Indoor Football Weekly Special Edition #1: The Shit Show 2017: Part One

BEFORE YOU READ: this is a warning to players and fans about how poorly teams and leagues can be run, now that the disclaimer is done we shall continue. By good it's awful out there, that's right even though the dreaded American Indoor Football finally folded it's not over. Why? Do you ask, well because we have not one, not two, not even just three, but five yes FIVE garbage leagues polluting indoor football this year. Yes it hurts and we all know it but there are some, well, decent teams in these leagues.

To start our journey of pain through the underbelly of indoor football off we'll start with the league that was originally launched in 2016, Supreme Indoor Football. Yes, yes the SIF, the league was started by the Cape Fear Heroes owner in 2016 and was to have partnered with a reborn CIFL. There was many problems, starting with the CIFL could never get off the ground and was dead. But like a phoenix Supreme Indoor Football rose again! Well sorta, the SIF didn’t have enough teams to make a decent league so they have um “partnered” with the EIF (Elite Indoor Football) for the 2017 season. This should tell you how garbage this league is right off the bat, plus they can’t decide how many teams are in the SIF. How you ask? Well depending on where you look on the website (and whether or not you count the EIF teams listed, but we’ll get to that later) they have five, six, or eight teams in the SIF!

For sake of sanity we’ll talk about the EIF clubs later, but currently listed in their Standings area on the Website are the Cap City Bulls, the team is based out of Austin, TX however per their schedule (on the Bulls Website) they’ll play an all road game schedule of 8 games. These games will span four different indoor leagues, including exhibition games against the IFL’s Wichita Falls Nighthawks, and the NAL’s Monterrey Steel. Next up we have the league owners team, the Cape Fear Heroes. The Heroes are based out of the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, NC and per the SIF website they have a Seven game schedule, and that’s all the info we have, yep off to a great start so far. Third in line we have the Georgia M.O.B. (or MOB depending on where you look) they are scheduled to play out of Conyers, GA (where I have no idea) and have a whopping four games scheduled in 2017! The M.O.B. don’t even have a website just a Facebook page wow. In fourth place is another expansion club the Greenville Dragons, the Dragons we’re admitted with no home! Yes the SIF let them in this “league” as a travel team and having them secure a venue for 2018. The SIF website lists them as playing four games while the team site has them playing six! Another reason the SIF can’t make up their mind. But I digress last but not least of the teams (at least listed in the standings) is a team who actually played in 2016! It’s the Triangle Torch (yes it’s a stupid name, we know). The Torch played in the now dead AIF in 2016 and finished with a 3-4 record with one game cancelled besides the seven played. They made their home turf out of the J.S. Dorton Arena at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds in Raleigh, NC. Per the SIF website they have a whopping five games scheduled and oh gee no website!

And to finish off the SIF they also have listed on their website the Anderson Gladiators who are nowhere to be found in the schedule or standings! As a background the Gladiators we’re originally announced as part of the ADL (now NAL) but bolted to the SIF and have been said to have not found a home arena. We also have listed in the teams section the Louisiana Cottonmouths, a failed AIF expansion team in 2016, and the South Carolina Ravens, a team who was scheduled to play 2017 in the AIF.

Now on to something even more painful, Elite Indoor Football. Yes ELITE Indoor Football, the EIF was founded by Bobby Dammarell the owner of the Savannah Steam. I won’t get into it to deep here but his wife Jenny, was booked into a county jail for “deposit account fraud”. The team was also told by the City of Savannah that due to it’s debts they wouldn’t be allowed a lease at the Savannah Civic Center again, in fact they can’t even play there as a road team! Next we have the Carolina Cowboys, based out of ?, South Carolina. Yes they don’t have a home arena or even city leased and their using the Dallas Desperados logo jeez. Next up is the Florida Tribe to be based out of Tallahassee, FL, where is their home arena, nobody knows. The Roanoke Militia were announced as the fourth team in the EIF, all we know is their base is Roanoke, VA. And finally the fifth and newest team the Atlanta Furious. Where do they play? You guessed it nobody knows. This is a league shrouded in mystery and unprofessionalism, per the website they will play a March through June schedule but yet don’t have an actual schedule released, and all but Savannah don’t have a website!

Stay tuned for Part Two of this nightmarish mess, we’ll show you the disaster of the Can-Am Indoor Football, Arena Pro Football, and the Elite Indoor Football Conference (yes it’s a different league).

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!

Indoor Football Weekly #7 Offseason Edition: October

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!

Indoor Football Weekly #6 Offseason Edition: September

Well everyone I know it’s been a while but we’re finally back with IFW. Since the United Bowl in July a lot of things have happened in the world of Indoor Football. First as usual the Sioux Falls Storm won the IFL Championship (again and I’m getting f*****g sick of it) but even more happened, and we’re gonna cover that now!

First on the IFL front a few things have happened. The league will be expanding to West Valley City, UT next year when the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles take the field at the Maverik Center. The last time an indoor or arena football team played there was the Utah Blaze of the AFL in 2010. The Blaze finished 2-14 and averaged 5,018 fans per game. So far Project FANchise is coming along nicely (I mean if your into a fan run club and I am not but whatever), but another bigger thing happened in the IFL. The other big news was that the Tri-Cities Fever, a club that was around since 2005, has (at least for now) folded. Officially the team has declared dormancy until either a new owner is found or the franchise rights are bought and moved to another city, which we all know how likely that is. So (as of now) all in all 10/11 clubs will be back in 2017 with 1 expansion to keep the league at a sable 11.

Heading south to Champions Indoor Football is a similar story. While all the clubs in the North will be returning one team in the South will not. The San Angelo Bandits had a fire sale of all things, office supplies, memorabilia, etc was as sold of at a steep discount. Shortly after the folded a club was awarded to Belton, TX to play in the Bell County Expo Center. Originally known as the CenTex Fightin’ Calvary it was quickly and shortly changed to the CenTex Cavalry. The Bell County Expo Center was previously home to the Texas Bullets of the original PIFL in 1998 and the CenTex Barracudas who played 3 season in the Intense Football League from 2006-2008.

In other news something that we all have been praying for finally happened the burning heap of garbage known as American Indoor Football has finally folded. The official release said it had to do with the creation of the Arena Development League “continuing the AIF’s mission” however the ADL only has 4 clubs as of now. With the AIF folding a plethora of new leagues have been created. One of those is the ADL which currently has only 4 teams, the Columbus Lions (2014 PIFL and 2015 AIF Champions) Lehigh Valley Steelhawks, Dayton Wolfpack, and the High Country Grizzlies (the last 2 are expansion teams). The Wolfpack have not announced a home venue but since the Hara Arena closed the only viable venue is the Nutter Center, while High Country announced they’ll play at the George M. Holmes Convocation Center in Boone, NC on the campus of Appalachian State University. Trusted sources have told us that the ADL will play a 10 game season their first year with playoffs and an All Star Game in Biloxi, MS. We’ll keep you up to date on the happenings of the new Arena Development League as we’re sure more clubs will be added.

And then we have 3 leagues looking to replace the AIF, first is Supreme Indoor Football. A little background on that league is the SIF was attempted to be started last year Barbara Spigner, owner of the Cape Fear Heroes. Now here’s a shocker for ya folks other than Cape Fear it has 3 expansion teams, One of which (the Coastal Outlaws in Savannah, GA) claim to not even be part of the league! The other leagues that have started up are the Can-Am Indoor Football League which is based in the Northeast. The CAIFL has a whopping 11 clubs and yet again they’re all expansion teams so we’ll get to see how long this nightmare will last. And last and certainly least is Elite Indoor Football. The EIF has at last count 4 clubs which include some real winners. Those teams include the Palm Beach Phantoms who have tried so many times to start and been a road team so much it makes me wanna puke. And on top of that if it’s not bad enough already we’ve got the Savannah Steam coming back! The Steam’s burning ship may still be afloat but the city has already said they will NOT be playing in the Savannah Civic Center until they're completely paid up on back rent. So we’ve got some real winners of leagues starting up next year.

We’ll keep updated on these leagues and developments over the next month to see exactly what ends up happening. For everyone who's read this we really do appreciate it and we’ll be back in October for another edition of Indoor Football Weekly. I’ve got to thank everyone over at Indoor Football Forum for a lot of this info and especially the stupid owners who make these articles possible. We’ll see you next week!