Philadelphia Soul

The Philadelphia Soul are back, but Jon Bon Jovi isn't. After a two-year hiatus, the franchise will return to the Arena Football League next season. But it will do so without high-profile owner Bon Jovi, who is focusing on his worldwide musical tour. New owners Cosmo DeNicola and Pete Ciarrocchi will join Craig Spencer and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski, members of the original ownership group. Ciarrocchi is the owner of the sports bar Chickie's and Pete's. DeNicola is the former owner of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton AF2 franchise.

After watching his football team practice on a recent Thursday afternoon in Delaware County, the chief executive officer of the Philadelphia Soul got into his BMW sedan for the 90-minute drive to his wife and four children at home in central New Jersey. Jon Bon Jovi's workday was not over. He continued to field calls late into the night. There was a movie offer to weigh. He had some final touches to make on his band's new album. And he had to handle some personnel issues with his newest and riskiest venture, the Arena Football League franchise he landed in 2003.

RE THE Feb. 11 letter on Jon Bon Jovi and the Philadelphia Soul: What really blew our minds was that "Mr. Know-It-All" Stephen Cornell said that Jon Bon Jovi, the Philadelphia Soul arena football owner, hasn't really been a celebrity for more than a decade. We hate to inform him, but for the last 20 years, Bon Jovi has been a part of the music, movie and TV worlds. He and his band have had sold out tours and sold many records. Through all this, Jon has remained a wonderful family man and father.

The Philadelphia Soul is no longer a thing of the past. After what will be a two-year hiatus, the franchise will make a return to the Arena Football League next season. But it will do so without former high-profile owner, Jon Bon Jovi, who's focusing his attention on the Bon Jovi world-wide tour. New owners Cosmo DeNicola and Pete Ciarrocchi will join Craig Spencer and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski, members of the original ownership group. Ciarrocchi is the owner of the sports bar Chickie's and Pete's.

If you want to try out for the Philadelphia Soul, the city's new Arena Football League team, you can travel to Memphis this weekend. Or go to Houston the next. Or just be a little patient. The team announced yesterday that it has scheduled tryouts in both of those cities for this month - and expects to have one in Philadelphia sometime next month, time and place to be announced. Team officials said they chose Memphis and Houston because the cities are at the center of football-playing hotbeds, the mid-South for Memphis, the state of Texas for Houston.

JON BON JOVI stated several times that if the Philadelphia Soul won an Arena Football League championship, he would perform a free concert in Philadelphia. Well, the Soul broke the 25-year Philadelphia drought in 2008, four months before the Phillies. However, the fledgling league then went belly up, shutting down and eventually folding. We never received our free concert. Perhaps Bon Jovi, a very philanthropic gentleman, as evidenced by his Habitat for Humanity work in Philadelphia, would perform free on July Fourth as part of the Sunoco Welcome America!

Arena Football is coming back! Just not back to Philadelphia. At least not yet. After being dark for a season, the AFL will resume in April with 15 teams. There are no teams in the Northeast section of the United States, but commissioner Jerry Kurz hopes a franchise could be in Philly by 2011. "[Our] expansion committee has been in communication with a group that we very much want from the Philadelphia market," Kurz said. "No one has done more to help brand and become a part of the community than the Philadelphia Soul's previous ownership did. " The Soul won the 2008 championship behind a leadership group that included ESPN analyst and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski and rocker Jon Bon Jovi.

IN A CITY that's home to four major sport franchises, the Philadelphia Soul of the Arena Football League has had a tough row to hoe. Since the team came into the league five years ago, it has been virtually ignored by sports-talk radio, and newspapers have mostly confined Soul coverage to the inside sports pages. Yes, we know the Soul's president, Ron Jaworski (former Eagles quarterback/sports analyst), and a co-owner, Jon Bon Jovi (rock star/babe magnet), but not much about Soul players like Chris Jackson or Matt D'Orazio.

IT WAS AN unusual collective: A rock star, a political star, a football team, a car maker and a home builder. Their goal: Building homes for the needy and revitalizing a neighborhood. Yesterday's announcement about Project HOME's Phase V Homeownership Project brought together former President Bill Clinton, Jon Bon Jovi, the Philadelphia Soul (Bon Jovi co-owns the indoor-football team), Saturn, and Habitat for Humanity. When completed, 15 houses in the 1800 and 1900 blocks of N. 23rd Street in North Philadelphia will be occupied by first-time homebuyers who'll pay about $70,000 for them.

Here's a perfectly reasonable idea that the folks at Amtrak ought to be taking more seriously: Change the name of 30th Street Station - so lacking in grandeur, so literally pedestrian, so evocative of the dankest aspects of the Philadelphia soul - to Pennsylvania Station. After all, the building, which opened in 1933, was originally named Pennsylvania Station. At a minimum it could be called "Pennsylvania Station - 30th Street," which is indeed what the old Pennsylvania Railroad used to call it. It's only natural that this proposal, which has the support of 60 members of the Pennsylvania House, has come up as Amtrak is completing a splendid restoration of the station.

A Thursday afternoon in America's heartland: sunshine, blue skies, "Wild Thing" pulsing through Milwaukee's mostly empty Miller Park. A baseball stadium before game time is a carnival before opening night: the steady beep of a forklift in reverse, the dull roll of a beer keg on a concourse, the muffled chatter of park personnel running through their pregame routines. In an hour, the gates will open and the stands will begin to fill with pale Midwesterners trickling in from their 9-to-5s.

The Soul announced their 2012 Arena Football League schedule on Thursday. They will play at the Wells Fargo Center and be in the American Conference Eastern Division with the Cleveland Gladiators, Milwaukee Mustangs, and Pittsburgh Power. Home games in bold   BYE March 18 at New Orleans, TBD March 23 at Pittsburgh, 8* April 1 Cleveland, 6:05 April 7 at Georgia, TBD April 15 San Jose, 6:05 April 20 Tampa Bay, 8* April 28 at Orlando, TBD May 5 Milwaukee, 7:05 May 12 Jacksonville, 7:05 May 18 at Spokane, TBD May 27 at Cleveland, TBD June 2 Orlando, 7:05 June 8 at Milwaukee, TBD June 16 at Jacksonville, TBD June 24 Pittsburgh, 6:05 June 30 at Tampa Bay, 7:30 July 8 Spokane, 6:05 BYE July 22 Utah, 6:05 p.m. Times subject to change * NFL Network

ORLANDO - The Orlando Predators fan sitting above the Philadelphia Soul's bench wasn't showing any southern hospitality. "Hey, Vena, thanks for the interception," the fan taunted Soul quarterback Ryan Vena. "You're our best player. I'll buy you a drink after the game. " Despite flashes of brilliance, Vena's debut as Soul quarterback will be remembered for two second-half interceptions that allowed Orlando to take a 53-46 victory before an announced Amway Center crowd of 11,789.

Right after they decided to create indoor football a quarter of a century ago, they created Mike Hohensee. That's an exaggeration, of course, but Hohensee is the only person who has been around as a player or a coach for the entire existence of this goofy experiment known as the Arena Football League. He was there in 1987 when the league that began with a drawing on a beverage napkin took flight in four cities (Chicago, Denver, Pittsburgh and Washington). Hohensee was no superstar, but he did throw the first touchdown pass in AFL history.

All eyes in the room focused on Jerome Hayes as he rose from his chair and readied to speak in front of a group of men he had just met. Soul head coach Mike Hohensee had gathered his players at the team's Voorhees facilities two weeks ago for their first team meeting. One by one the players introduced themselves to each other and described why they were playing in the Arena Football League. Hayes, a former high school all-American and top Penn State recruit, told his teammates about the hard luck he faced in college and the adversity he overcame to be standing in front of them.

Ron Jaworski had already interviewed four or five coaching candidates when he heard Mike Hohensee might be available. Hohensee had spent the last 9 years coaching the Chicago Rush, where he won ArenaBowl XX in 2006. "Mike wasn't even on my radar," Jaworski said yesterday after Hohensee was introduced at Chickie's & Pete's in South Philly as the Soul's new head coach. "I had heard there was some issues with the ownership over there. [We] called and said '[We're] looking for a coach.

The Philadelphia Soul are back, but Jon Bon Jovi isn't. After a two-year hiatus, the franchise will return to the Arena Football League next season. But it will do so without high-profile owner Bon Jovi, who is focusing on his worldwide musical tour. New owners Cosmo DeNicola and Pete Ciarrocchi will join Craig Spencer and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski, members of the original ownership group. Ciarrocchi is the owner of the sports bar Chickie's and Pete's. DeNicola is the former owner of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton AF2 franchise.

The Philadelphia Soul is no longer a thing of the past. After what will be a two-year hiatus, the franchise will make a return to the Arena Football League next season. But it will do so without former high-profile owner, Jon Bon Jovi, who's focusing his attention on the Bon Jovi world-wide tour. New owners Cosmo DeNicola and Pete Ciarrocchi will join Craig Spencer and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski, members of the original ownership group. Ciarrocchi is the owner of the sports bar Chickie's and Pete's.

At the height of his hair-metal fame, you'd hardly have pegged Jon Bon Jovi as the type to get nostalgic for simpler times. But age - his and, more to the point, his audience's - has a way of shifting perspective. At the sold-out Wachovia Center on Tuesday night, the bad-boy anthems of Bon Jovi's youth were outnumbered by recent songs built on inspirational nostrums and blue-collar solidarity. (The band also played the venue twice yesterday: another sold-out concert last night, and a late-afternoon show for fans of Bon Jovi's departed arena football team, the Philadelphia Soul.

Arena Football is coming back! Just not back to Philadelphia. At least not yet. After being dark for a season, the AFL will resume in April with 15 teams. There are no teams in the Northeast section of the United States, but commissioner Jerry Kurz hopes a franchise could be in Philly by 2011. "[Our] expansion committee has been in communication with a group that we very much want from the Philadelphia market," Kurz said. "No one has done more to help brand and become a part of the community than the Philadelphia Soul's previous ownership did. " The Soul won the 2008 championship behind a leadership group that included ESPN analyst and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski and rocker Jon Bon Jovi.