T.J.: Well, first off, I think it’s awesome that you brought a team back to PA. I was a huge fan of the Steel Hawks and was on the staff for a year. And when they left, we didn’t have a football team anymore until you guys came back. Just a little history, 2013 AIF champions, you’ve coached, played, and owned the team before, which leads me to my first question. I’ve seen in previous interviews you received a call inquiring if you’d be interested, but ultimately, what made you want to get the Stampede back up and running again?
Justin: Well, I felt like I never got to finish before when I had the team my goals they never got, they never got done. I felt like I never got to accomplish finishing, I should say what my goals were. I owned it for one year and got an opportunity, Marquise Colston wanted to run in a little bit of a different direction than I did.
I made some money, which is rare in indoor football, but I never got, you know, to sort of complete, I guess, my goals. And in my mind, I needed to come back and do that. And that’s sort of what brought me back when you’re an owner or a football coach or anything like that player, you got that a personality, you know, you want to because you’re competitive. So, you’ve got that fire in you. And I think that’s the best way to put it is I had that fire in me and wanted to complete what I had done.
And so, we did. You know, that’s why I bought back in it. It was good. I mean, last year was great. And we’re going to be even better this year. And I’m excited about the things that we have. We’ve got a lot of things planned. And, you know, we have a great staff and are going to move to the NAL, bigger league, more organization. You know, there was a lot going on with the AIF last year. Brandon, the owner who took over from the previous leadership, really stepped to the plate and did a lot.
So, you know, I think it’s going to be a better, more competitive league, and I’m looking forward to it. And like I said, I think that from a standpoint of those juices that you get when you play or you coach, that’s sort of like I got one year in and then I sold him and just sort of missed it. And it was like, you know what? I think it’s the right time. I think I am in a better position now owning the team than I was 12 years ago. But I owned it 12 years ago. A lot of people know this.
T.J.: What differences were there buying the team then compared to now?
Justin: I bought the team right before we played football. And I tell you what, now, I mean, like we did have uniforms. We had beds. We had some stuff, but man, I can’t believe how right before the season, like now I had a long time to plan and organize things. I don’t know how I did it before. But somehow, we did, and we got through it, so God bless.
T.J.: Sounds like a whirlwind the first time. My next question is, since you played there previously and with how great the Farm Show Complex and Expo Center is, was it your main venue of choice when you decided to bring the Stampede back to try and get back in there again?
Justin: It was, and I’ll tell you why. A lot of people don’t know this, but the Farm Show was always good to the Stampede. I mean, I’m going to be honest with you. We’re not the newest facility. It’s not state of the art, but from a business standpoint, they’ve been a great partner. And arenas are like the foundation. If you’re building a home, that’s the thing.
People don’t understand that if you want to start an arena football team, the first thing you’ve got to do is have a relationship with an arena and go get that letter of intent. I mean, you’ve got to have money. You’ve got to have a lot of credit. But you’ve got to have the arenas.
The Steelhawks played in a great arena and had a great working relationship with that arena. But when Marquise moved them from Harrisburg to Hershey, I don’t know if where you live or you’ve ever seen something like this, but it’s only a couple of miles. That’s a big divide between economics and culture. What happened is I think he increased the attendance over here in Hershey, tapping into the hockey and the Hershey crowd, probably 20%. But I think he probably lost 20% moving to Hershey.
The big Harrisburg supporters sort of fell off. The financials don’t work in my opinion, in Hershey. I think that’s one of the reasons he shuttered the team. It was just too expensive and it’s not Hershey, I think Hershey is a great partner. I think they look at, look at how they do the giant center with the bears, but just too expensive until you can have, you can’t play and have two, three, 4,000 fans there. I don’t even think they have four, but if they had two or 3,000, it just doesn’t work. So yeah, upon coming back, I went and talked to the farm show. I’m like, hey, can I bring the team back? And they welcomed it. I mean, there was a lot of discussion. And so, I looked at it and I’m looking into upgrading some things this year.
T.J.: What kind of upgrades are in the plans?
Justin: Financially, if we’re able to, and if it’s not this year, maybe next year. Every year I’m taking on a big expenditure. In previous years when the team was owned by other groups, they never owned the field. They didn’t have the walls; they leased this stuff. And I don’t think that’s a good business model. So last year we bought an AFL field, a very high-end field. We’re making some renovations to that by changing out the logo at midfield. And then we buy the inserts, the correct inserts too, five feet tall and nine feet wide.
There are six of them and they’re actual inserts that come out. Those are expensive, but we bought the field last year and then we rented a wall system. This year, my expenditure is buying the wall system so that we own that. And what people don’t realize is we store that; we have to store that year-round. It doesn’t stay at the arena, so they don’t hold that. What we’re doing is just doing the best that we can next year. I can’t do it this year, but next year we want to buy a new scoreboard with a Jumbotron built in, four-sided so that we can have, in my opinion, we have one of the best streaming companies and partnerships.
If you saw our stream online and everything on YouTube and our website, we had that streaming in just under a dozen restaurants and bars in Harrisburg. So, that’s awesome. On Saturday night, they can watch it. Then our other partner, PCN, aired the game and re-aired the game at noon on Sundays. That’s all over Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Cable Network from 12 to 3 took the feed and ran with it. They had great numbers, so we’re hoping to do a live feed this year on the Pennsylvania Cable Network.
I’d like to get the Jumbotron so we can have a replay and have kiss cams and end-game experiences and stuff, but everything is within budget and working. You can be a multimillionaire and throw millions of dollars at this and then never see a return. We’re staying on budget. We’re being fiscally responsible, which you should be in this economy. And the sponsors are helping us and the fans. Without the community, the nonprofits supporting us in partnerships, and without the businesses advertising and partnering with us for their fans and their product and the local community, the fans coming out and buying tickets and buying into this product of football we couldn’t be successful. I think we started with a bang, and we had a great first year and we’re looking to build on that this year.
Like I said, the foundation is that arena and that relationship. I have a meeting with them and we’ll hopefully get ironed out the dates and then we can move forward with getting everything ready for our schedules release for the league.
T.J.: That’s awesome. Well, you kind of already answered this one a little bit. Is there anything else you want to add, how do you feel the team did last year and what do you hope to improve on in really any aspect for next season?
Justin: So, I believe the team did phenomenal. You know, It’s a lot. People don’t realize to take a concept that’s up here. I want to be a football coach. I want to be a football owner. I want to own an arena football team. And then to build it from nothing and from, you know, in your head onto paper and then construct it. It takes a lot of work, takes a lot of staff. I couldn’t do this by myself, it starts at home with a supportive girlfriend and family. This was truly a family effort, my girlfriend and her children and the grandbaby, even everybody in my family at some point was helping during the football season and then having the front office we built.
We brought back many staff that had worked for me before and then I brought back many other new staff that had never done anything in indoor football and to get them to buy into your concept and what you believe in and sell them. I mean, essentially, I’m selling them on my product. They believed it and they were excited about it. So, we rocked it from my front office, game day experience, we tried to be a high energy.
My coaching staff, I mean, are knowledgeable. They’re hardworking. They brought professionalism and they coached up my players. Players at this level want to be coached. They don’t want you just to, I could say, tell you multiple times where players are like, I want them to coach me hard. I want them to tell me what we’re doing. I want them to install it and tell me what they see. I want to get better. And yeah, we did. We were knocked down. I mean, were we perfect? No. Were there some things I would do again? Yes. By and large, you know, we hit it. We hit a lot of numbers, marketing numbers, sales numbers, tenants’ records, season ticket holder records, and sponsors.
We had 43 sponsors, and 43 companies that partnered with us. We met a lot of those expectations. I mean, and I will say this, I’ve been around a lot of indoor games. I’ve been to them, and I’ve owned a few. I mean, I’ve owned one team, but I’ve been at a few games where I was the owner. The game against the Columbus Lions, the energy, you know, it was only 1681 in the crowd, but you would have thought there were 3,000 people there. You know we were at 1681 that game and I can tell you that they didn’t leave. They didn’t leave. The game was so close. It came down to the last minute. Could we hold them and get one more chance? Or did they get it? They held. They got the ball. They held it. They were able to run. We lost by eight points.
But that’s an athletic team. Those guys are dogs, they are hard-nosed players, and I love it. My players love it. My coaches love it. I loved it. My fans loved it. The only thing that we didn’t love was the result. I have nothing bad to say but I see some comments on the message boards, and I try not to reply you know talking about how they bounced leagues and all. It’s like listen, the Columbus lions, it was great having them in the AIF. They were the class of it and I won’t make excuses for the other games, but we had a lot of injuries so it wasn’t our complete team in the first game we played them, it was a little weird schedule.
We played them down there and we were short five starters. You know, we were not able to turn and get guys in and practice in time to go down there. We were down five stars and replaced with some of the guys we had in camp. But we were able to the second time when they came back to play us at home, those guys that we had recruited were now in town and got to come play. But most of them didn’t even get to practice with us. Yeah, we lost but it was a hell of a game.
T.J.: You mentioned fans staying until the end and how electric it was inside the arena. How would you rank it among other games you’ve been involved with?
Justin: I mean, the energy, I’ve talked to multiple players and I’m not going to name names, but multiple players on their team and ours that said it was the loudest in a long time that they played in front of. There were even some players who played in a championship game, and they said there were more people in attendance. With how loud that game was every arena is set up differently with most of them having fans on the side and everything. We built risers. We built them and we put over 400 people on our walls, which is probably a record.
I’m not going to go out there and say it’s better than any other arena, but I’m going to tell you probably most arenas just put it like a standing room where they have a high top and two people sitting at it. We put in 20 boxes, 12 people per box, and then we have the bleachers and standing room only. We want it to be loud, we want our fans to engage. If you go watch that game, the coaches turn around and talk to the players and the fans. The fans are chirping at the away team’s coaches and there are multiple times when you see the coach turn around and everything.
So that is what you want, I think, in indoor football. The ball’s going in the stands, the kids are going loud. That’s the game day experience. The game was hard-hitting. We used hockey walls and then had our pads. We broke three walls last year and two of them were broken in the Columbus game. When I say broke, I’m talking shattered. That’s fiberglass and I mean, hockey’s known for going in the walls. We had guys going in and cracking the whole fiberglass. It was just wild. It was wild, man. I’ve never heard that before, man. We had the Farm Show.
Shout out to those guys with their state employees, they came over and were drilling. We had to put wood braces in so that we could just finish the game. Literally at halftime of the Lions game, they were putting in wood. They put it in braces, screwed it in, and everything. And then we put the pads back up and we got through the game. And then during the week, we had to take out that whole section and replace the fiberglass. It has a, what do you call it? A shelf or, you know, a top part that you sort of lean on and that was cracked and we had to take that off and replace it, and since I rented it, I had to fix those three sections.
T.J.: That’s crazy. That’s a behind-the-scenes look right there.
Justin: Yeah, you’re getting called I mean all my front office staff have earbuds and I’m getting a call and they’re like we need you at box 13. We had an emergency, and the players had just come down. I mean, It was hard-hitting physical game, a great game. I tell people all the time, I’ve been to a lot of NFL, college, and arena games and I would have put the players playing and a shout-out.
I mean, I don’t want to underscore it. I’m not kissing anyone’s ass but shout out to the Columbus Lions. I mean, those guys are ballers, and my players loved it. And if they say they didn’t love playing that game, they’re lying because they played. They got somebody that stood toe-to-toe with them, and they had fun. They had fun. They beat us. But that’s the way you want. I mean, you play 10 games, and you can get 10 of those like that it’s a great deal.
T.J.: I completely agree with that. Speaking a little bit about the AIF-NAL merger, are you able to say anything about how it went down behind the scenes? Was it a long-term plan or was it kind of something that just came up and once the conversation became a reality, then it got worked on?
Justin: No, I can speak on it. So AIF, it’s no secret that we ended the season with fewer teams and we started with teams that Brandon and the executive board had to vote out. And then there was a desire not to bring back at least one team. I’m not going to name names or anything, but for the core three to four teams, we put a challenge to the owner. Like, we have got to have expansion. We were at an owner’s meeting and there was no plan for a merger. I never thought we were going to go to NAL.
I respected the league from afar. It’s been around a long time. They have great teams, like the Omaha Beef. I mean, there are good teams within that league, but it wasn’t on our radar or anything. Expansion was getting more teams but one day we had an owner meeting and then we went I think probably two or three weeks and he was trying to recruit and talk, and we were in talks. Some teams had applied to come to the AIF but talking to the owner of the AIF and the other owners in the league it just didn’t seem like we were going to get to enough and in our opinion, having three solid teams, even if we added three, that’s six. Personally, that’s just not a good business plan.
We needed to get to 8 to 10 teams. We knew that the NAL ended with five teams and then they brought in Wheeling and that brought them to six and Wheeling, you know, they’re in our backyard. That was a team we wanted to bring to AIF. They decided to go NAL, but there were another three or four other teams that applied to come in the AIF. But like, when you bring in a new team, you vet them, but do you know if they’re going to be able to since they’re not established?
So, although we were trying to vet the best, you know, with financials and the arena and seeing they were ready to move forward, you just never know. We were lied to at the AIF by the previous owner, Larry Clark, and we were lied to by the previous owners of those teams saying they were ready, and they were not ready. I mean, short of getting on a plane and flying down to their arena and looking at the walls and the helmets and uniforms, you must at some point believe the team is. I mean, you can’t tell me you’re ready to play football on Saturday night two weeks before and you don’t even have pads.
How are you going to do that? You’re just going to show up at the arena and poof, they’re going to appear. So that’s what was happening. They were lying. We were talking about the expansion teams, and I was talking with Brandon. So, we’re in a meeting on a Zoom call. And I just said, what would we do? We should be entertained talking to the NAL. And everybody was sort of like, eh, no, uh, nobody was really against it, but nobody had thought about it. And I was like, listen, all egos aside, why don’t we call them? Why don’t we talk to them? We talked to our owner of the league and were like, why don’t you reach out and see if there’s any interest in a merger?
Two of us fighting, to get new teams too. And they’re going to say, everybody’s going to say, well, we had all these people we were recruiting. True, but again, when you’re vetting a team, you don’t know. So, if they vet and get four teams and we vet and get four teams, okay, now you have six, eight-team leagues. There are still some wild cards that you just don’t know. There are rumors like I’ll be honest, and I can say this because I’m going to be, you know, I like the guy a lot and have gotten to talk to him more. Todd, the commissioner, I mean, everybody involved in the NAL has been excellent to work with.
But in my experience, all I had heard was negativity about Ricky Bertz and the Omaha Beef. I had never talked to the guy. I say maybe we should just talk to him. Like maybe these guys are not these monsters. So, Brandon reached out and, you know, he talked. I don’t know what was said, we weren’t a part of the process at first. I just said that maybe they’ll be like us. Maybe they’re thinking the same thing that we’re not willing to talk about and we’re uncompromising. He talked to Ricky Burch and like within an hour and a half; they talked no football.
They talked about life and found out that everything that we had heard about the monster in the closet just wasn’t true. It’s like the telephone game just gets worse. The stories, you know, change. He was easy. Then he went to Todd and then he talked. They had a meeting and they; I don’t know exactly because I wasn’t in that, but they were all for like, let’s talk. We got on and the owners all talked to the AIF, and we were like, they’re for it. We’re for it. We’re willing, you know. And they extended the olive branch.
We got in a meeting. Ricky Bertz called in and talked and answered questions that we had. Then the next step after that is the NAL took down the rebound nets. We played without them, and they played with them. They were just like let’s compromise, give some and take some. We’re going to learn more of the IFL rules, and it’s a little different than our AIF football rules but they compromised on the nets to give, and that’s a true partnership. When you’re willing to both give and take, you can’t just take. If you don’t give, then that’s not a partnership. You’re just telling them what to do. We voted in.
Like I said, it was never really planned from start to finish. No arguing. It still isn’t. We just had a call last night with coaches and owners on it and it was just, it’s everybody wanting to put a good product together for the fans, for the sponsors, and have a strong league and no egos. Some of the most humble guys in football where they’re just like, we want to win. Don’t get it wrong on the business side and you don’t have to be me, me, me. It’s us, us, us. Once we do all the business right and we do all the building, the teams right and the league right, we can then chirp about the football field.
Then as soon as the game is over, it’s back to we’re partners in this again. And I tell you what, it’s a lesson that can be learned by a lot of other businesses. We’re partners in the business. We all own the league. We’re all a part of a league. and represent it, carry it professionally, and work. Then we’re individual teams when we play on the field and as soon as that’s over, we’re back to being partners again and building a brand. And I think the NAL is going to be a hell of a league this year. I know a lot of people like the AFL, and I think that’s no knock on AFL. I mean, I know the players still think that minute, you know, but they don’t have the teams, and they don’t have, they might be paying them the money, but very hard business model.
I think the NAL is going to be strong. We’re at ten teams. We still are vetting more teams, and I think when we’re done, we’re going to be over nine teams. The IFL and NAL are going to be neck and neck you know, we’re going to be able to put out a great product. I mean, the talent is there. I can tell you that so watch out. Like there’s going to be some players, I think people are going to move up to the CFL and UFL from our leagues and the coaches. I mean, there are outstanding coaches in the NAL not getting enough credit. I mean, we have some seriously good ownership, coaches, and players’ talent. You guys were part of it, the Steelhawks in the NAL.
T.J.: Yes, I think they were one of the originals back when it was first introduced as the adl. Then I think they lasted the first two or three seasons before they went on their hiatus.
Justin: Yeah. It’s going to be good. I’m looking forward to it and I’m ready for football to start again.
T.J.: Just one final question. You can answer with more of an opinion or hope more than fact-based if you want to. Do you see any other teams coming to the NAL that could be in or near PA with the possibility of having a rivalry start?
Justin: We’re going to have a rivalry with the wheeling miners, there’s a lot of history there. I won’t go into a complete concept, but I think at some point we’ll go into that and, you know, throw that gauntlet. I think Coach Resignaldo, he’s the GM and a head coach. I think we’re working on getting a rivalry set up and doing something like the Appalachian Bowl, you know, us both in the Appalachian Mountains and stuff. I don’t know of any rumors or teams in PA, I don’t know. I’ve never been a proponent of arena football in big city markets like they have NFL markets.
So, I don’t think it’s good for Philadelphia. They did great when there was the soul, but that model, even then, I mean, they went bankrupt, not the team but the league. Pittsburgh, I think it’s better in secondary markets where they can love football. have their NFL team, but also support that team. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. You know, just my opinion. So, I don’t know of any coming into Pennsylvania. I’d love to go to Ohio. I’d love to go to New York. I’d love to go to New Jersey. I’m selfish. I’d love to go to Maryland and Virginia. It reduces my travel greatly, but I don’t know of any.
I know that Wheeling, I’m looking forward to having a great rivalry with them. I’m looking forward to going down to Carolina. I’ve always loved playing Carolina. My sister was stationed in Carolina for a while, for many years, not a little while, many years. So, what do they call it? The Snake Pit or something like that? So, we’re looking to go down there and take over that arena. I love Columbus. They have a great arena.
They’ve been very professional, and they treated my team very well. So those are the teams that we know we’re going to be going to. I look forward to them. For this season we’ll take all of Pennsylvania. We’re fine being the only arena team in Pennsylvania right now. With our marketing and branding, we’re going to be advertising in Philadelphia Market, Pittsburgh Market, Altoona, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and Allentown. We’re going to be running corporate ads and billboard ads. We want to be the premier arena team in Pennsylvania. So, until somebody else steps up and comes in, we have no problem. We will fulfill. You know, we have hotel sponsors. You can make a family weekend of it. Go to Hershey Park during the day and to us on Saturday night or come to our game on Saturday night, get a hotel, and go to Hershey Park on Sunday. What greater experience with your kids? Make a weekend of it.
We have great hotel partners. We have great food sponsors. So, we can help you. We’ll be travel agents for you and steer you to the right places to get a hotel discount, stay at the team hotel, have breakfast with the mascot, you know, things like that on game day. So, we have a lot of work to do. So, I would love for us to become a household name in Pennsylvania.
T.J.: Well, yeah. I know when the Steelhawks were here, they had a huge presence. So, it definitely can be accomplished and from the sounds of it, I can’t wait till the Stampede is a household name down here. I live in the Lehigh Valley, so I’ll be helping and spreading the word about you guys.
Justin: I appreciate that. I mean, we have some season ticket holders that were sent by the Clarke family, they’re excellent people. I’ve known them for a while and we have had some season ticket holders that were at Steelhawks that have come in, the Reading Express that have come to us, the Baltimore Mariners, all of that. We’ll take them. We’ll get you geared up in a panel, and we look forward to it.
T.J.: That’s awesome to hear. Well, again, thank you so much for doing this. You gave great answers. I can’t wait to rewatch it and hear them again and hopefully, we can do some kind of interview again in the future, maybe even in season or something like that, if you want to. I would love that.
Justin: Absolutely and if you want to talk to any of our coaches, our front office staff, or players we will be announcing, and starting some players in one week. We’re resigning multiple players, and we’re excited about that. We have a lot of good talent coming in. We’re ready for the 2025 season. Our introduction to NAL.
T.J.: Oh yeah, I can’t wait.
Justin: Thanks, man. Have a great day. If you need anything from us, let us know, and go horns up.
T.J.: Absolutely. Horns up and thank you again.
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