Howie: AF1 Notebook

Howie's daily column is sponsored by Lyric Kitchen Bar.

There are nights in arena football when the game feels like it’s moving a little too fast for its own good — touchdowns stacking up, possessions blurring together, scoreboards spinning like slot machines — and what you need more than anything is a steady voice to slow it down and make sense of it.

Friday night in Clarksville, Tennessee, that voice belonged to legendary play-by-play man George Plaster. And just as importantly, right alongside him, it belonged to colorman Joe Dubin.

The Nashville Kats’ 70-48 victory over the Michigan Arsenal, live-streamed worldwide on TheAF1.com, wasn’t a subtle football game. Arena football rarely is. It was loud, fast, occasionally chaotic, and — if you didn’t know what you were watching — easy to lose.

That’s where Plaster and Dubin did their best work.

This wasn’t about catchphrases or forced excitement. It wasn’t about trying to out-shout the building. It was about control — the kind that only comes from years in the chair, nights when the headset gets heavy, and an understanding that the viewer doesn’t need more noise. The viewer needs clarity.

Plaster has been doing this long enough to know the difference. He doesn’t chase the moment. He frames it.

There’s a rhythm to experienced play-by-play men, and Plaster still has it. He lets the game breathe, identifies what matters, and delivers it in a tone that suggests he’s seen enough football to know when something is real and when it’s just another Friday night blur.

And then there’s Dubin, who arrived at the broadcast with a different kind of résumé — one built not in the booth, but on the sidelines and in locker rooms across Nashville.

For years at WKRN-TV, Dubin has been one of the steady hands covering the Tennessee Titans, the Nashville Predators, and Vanderbilt Commodores football — the kind of reporter who earns his credibility one conversation at a time, one deadline at a time, one sideline at a time.

That background showed up Friday night.

He didn’t treat the color role like a second play-by-play seat. He treated it like a reporter would — adding context when it mattered, explaining personnel without turning it into a lecture, and, most importantly, knowing when to stay out of the way. No clutter. No reach. No panic. Just information.

When the Kats started to separate, Dubin explained why in clean, understandable football language. When Michigan showed life, he didn’t overreact. He diagnosed it. When the game drifted toward chaos, as arena games tend to do, he helped bring it back into focus. That’s the job. Not to perform. To inform.

And then came halftime — and the broadcast revealed something even more important than clarity. It showed purpose.

Plaster turned to Jeff Fisher, the commissioner of Arena Football One, and what followed wasn’t filler. It was the league, in its own words, explaining what it is trying to become.

“The league has a philosophy … it’s not an in-season and off-season, it’s a between-season,” Fisher said. “You’ve got to constantly evaluate and try to improve … we’re talking about growth.”

There was no sugarcoating in it. Fisher acknowledged expansion and contraction in the same breath — “we brought in basically four new teams … unfortunately, we lost a couple” — and framed it not as instability, but as filtration.

“We knew that they were going to survive our league.”

That’s not the kind of line leagues usually volunteer on a broadcast. But it’s the kind of line that tells you someone is at least attempting to deal in reality.

Fisher talked about tightening the rule book, upgrading officiating oversight, improving digital reach. He pointed to early returns — stronger engagement numbers, better structure, more consistency — and leaned into something that often gets lost in startup leagues: Community.

“It’s the relationship between the fans and the players and the organizations and the communities,” he said. “That’s what this league … is about.”

It was a useful reminder: this isn’t the NFL. It’s not trying to be. It’s trying to find footing somewhere closer to the ground.

And then, just as the interview settled into the business of building a league, it turned — quietly, naturally — into something more meaningful.

Plaster brought up the passing of their friend, Dave McGinnis.

“I don’t know that I’ve been around a human being who did a better job of making everybody around him feel special,” Plaster said.

Fisher didn’t rush it. He didn’t pivot back to football. He stayed there.

“The football world lost a dear friend,” he said. “He was like a brother to me.”

And for a few minutes, the broadcast stopped being about an arena game and became about something the sport rarely pauses long enough to honor — the people who carry it.

McGinnis’ life in football ran deep — from a college defensive back at TCU to a long coaching career that included leading the Arizona Cardinals and later mentoring players and coaches with the Tennessee Titans. In retirement, he moved into the broadcast booth, becoming a trusted voice on Titans radio, known for the same quality Fisher and Plaster described: connection.

“He’s one of those guys … you meet him and feel like you’ve known him all your life,” Fisher said.

Then he told the story that stays with people who knew McGinnis — the weight he carried after the loss of Pat Tillman, one of his players in Arizona who left the NFL to serve his country after 9/11 and was killed overseas.

“That’s one of those things Mac took to bed with him every night,” Fisher said. “He loved that man, he loved his country and he loved this sport.”

There was no production trick there. No music. No montage. Just two men, in a booth, telling the truth about someone they respected.

And that — as much as anything that happened on the field — is what made the night feel real.

Because arena football, especially now, doesn’t have the luxury of history carrying it. It has to build trust in real time. It has to convince viewers that what they’re watching matters, that the people involved care, that the whole thing isn’t just temporary noise.

Broadcasts like Friday night help do that.

Plaster’s career — from his long run on Nashville radio to his place in the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame — was built on understanding that responsibility. He’s never needed to oversell. He’s always trusted the moment, even when the moment turns quiet.

Dubin matched that approach, bringing the discipline of a career reporter into a role that too often forgets what the job actually is. Together, they gave the game something it doesn’t always get: credibility.

Because for a lot of viewers, the broadcast is the product. On Friday night, the product sounded professional. It sounded grounded. It sounded like it belonged. And for a league still trying to prove it can last, that might be the most important win of all.