Indoor football rivalry in the making

DES MOINES - The Cedar Rapids Titans make their first trek down I-80 tonight for an in-state tussle with the new-look Iowa Barnstormers.

This will be the second edition of the Iowa Bowl, a moniker adopted by the two franchises in their maiden season as Indoor Football League mates. Cedar Rapids (6-4) dominated Iowa in its Feb. 28 home opener, 51-20, to begin the budding rivalry and claim the traveling trophy.

This time, the venue flips to Wells Fargo Arena for a 7:05 p.m. kickoff.

'I think this is going to end up being a really good rivalry,” Iowa Barnstormers president/owner Jeff Lamberti said. 'We had quite a few of our fans go over for the opener over there, and we expect to have quite a few coming from Cedar Rapids over.”

Iowa (3-6) joined the Indoor Football League this season after two stints apiece in the Arena Football League and its developmental league, af2. Once the af2 - which had franchises in markets such as the Quad Cities and Peoria, Ill. - folded in 2009, the Barnstormers were forced to return to the AFL, where competing for players and sponsors with much-larger cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia proved very difficult.

'In my opinion, it was an economic model that just couldn't continue to work in a city like Des Moines,” Lamberti said. 'This gets us back to an economic model that we were comfortable with, that we were successful with and is just a better fit for a market like Des Moines.”

Lamberti has navigated the Barnstormers since their return in 2008 following a seven-year hiatus.

'We now have an organization that played in the original AFL, played in the af2, back to AFL and now IFL,” Lamberti said. 'What we've said to our fans, it's not so much the league we play in, it's the Barnstormers and we want to really connect with our history and our tradition.”

Due to the hectic March schedule at Wells Fargo Arena, this will be just the fourth home game for the Barnstormers. Attendance has averaged just shy of 6,000 fans per game, which is down a bit from the AFL numbers but not unexpected. Lamberti reports there are a handful of fans who are season-ticket holders for both Iowa and Cedar Rapids.

'For the most part, our fans understood that the choice was between moving leagues or not having a team at all,” Lamberti said. 'Having some of these closer markets will get the rivalries going and will get fans on both sides being able to travel to games and it really makes it a lot more fun.”

l Comments: douglas.miles@thegazette.com