There's a rumor that new Titans Coach Mike Munchak wants to replace LP Field's natural surface with synthetic, contemporary FieldTurf.
Charles Hunter, the coach of the semi-pro Nashville Storm, would be happy if his team got to play on grass.
The differences don't stop there. Munchak is an NFL Hall of Famer. Hunter was an All-OVC tight end and NFL camp journeyman, spending time in 10 different camps and never making a team. Munchak will preside over a roster of millionaires. Hunter makes do with — who knows, thousand-aires. Hundred-aires.
But Munchak — the new leader of the largely mediocre Titans — might have reason to be jealous of Hunter's coaching success.
In 10 seasons, the Storm — a collection of local former high school and small-college standouts — has lost, on average, fewer than one game per year. Their success on the cultish semi-pro football circuit is legendary. Message boards for the minor-est of minor leagues, where players aren't paid and largely have to foot the bill for their travel, light up with dream match-ups for the Storm.
They're kings of a niche that's a question mark even to many football stalwarts. Semi-pro football is largely a summertime sport, played typically at small college or high school stadiums. The Storm play home tilts under the blistering Tennessee heat on the dusty pitch at Stratford High.
By NFL standards, the players are HO scale. Maturity issues aside, departing Titans QB Vince Young is one of the most athletically gifted men to play football. He is listed — and this is probably an undersell — at 6-foot-5, 233 pounds. By contrast, Storm quarterback Phellepe Hall, who played his college ball at TSU, is listed at an ambitious 5-foot-9.
Hall's teammates have similar pedigrees. The team roster is dominated by former TSU Tigers, with a smattering of guys who played in local high schools. Guys who did play in college mostly did so at powerhouses like Cumberland, Arkansas-Pine Bluff and one Allen University, which apparently exists.
But if there are no superstars in semi-pro, neither are there prima donnas. Here survives the game that fans remember from childhood, along with an important lesson: In sports, it's not who you are or where you come from that measures your success. It's who you beat and how you win.
On that score, the Storm has a record of dominance that would make the 1927 Yankees take notice. That is, of course, if the 1927 Yankees were paying attention. Like most everybody else, they're not. At least they have the excuse of being dead.
Blame lack of focus in part for the low profile. Minor league football is a lot like pro wrestling was in the pre-cable days — there are lots of little federations spread around the country, but few ways to determine the champion of champions. In recent years, the Internet's made it easy: On the web, you'll find power rankings, proving once again that if someone is keeping score at something, someone else will make a website to follow it.
The Storm dominates those rankings — but a team has to win on the field too. The Storm does, big. Last year, the team ran roughshod over a convoluted playoff system, besting teams from Illinois, Iowa and Michigan by an average score of 53-4. They qualified for the Less-Than-Super Bowl championship game of minor league football in Myrtle Beach, facing a team out of Washington state. After falling behind 20-0, they scored 41 unanswered points to win the (notional) national title.
And the Titans? At low ebb last season, fans would have been happy with 41 points in three games.
While the Titans have an army of PR men and marketing gurus to convince Nashvillians that the prospect of 8-8 is good enough to shell out thousands of dollars for season tickets, the Storm has Dave Wilcox — a semi-retired gospel producer whose enthusiasm for the team is volcanic, and who says "dreams" more frequently than a compulsive Freudian.
"It's all about dreams," he says. His own dream is to land the Storm a bottled-water sponsorship.
And for most of these guys — like Hall, the diminutive signal-caller whom former Storm assistant (and Arena League and UT standout) Corey Fleming deems one of the best he's ever seen — the dream is just as modest: an invite to an NFL camp, or a tryout for a Canadian team.
"These guys have full-time jobs, or they are still in school and living with Mom and Dad," Wilcox says. "It's the complete antithesis of Baptist Sports Park."
In a way, the Storm — with its barnstorming style, its stops in metropolises the likes of Huntsville, and its roster of stubborn dreamers — is a gridiron version of the classic Nashville cliché. They're hardworking, against-all-odds guys aiming for just one last chance to play their hearts out, even if it means paying their own way, playing on dirt in the height of the sweltering summer, and buying their own equipment.
And in the Storm's version of the Nashville dream, they're at the top of the charts. The Titans' fortunes may rise and fall, but Dave Wilcox says the Storm is eternal.
"They've been No. 1 forever," Wilcox says.
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