Well everyone this is A LOT later than I had hoped to be posting this however there has been some MASSIVE fallout in this sport in just the past week and I wanted to wait until everything was finished as to not leave any speculation. We'll start off with the small shit first and then move on. I'll do my best to keep this as usual league by league but that may not happen.
Starting off with the newest league that I've been the most critical of, the Arena Development League, as of last post the league only had 4 clubs and only 3 a home arena (YIKES!). That has changed as they announced the Georgia Firebirds would join from the folded AIF, the Firebirds will play out of the 8,000 seat Albany Civic Center as they did last season, in the AIF (which I know doesn't mean much) they finished with a record of 3-5 (including one forfeit but not including 2 non league wins). The other 2 teams that have been announced are the Anderson (SC) Gladiators who will be playing their first season out of the 5,100 seat Anderson Civic Center and a yet unnamed franchise in Northern Kentucky to play out of the 9,400 seat BB&T Arena in Highland Heights, KY on the campus of Northern Kentucky University. If anyone remembers that arena it's because it was formerly the home of the Northern Kentucky River Monsters in 2011 and 2014. The Dayton Wolfpack still haven't announced a home arena which isn't looking good heading into the fall, but changes may be on the way with an 8th expansion club that we'll get to shortly.
Onto somewhat bigger news out of Champions Indoor Football, the last time we spoke about the league they had the same 12 clubs with CenTex replacing San Angelo and Mesquite changed their name to Dallas, since them that has changed BIG TIME. We have had 4 teams announced as expansion since then. The first 2 are existing clubs, who yes unfortunately moved from the AIF, the River City Raiders (playing out of the Family Arena in St. Charles, MO) and the West Michigan Ironmen (playing out of the L.C. Walker Arena in Muskegon, MI). I was throughly impressed by the Ironmen (except in their last game) by being able to make it to the AIF title game by way of beating Lehigh Valley, lets see how they do in the CIF. The other expansion clubs have been the Kansas City Phantoms, who just recently announced they'll actually play out of the Silverstein Eye Care Centers Arena in Independence, MO, and Bismarck (the northern most team in the league) who will play out of thank god the Bismarck Event Center and not the V.F.W. Sports Center (home of the NAHL Bismarck Bobcats). The league also announced they'll have 4 divisions of 4 teams with an 8 team playoffs and continue to play a 12 game season. The Divisions look as such Northeast (Bloomington, Chicago, River City, and West Michigan), Northwest (Bismarck, Kansas City, Omaha, Sioux City), Central (Dodge City, Duke City, Salina, Wichita), and South (Amarillo, CenTex, Dallas, Texas Revs). I really do like this setup though personally I find the league playing 12 games to be way to short and I'd like to see them expand the schedule to 14 but I'll take it.
Now onto the biggest news, we usually don't cover things involving the Arena Football League but here we go. I will start out with this, unless the league gets it's act together and starts cost cutting it's fucked, there I said it. As of the time we are writing this the Arena Football League has 4 thats right just 4 clubs, the existing Cleveland Gladiators, Philadelphia Soul, Tampa Bay Storm, and expansion Washington (D.C.) Valor. Thats right folks since the league came back with 17 clubs in 2010 and had a high of 18 in 2011 the league has lost teams each and every season. Now your asking what happened to the other 4 teams, well hold on I'm getting there! The Portland Steel (whose market was stolen away from the bills paying Portland Thunder owner) and the LA Kiss have effectively folded. Neither team made an official statement but were dispersed in an expansion draft, so now we're down from the original 9 for next year to 7. The last week Orlando announced "due to the reduced number of teams operating" they would suspend operations, ya more like fold. The same day not even 2 hours later Jacksonville announced it would leave the AFL for a "rival league", and now we're down to 5. Then as of yesterday the most successful AFL club of all time, the Arizona Rattlers, announced they would move to the IFL. Now rumors have floated that LA, Jacksonville, and Orlando will join the IFL, and I'm not gonna be nice about this. THAT"S JUST FUCKING STUPID. In LA you now have the Rams who have come back so a whopping ZERO people will care to go to an IFL game in Anaheim, plus the workers comp is outrageous so this makes no sense at all, As for Jacksonville and Orlando, well Orlando is dead so count them out, but the closest IFL team to Jacksonville is a 17 hour bus trip to Wichita Falls, TX. Yes Jacksonville would leave the AFL, which is now entirely based on the east coast for a Mid-West based league to jack there travel costs back up coupled with the expected 50% attendance drop would make it totally worth the move. No Jacksonville should look at the ADL which would play in it's own area, and from their last release it looks as if they will be the 8th ADL club.
So now onto the Indoor Football League just real quickly, the Colorado Crush have been bought by the Salt Lake owners and Billings has folded. This coupled with Arizona joining will keep the league at 10 clubs for 2017. The conferences should be realigned now, it makes no sense to have Wichita Falls in a conference with the northern teams and Nebraska in with the Western clubs. In reality the league should look like this: Intense (Arizona, Colorado, Salt Lake, Spokane, Wichita Falls), United (Cedar Rapids, Green Bay, Iowa Barnstormers, Nebraska, Sioux Falls). With everything that's gone on it does look like the IFL is now set up for success and as long as someone not named Sioux Falls wins the title I think that will continue.
Roast me if you want but this is the reality of our sport. I think it's a great move for Jacksonville and Arizona to ditch the dying AFL as this sport needs to be based on a regional and not national level. There's also a bunch of garbage league going on (I'm looking at you EIF) that I won't cover right now. We'll be back in November or even late October with another edition of Indoor Football Weekly. Until then I thank everyone and Indoor Football Forum and the crazyness that is this sport, so long folks!
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