PEORIA – After a year without 50-yard football, Peoria will see the Peoria Pirates – contenders in three separate leagues — combatants for championships in two of those leagues, winners of a total of two championships – set sail for more championship trophies beginning in March 2008.
The Pirates will rejoin arenafootball2, the developmental league of the Arena Football League, and a body the team belonged to from 2001-2004, while owned, first, by Orlando Predators Entertainment, the group that owns AFL’s Orlando Predators, and then by Peoria banker Pat Ward.
The man who will patrol the Pirates’ sidelines was considered hometown hero material in his putting championships together, too. Bruce Cowdrey, whose last football address was AFL’s Austin Wranglers, as an assistant coach, will return as the Pirates’ head coach.
He last coached here in 2005 while Peoria had a team named the Rough Riders in the United Indoor Football League. That 2005 Rough Riders squad went 6-9.
Cowdrey exited Peoria after that, heading for AFL’s Chicago Rush in 2006 as special teams coordinator/fullbacks-linebackers coach on head coach Mike Hohensee’s staff. The Rush won AFL’s ArenaBowl trophy in Las Vegas in 2006. Before the 2007 season, Cowdrey moved on from there, to become offense line coach for AFL’s Austin Wranglers.
Austin finished this season 4-12, but Cowdrey finished ahead because Wranglers’ President Doug MacGregor showed interest in helping put a team in Peoria with Cowdrey back at the controls as head coach.
Media reports from Austin also indicated that MacGregor was looking to downshift the Wranglers from membership in AFL to af2 in 2008 because of declining attendance.
MacGregor can own more than one team in af2, under league rules, so long as, among other caveats, the two same owned teams do not trade players among themselves.
When they return, the Pirates will find themselves, most likely, in the league’s American Conference Midwest Division among old foes like the Quad City Steamwheelers, Green Bay Blizzard, and Louisville Fire; while contending with this season’s newcomers, the Fort Wayne Fusion, and Cincinnati Jungle Kats.
Numbers Game: The Pirates ruled the Indoor Football League, now defunct, in the league’s debut year, 1999, and sophomore season, 2000. But they lost IFL’s first championship game, 63-60, to the Green Bay Bombers before a capacity crowd at Carver Arena.
The Pirates earned their first and only IFL trophy in 2000, beating the expansion Bismarck (N. D.) Blaze, 63-42, capping a perfect 17-0 season under Cowdrey.
In November 2000, IFL’s creator, Keary Ecklund, sold the league to OPE. OPE kept but a few of IFL’s teams for expansion into af2, including the Pirates.
While owned by OPE, starting in 2001, and watching players adapt to af2 rules from IFL rules, the Pirates had a new coach, their 2000 season quarterback, Gary Porter, and squeaked through mathematically missing the playoffs at 7-9. Cowdrey had a frustrating 2000 season with af2’s Pensacola Barracudas, a team that went 5-11, then folded.
OPE reassigned Porter to another team it owned in 2002, and brought Cowdrey back to Peoria. OPE and Pirates fans got their money’s worth – the team went 11-5 in the regular season, and won four straight playoff games including a 65-47 win over the Florida Firecats at Carver Arena.
But there was to be no repeat in 2003, as Cowdrey’s crew went 5-11.
By the Winter of 2004, and with OPE financially floundering and looking for a buyer for its flagship, Pat Ward, president of Peoria’s SouthSide Bank, stepped in and bought the team from OPE.
One might think Ward’s doing that in an even-numbered year was good karma, as even years seem to favor this coach. Proof of that was Peoria getting back to the ArenaCup in 2004, but the result was not the same against the same Florida Firecats, this time in Florida. The Firecats beat the Pirates, 39-26, closing 2004 out at 12-8, including a 9-7 regular season mark.
In that offseason, Peoria switched leagues a third time, going with an untested product, the United Indoor Football Association, becoming one of 11 founding UIF members.
But because af2 purchased the entire IFL, it retained the rights to keep the Pirates team name, forcing Ward to find a new name for his team. A name-the-team contest finalist, the Peoria Rough Riders, was settled on.
But product, somewhat like the new team name, was not a fan favorite. Under Cowdrey, the Rough Riders went 6-9 in 2005, last, in their three-team division.
While Cowdrey moved on to AFL ‘s Chicago Rush in 2006, the Rough Riders, under new head coach Chuck Goodwin, struggled but finished with an 0-15 record before just hundreds of fans per game.
Ward elected to fold the team in November, 2006, and indoor football fans had no 2007 season as a result.
Squib Kicks: When Peoria gets ready for its first contest with Quad City next season, management will have to give former owner Ward a call to see where the bragging rights trophy the Pirates and Steamwheelers fought for claim of and kept until the next contest between them – the “Ruler Of The River†trophy – is physically right now.
The Pirates-Steamwheelers series is tied at 4-4, and the trophy is in Peoria’s guardianship — a result of a 29-13 win on enemy turf at The Mark in Moline on July 2, 2004.
The Tulsa Talons defeated the Wilkes Barre-Scranton Pioneers to win af2’s ArenaCupVIII championship, 73-66, last Saturday.