Indoor football league coming to La Crosse

La Crosse will be one of the new homes to a professional football team, part of the Indoor Football League, starting with the kickoff to the season in March 2010.

The IFL is a professional indoor league created in 2008 out of the merger between the Intense Football League and United Indoor Football. In total, 24 teams are part of the IFL. There are teams from Alaska all the way down to Maryland and there are additional expansions to come. In comparison, the NFL consists of 32 teams.

The La Crosse Spartans are one of seven new franchises that will participate in the Indoor Football League's 2010 season.

The Spartans, Arctic Predators of Wasilla, Alaska, and Richmond (Va.) Revolution are this years expansion teams for the league. The Amarillo (Tex.) Dusters, Austin (Tex.) Turfcats, Chicago Slaughter and Green Bay Blizzard come into the IFL from other leagues.

The IFL will have 24 teams for the 2010 season, including the defending league champion Billings (Mont.) Outlaws.

As for La Crosse's opportunity to be the home of a professional football team, the team wants to utilize as much local talent as possible.

According to the Spartans website, the Spartans signed former UW-La Crosse cornerback Steve Teeples. Teeples is third all-time in career interceptions during his time at UW-L, where he compiled a total of 21 career interceptions. At one time in 2007, Teeples was being looked at by NFL scouts. Teeples attended UW-L from 2003-2006 where he was a four time first-team All-American selection.

In 2006, he was elected as a first-team D-3 All American amongst other awards in that same season.  He also played in the Aztec Bowl (Division 3 All Star Game). Teeples was the first player to record three interceptions in one game twice in his career while tallying over 20 total career interceptions. He participated in the first ever world cup in Japan in 2007 and returned the first ever interception for a touchdown for Team USA.

"I've been waiting for an indoor team to come back to La Crosse since I stopped playing in Winona," former Winona Ruff Rider Jon Heser told Lumen. "La Crosse has always had support from the community regarding their semi-professional and professional sports teams."

La Crosse has only had the Loggers baseball team as the only sports team in the community for the last few years. The La Crosse Catbirds where a huge attraction for many years during the 1980s and 1990s but the league they belonged to has since disappeared. Earlier this decade, the city tried to incorporate another indoor football team called the La Crosse River Rats. That experiment lasted only two seasons before they too were gone.

"I think it's really cool that there is going to be some pro football being played here in La Crosse, I plan on attending as many games as possible," said Chris Aspenson, sophomore criminal justice major from Viroqua, Wis. "It gives students another option for recreation in a city where it sometimes seems that your only options are to either go bowling or go to a bar."

Aside from the fact that a professional football team is making its home in La Crosse, the Spartans have quite the celebrity face to go with their organization. Former Green Bay Packer defensive lineman, Gilbert Brown is the head coach.