Today, everything that I hold sacred in my life was shattered. I learned that one of the things I love the most is a big fat lie.

Some indoor football teams practice outside.

That picture at the top of the post is from the Arizona Rattlers, formerly of the Arena Football League and now in the Indoor Football League, as they opened training camp today.

If you didn’t look closely and just saw this scrolling past on Twitter you’d think, “hmm weird an empty football field.”

But take a closer look. The field is only 50 yards long, and the hashmarks are about 8 feet apart. It almost looks like a field that little kids would play flag football on, complete with the dinky little 8-foot-wide goalposts.

My favorite part of the picture: take a look at the top right corner, they even have the chalk lines rounded like some field in the league are for the boards in arenas that also play hockey.

Which brings up my biggest question, how do you practice without the boards? I mean, that’s kind of one of the biggest things in the game is that there is not a traditional sideline. It seems odd you’d have players practice on a field and surface they’ll never play on during the season.

But hey, maybe Arizona can hold a game on those fields! An indoor football game played outdoors would be crazy. Call it the Summer Classic, a direct rip-off of the NHL, but the same idea. An indoor game goes outdoors.

So yeah, now you know a dirty secret, some indoor football teams practice outside. It’s like the sport doesn’t care about tradition anymore.