Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009

More questions than answers for Fever

By Ben Reynolds, Herald staff writer

Tri-Cities Fever owner Doug MacGregor was very vague and short on details when talking about the future of the franchise.

He confirmed Monday night that the Fever will return to arena football next season, but would not say anything else.

And for the next four weeks that information is going to have to be enough because there are more questions than answers about the future of the Fever and the league.

It is expected that the arenafootball2 league will dissolve into a two-tiered league that will feature some big-market teams that played in the now defunct Arena Football League.

Where the Fever fit into this is unknown, but the team does fit in somewhere, meaning there will be indoor football in the Tri-Cities for a sixth straight season.

MacGregor said that he is planning on making some sort of formal announcement at the end of the month to explain everything.

In the meantime, a lot is expected to happen with the Fever and the league.

As of Sept. 15, coach Pat O'Hara's contract expires and he will be unemployed as will all other af2 coaches.

O'Hara has expressed interest in returning to the Fever for a second season after coaching the team to a 3-8 record. O'Hara took over the team prior to the fifth game of the season after Richard Davis was fired after an 0-4 start. O'Hara brought back respectability to the team and salvaged what he could of a second straight disappointing season.

O'Hara, who is in Detroit helping with a movie, said he, like everyone else, is in a wait-and-see mode until more details are released.

One of those questions is who the Fever might play. It is expected that Boise, Stockton and Central Valley will all return next season, but there has been talk that Spokane could be one of the teams that makes the jump to the upper tier.

The new league is also going to have to deal with some expansion teams. Toledo has already been approved next season, and there could be more teams to follow. There are also some af2 teams that will not be back next year.

The Fever was one of those teams until Monday, when MacGregor reached some sort of an agreement with a local partner to keep the team in a modified version of the af2.

That news ended nearly two months of MacGregor and general manager Randy Schillinger, who will not return next season, trying to find a local investor for the team. MacGregor said in June without a local investor he would fold the team.

Schillinger said he entertained several potential investors, including one put forth by Kevin Jinks and his Trademark Sports Group, who planned to move the team to the Indoor Football League.

But in the end, after over two months of wondering and speculating, the Fever is almost back where it started.

MacGregor is still an owner, and the team is playing arenafootball.

It's a marriage that Schillinger says will work out for the best.

"I think it's going to be great," he said.