SEATTLE EXPRESS LOOKING TO RUSH INTO NFL MINORS

NEW SEMIPRO FOOTBALL TEAM OPENS TONIGHT

By Kenneth Richardson P-I Reporter

SATURDAY, July 29, 1989

Section: Sports, Page: D1

Sometimes you have to take a step down to keep going up. That's especially true in the Minor League Football Systems, which opens its first season tonight.

The Seattle Express, the local entry in the 12-team league that stretches from here to Florida, meets the Pueblo, Colo., Crusaders at Snohomish High School's Veterans Memorial Stadium at 7 tonight.

The MLFS is a new football league with an old idea - to eventually become recognized as the No. 1 feeder system for the National Football League. (Better make that No. 2; the college draft has a lot of life left.)

Here's how the MLFS works:

"You gather 12 teams with the best possible talent not currently in the National Football League," says Worth Skinner of Monroe, a retired contractor who owns the Express. "You want to have quality players who can step in and help an NFL club."

The NFL, with its limited rosters, lack of taxi squads and vastly reduced training-camp rosters (80 players, down from as many as 120), would seem to welcome the help.

"Every once in a while, one or two of that other 40 would make an NFL team," said Express Head Coach Curt Marsh, the former Oakland Raider and University of Washington star who grew up in Snohomish. "These guys still need someplace to showcase their talent."

Skinner braved the required $150,000-a-year franchise fee with hope the league will soon sign a contract with the NFL, creating a baseball-like farm system.

The players are taking a gamble, too.

"Yeah, you drop whatever it is you might be doing, come all the way out here and bust your tail," said Rodney Swann, an inside linebacker from Detroit. "Sure you take a chance on being hurt, but you just hope your phone rings. If so, it was all worth it."

Swann has a wife and two children in Detroit, but has tried for two years to catch on with an NFL team.

Players in the MLFS are not paid, playing only for the chance to get recognized by the NFL or, at worst, the chance to fly to places like Palm Beach, Fla.; Pocono, Pa.; St. Louis; and San Jose. The players, who are guaranteed jobs through agreements with local businesses, practice three times a week and play on Saturdays.

Some love the game so much they would play for free, anyway.

"Actually, I play because my dad owns the team," said John Skinner, a 6-foot-5, 270-pound defensive tackle who was the defensive player of the year in the Northwest Football League last year.

The team's quarterback, A.D. Stinson, knows he probably won't get a call from the NFL, though he was the offensive player of the year in the Northwest Football League a year ago.

But players like former Washington State wide receiver Victor Wood have legitimate chances at pro careers. Wood was WSU's MVP in the Aloha Bowl last year.

Defensive tackle Smiley Creswell, a player-coach with the Express who sports a Super Bowl ring from his days with the New England Patriots, says he still enjoys the game, "but I'm not interested in pro ball anymore."

For most of these players, the MLFS is about as close to the NFL as they will ever get, a place where dreams go to die. Unless you're Curt Marsh, who looks at it like the Lotto.

"We prefer to think of this as a place where dreams can come true," he said.

NOTES - The Express isn't the only semipro team with national exposure and an eye on feeding players to the NFL. The Seattle Cavaliers open their 50th season tonight at 7:30 by hosting the Brooklyn Mariners in Memorial Stadium. The Cavaliers (9-1 last year) aren't in a league and don't have an individual owner. But insiders say the team operates on a $225,000-a-year budget, and has road games in New York, Chicago, California, Wisconsin, Oregon and Canada . . . The Seattle Express is derived from the franchise that went 14-0 as the Eastside Express in the NWFL last year, but two-thirds of the old team now plays for the NWFL's Sno-King Blue Knights, who open league play tonight at 7:30 against the Seattle Raiders at Shoreline Stadium.