses on an arena football game between the Orlando Predators and another team.
• Midway Sports released an arena football game in 2001 entitled Kurt Warner's Arena Football Unleashed. This game was poorly received, both by traditional video gamers who saw it as an unneeded ripoff of one of Midway's other American football game, NFL Blitz, and by arena football fans who did not like the rule changes and arcade nature of the game.
• EA Sports released a video game on February 9, 2006 (or, according to the website, February 7). It featured licensed players and arenas from the Arena Football League. An sequel was released in 2007.
• In the movie The Ringer, an early scene at the bar shows an Arena Football League game and the characters think about betting on the sport.
• In 2001, writer Jeff Foley published War on the Floor: An Average Guy Plays in the Arena Football League and Lives To Write About It. The book details the journalist's two preseasons (1999 and 2000) as an Offensive specialist / writer with the now-defunct Albany Firebirds. The 5'6", self-described "unathletic" writer played in three preseason games and recorded one reception for -2 yards.
• During the opening sequence of True Crime: New York City, two unnamed characters can be seen playing arena football.
• In the 2008 film Baby Mama, one of the characters tried to win AFL tickets through a radio call-in contest.
• In the 2007 film Freedom Writers, one of the characters is watching an AFL game on TV.
• In the first season of the television show Vegas, there was a scene about the ArenaBowl, where former Broncos QB John Elway and singer Jon Bon Jovi have a 'Battle in the Monteceto.'
• In America's Game, the 2002 Buccaneers' coach Jon Gruden mentions that his brother plays arena football for the Orlando Predators.
• In The Simpsons, Springfield has an Arena Football team called the Springfield Stun. It is first revealed when Bart and Milhouse are trying to plan their next adventure and Milhouse mentions "Arena football with the Springfield Stun?"
• In the cable drama Queer as Folk, the character of Drew Boyd, the male lover of main character Emmett Honeycutt, is a star quarterback with the fictional Pittsburgh Ironmen, a team in a league clearly patterned on Arena Football.
• In the television show, The Office, there are multiple references to Arena Football. Based in Scranton, Michael Scott is seen wearing Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pioneers sweatshirts and undershirts in various episodes. The Pioneers played in af2 from 2002 to 2009. Also, a few of the Dunder-Mifflin employees have a miniature version of the AFL's gold ball with blue strip on their desks.