Indoor Football Weekly #8 Offseason Edition: December

Credit: Our Sports Central

Well everyone in the two months since our last post there has been another shit storm thats happened in the world of Indoor Football. So sit back relax, strap in, and enjoy the ride because here we go!

Credit: Indoor Football League

As normal we'll start off with the league that's had the least happen since our last visit and that ironically is the Indoor Football League. Last time we covered the folding Billings and the addition of Arizona. Since then the IFL has released there schedule and in the opening week is a game we've all been hoping for. The Sioux Falls Storm will take on the Arizona Rattlers at the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls, SD at 7:05PM on Friday, February 17th. We will be doing a game of the week for each league this season and this will be the first IFL Game of the Week! The IFL will still play a 16 game schedule starting Thursday February 16th and ending Saturday June 17th. The playoff format will revert to what is has been most of the past few seasons. The #1 seed will host the #2 seed in the Conference Championship with no 1st round game. I found the United Conference Semi-Final to be a good one last season as both teams were deserving, all this does is set the stage for a guaranteed Sioux Falls hosting. My prediction is Sioux Falls vs ? in the United Conference Championship in Sioux Falls, SD and Arizona vs Spokane. I do believe that there is truly a 3 way race for that second spot in the United Conference but not in the Intense. The Conference Championship will be held June 23rd-25th and the United Bowl July 7-9th.

As we stay in the same area we move on to Champions Indoor Football a somewhat bigger change has happened with the Chicago Eagles suspending operations for the 2017 season. That however is not a huge shock to this girl at all, per the CIF website they didn't report any attendance figures and from the video footage of last season there attendance was almost non existent. The River City Raiders are also having been reported to have left the CIF, the reasoning said was that Chicago folding was to detrimental to keep them in the CIF. Since those changes have happened a new schedule or alignment to the league has not been announced. Once we do receive the information we will update it. As of this afternoon the CIF announced their new schedule and alignment. Rather than the 4 division alignment that was originally announced the league will be split into two 7 team Conferences. The Northern Conference (Bloomington, Bismarck, Kansas City, Omaha, Salina, Sioux City, and West Michigan) and the Southern Conference (Amarillo, CenTex, Dallas, Dodge City, Duke City, Texas, and Wichita) is how the league will align for 2017. The schedule will start out on Saturday February 25th when the Omaha Beef take on the Sioux City Bandits. The season finishes on Saturday June 3rd with 4 games that day. With the new schedule and alignment a playoff announcement was not part of it but when the playoff schedule is announced we will be sure to update it.

A quick update on the Arena Football League is after dropping down to just Four clubs an expansion team (which is still unnamed) for Baltimore, MD was handed to Monumental Sports and Entertainment (owners of the Washington Valor) to add a 5th club to the AFL for 2017.

Credit: National Arena League

To wrap everything up let's finish it with the newest league of them all. That is what was known as the Arena Development League (get to that later) the newest addition at the time of the last post was the Anderson Gladiators, due to apparent lease issues (aka them not having a lease) they left the ADL and joined the SIF. As for new clubs announced since then, the Corpus Christi Rage were announced to play out of the American Bank Center. Also the Florida Tarpons had joined the league on October 20th, and given a nice boost of an older stable team to the league, and bailed then on November 10th for an AIF replacement league Arena Pro Football. The reason why!? Well they didn't want to spend the money the ADL was requiring and had no faith that the league would last multiple seasons, do I blame them? Yes, there just stupid, if they don't have money to play in a real league don't play at all. Finally was the big news on a November Press Conference, the Arena Development League changed it's name (and structure) to the National Arena League while at the same time adding the former AFL club the Jacksonville Sharks. Since coming into the league the Sharks have signed players from last seasons AFL squad and numerous IFL All Stars, I fully expect this to be the team to beat in the (now) NAL. In late November one other club was added, the Mexican team, the Monterrey Steel, where did Northern Kentucky go? Nobody knows but there not here anymore. A few short weeks later the NAL schedule was released, the first game in league history and first NAL Game of the Week is the Columbus Lions vs Jacksonville Sharks. The Sharks will visit "The Jungle" at the Columbus Civic Center to take on last years (yes this doesn't mean much as the league was a joke) AIF Champion Lions. I fully expect this game to set the tone for the league which is playing Arena Style minus the rebound nets. A background on the schedule, Jacksonville will host 8 games, Dayton and Corpus Christi will host 5, the other 5 teams will each host 6 games in a 12 game schedule. After the 12 game, 14 week regular season the NAL will have the top 4 teams qualify for it's playoffs. June 23-25 is Semi-Final Weekend while the NAL Championship Game will be played on the weekend of July 7-9.

The NAL really made some standout moves this month, with changing there name and adding Jacksonville, I can't wait to see how the league gets played out. On the other hand the CIF should already have an updated schedule released or at least say what's happening to the teams. The IFL made a very stupid move, after expanding the Playoffs last season, which made it enjoyable for us at IFW for once contracted it back to 4 teams with 3 seeds practically locked in. Until next time that's the news and all we have time for, we'll be back with one, maybe two more offseason posts before the season starts. So long folks!