Football league to vote on Everett

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, September 25, 2004

EVERETT – This week, what happens in Las Vegas may not stay in Vegas. It may come to Everett.

The National Indoor Football League will decide at its annual meeting in Las Vegas whether to approve an expansion team in Everett – the Hawks.

Expansion teams for the Tri-Cities and Boise, Idaho, will also be put to a vote, and the league is expected to announce Wednesday whether it will add the three to its 25 teams.

Earlier this month, Everett Events Center officials invited the Everett Hawks to call the arena home.

The expansion team is owned by a local group headed by National Football League player Sam Adams, a former Seattle Seahawk.

Adams, who now plays for the Buffalo Bills, said he feels good about his chances heading into the league vote.

“We’ve been working on this for over three years,” Adams said from Buffalo. “We know football, and we know the business of football.”

Adams said he knows the Everett Hawks could make a positive contribution to the league, and to Everett.

He wants the team to be heavily invested in community causes, especially education, and hopes that in return residents will support the Hawks.

“I know that the fans are the reason why I’m here. The fans are what make the game so powerful and strong,” Adams said. “So to the club, that relationship being built is very important.”

There seems to be only one thing that could keep the Everett Hawks from a 2005 inaugural season, said NIFL President Carolyn Shiver.

Because the teams travel by bus to away games, they are required to enter the league in threes, according to geographical location. This ensures that each team will have enough competitors in the region to make the games exciting, Shiver said.

“I’m pretty confident they’re going to make the vote. He fits the criteria, and we’re really excited to get him,” Shiver said of Adams, the league’s first NFL player owner. “He brings us a lot of pomp and circumstance on the football side of things.”

If Boise or the Tri-Cities are not voted in, Adams would have to wait another year, she said.

But if 75 percent of NIFL league owners vote the Everett Hawks and the other two teams into the league, they could be playing on sod in the arena by March.

Both Shiver and Adams said events center officials were a tough sell when first approached about indoor football.

“They were very conservative, which is good for a building, but they were really very supportive,” Shiver said. “We were excited to hear they had decided in our favor.”

Adams said that by asking hard questions, and a lot of them, the Everett Public Facilities District board took the “proper precautions” to make sure the Everett Hawks would be a viable tenant.

“It makes me feel good that every tenant that comes into the events center is going to go through that,” he said.

Fred Safstrom, facilities district executive director, has heard about minor league expansion teams that signed a lease and never played a game, or folded in the first season.

“We want to have successful enterprises here,” Safstrom said. “I believe that happens when the homework is just done well. We wanted to make sure … we would have a very competitive and exciting product … for our fans.”

Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.