News Story - Idaho State Journal

BOISE

George Yarno's smarts could compensate for size during his college career, but they can't in arenafootball2.

Still 6 feet and about 280 pounds, the former Idaho State center is small by the standards of offensive linemen, and in arena ball defenders dwarf him even more.

On top of that, he rarely gets to run block. It's all passing.

"I've got a 340-pound guy in my face trying to bull-rush me every down. I'm giving up sometimes almost 100 pounds to a guy, and he's just trying to run me over," Yarno said. "It's harder to be small in this game."

After starting his first four games since he signed with the Boise Burn a month ago, Yarno was relegated to special teams play Saturday night against the Florida Firecats. He didn't get to line up under center, the spot occupied instead by a recent, bulkier signee.

Yarno's situation is another example of just how different arena football is from its outdoor parent -- and how college success doesn't automatically translate to excellence inside the box.

And what an intimate box it is. The eight players lining up to cover the opening kickoff Saturday seemed cluttered along the goal line, not spaced almost five yards apart as they are in the college game.

Eighty-five feet wide and 50 yards long, the arena field is a squat version of the college parameters. Walls abbreviate sidelines. Goal posts are half the width of those in the NFL. Balls played off the netting behind the end zones are live and unpredictable.

Everything is magnified. When quarterback Royal Gill fires a pass, he does so looking for windows that wouldn't be considered open in a game played at Holt Arena. Arena ball looks cramped when watching it and certainly is when playing it.

"It's a different game, smaller field, less guys, more one-on-one," said the Burn's Mark Weivoda, who played defensive line from 2000 to 2003 at Idaho State. "I like it all. It's football."

For everyone, the arena game is faster, like playing ping-pong on a table half the normal size. The stretch plays popularized by the NFL's Indianapolis Colts can't work in arena ball; the rubber-padded walls nullify traditional north-south plays. There's just no time for them.

But Ernie James, a cornerback, knows as well as anyone what the squat field does for receivers, whose running start is perhaps the most obvious differentiation between arena and outdoor football.

James played four years of football at Idaho State, the last in 2004 when he was named to the all-conference team. But he rarely looks that good for the Burn. In arena ball, no task is more challenging than covering a wide receiver.

"Where a 4.4 (second) 40-yard dash is amazing, it's a 3.6 now," said Boise coach Lee Leslie. "You're a knucklehead if you even want to be a DB in this league."

Added Shak Okoebor, the former Idaho State receiver: "If you make one wrong move or you guess wrong, game over. That's not a completion, that's six (points)."

But once acclimated, players said they love the indoor game because it hones their quickness and one-on-one skills, both prized in the outdoor game.

"It's like, if we're playing tag," Okoebor said, "and we're in a phone booth, and you can get away from me while we're in that phone booth, and I say 'OK, now we're gonna get out of the phone booth and I'm gonna put you in this living room,' and you have a whole living room to work with, of course you're gonna get away from me."

Unlike most on the Burn, Yarno isn't trying to move from the phone booth to the living room anymore. His career in the arena league, where size does matter for linemen, is, by his own admittance, likely done after this season. Ironically, being a smaller center on a smaller field puts him at a bigger disadvantage.

The af2 is not on the path to the NFL for undersized linemen, but for others -- the receivers, linebackers and defensive backs -- this is the road, albeit an almost impassable one. About 150 players successfully made the jump from the af2 to the Arena Football League last year, and even fewer moved on from the AFL to NFL training camps.

But at the least, it is a testing ground. If a player can't adjust to the arena game, if he can't use it to make him a better outdoor player, his career will end on a patch of turf the size of a hockey rink.

"Not everybody can make the transition," Okoebor said. "But if you're a more versatile player, it can do nothing but help you."

This document was originally published online on Tuesday, July 15, 2008

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