Last Friday, I went to see the Austin Wranglers. Someone pointed out that they are Austin's only professional sports team that is at the top level of their sport. This requires identifying Arena Football as it's own sport other than football, but that works for me.
This was the first time I had been to an AFL game. In fact, I had never even seen more than 5 minutes on TV before. Clearly taking some cues from the NBA, they were giving away tons of little prizes. This included coupons to Rudy's, t-shirts that were shot out of cannons, and a metric ton of mini-footballs. They're even setup in such a way that if a football finds it's way into the crowd, the person gets to keep it. Clearly they had put a lot of time and effort into making it a fun event where a lot of people could walk away from the game with something other than just a good experience. Sadly, our beloved Wranglers are currently in last place at 0-3. I couldn't help but thinking that maybe they could save some of those mini footballs to try and invest in some better players or coaching staff.
An interesting thing happened while I was there. Sitting directly in front of me was a guy and either his little brother or his son (it could go either way). After getting up to catch a mini-football, the kid was coming back to his seat when he threw his mini football into the air towards the group of people seated in front of him. When his puzzled companion gave him the "What was that for?" look, he reached into his cup holder and pointed out that he had already gotten one earlier.
It's good to get those reminders that there are plenty of good people in this world.
