Important note here to the Birmingham Iron, and everyone affiliated with the Alliance of American Football.

If you’re going to ask people to stand in the cold and the wet and the wind and eat grayish, boiled hot dogs that kind of resemble in color and spirit a dank and leaking stadium that needs to be put out of its misery, then please, for the love of all things, run an offense that generates the slightest potential for points and excitement.

The Birmingham Iron, for the uninitiated, is a new minor-league football team playing in a new minor-league football league. Up until this weekend, the Iron was undefeated and tied for first in the Alliance of American Football.

If the Iron were tied for first, then how bad are these other teams?

The Iron played the San Antonio Commanders on Sunday at Legion Field and the Commanders won it 12-11. Both teams were awful. It was an unimaginative, cautious NFL football game of screen passes and equally annoying slop, but with players and coaches who couldn’t make it in the NFL.

“I thought it was two evenly matched teams that both played 3-4 defenses, and both tried to run the football and grind it out, and it was a low-scoring game, but a good one,” Birmingham Iron coach Tim Lewis said.

No. Just no.

It was not a good game. It wasn’t anything close to being a good game.

It was a showcase for the punters. Birmingham Iron punter Colton Schmidt is great, and so is kicker Nick Novak. Everyone else on the team could be replaced tomorrow, including the coaches.

Trent Richardson had 15 yards rushing. He’s averaging less than 2.5 yards per carry through four games. This uninspired brand of football is unsustainable for the Iron and the AAF. I don’t care who’s playing. And don’t blame the weather. The rain stopped a hour or so before the game started it never rained during the event.

The Iron fumbled the ball five times during a game decided by one point. On one crucial sequence in the fourth quarter, the Iron fumbled it twice on the same play. First, quarterback Luis Perez put the ball on the ground. Iron running back Brandon Ross then recovered it, but he fumbled, too.

San Antonio recovered, but of course they couldn’t convert it into a touchdown despite six chances at the goal line.

San Antonio coach Mike Riley could have slept through the game and still won. He seemed a little sleepy during his postgame news conference, so maybe he did.

How does Riley see the league evolving? What’s it’s personality through the first four weeks?

“You know what I think, that’s kind of dawned on me, because everyone wants to think that — because it’s brand new and it’s clean — everyone wants to think that they have the best team,” Riley said. “Everyone is kind of proud of that, and I think what it looks like to me is whoever is going to play the best that day is going to get the win. And so it’s kind of even, even Stephen all the way around.”

Does even Stephen also mean that everyone has to run the same plays? Seriously, stop playing conservatively. That has always been the boring realm of bad NFL football. Don’t copy that model. Run away from that model. Why run a fledgling, startup entertainment business that’s not entertaining? It’s not like the in-game experience is going to carry the Iron. This isn’t minor-league baseball. The Iron gained just 256 yards of offense the entire game. The Commanders weren’t much better, 289. Everyone who stayed until the end, and witnessed the “onside conversion attempt” deserves a free ticket to next week’s game.

An “onside conversion” is the AAF’s answer to an onside kick. In theory, it’s a great idea. Instead of an onside kick, which is one of the most dangerous plays in football, teams can attempt a fourth-and-12 scenario instead of kickoff. If the offense converts, a team maintains possession.

The Iron’s onside conversion attempt was intercepted and never had a chance. Perez threw the ball up for grabs like he was attempting a 45-yard Hail Mary. Again, the Iron had the look of an unprepared team in every way.

Right now, after four weeks, the Alliance of American Football feels like a pro sports league thrown together so a few people at the top can make some quick TV money. The in-game experience is dreadful. Officially, there were 6,539 hardy souls at Legion Field on Sunday for the fourth game of the Birmingham Iron’s existence. Bless their hearts. It felt like a football game played inside a giant abandoned strip mine.

Can’t these games be played at a high school stadium? There are at least a dozen high school football stadiums in the Birmingham area nicer than Legion Field. Put these games out in Shelby County at Thompson’s new football stadium in Alabaster. The Iron would probably do very well there.

Not sure they could afford the rent, though.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.