Signs Of The Season

Before you turn cartwheels at the news that Arena Football is back on for 2000—when players voted on March I to form a union instead of battling team owners in court, the owners reversed their decision to cancel the season (SCORECARD, March 6)—get a load of the ad campaign of the first-year Los Angeles Avengers. Sprouting like fungus in the muck of rainy Southern California has been a billboard-and-poster blitz promoting the Avengers' opener on April 9 against the Oklahoma Wranglers. While citizens in Azusa discovered that ON APRIL 9TH, TWELVE MEN WILL GO BOTH WAYS, residents in El Monte were assured that on the same date EIGHT OKLAHOMA TOURISTS WILL BE BEATEN IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. Meanwhile, denizens of West Covina could rest easy knowing that on opening day SIXTY-NINE WON'T BE OUT OF THE QUESTION. Of course, the Avengers meant 69 points. Oh, behave!

Said team spokesman John Tamahana of the campaign: "In time, it will be revealed as a play on words. This is a well-thought-out campaign, and we're not naive enough to think that it's not pushing the edge."

Several Azusans were not naive enough to find the idea anything but offensive. In the middle of a downpour last Monday, they climbed a billboard promising that ON APRIL 9TH, SIX BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WILL SHOW YOU THEIR PANTIES—cheerleaders, we hope—and doused the last word with black paint. Seems they aren't ready for some football.