The Arena Football League (AFL) was founded in 1987 as an American football indoor league. The AFL's attendance has
increased dramatically over the last few years, rising to an average of 12,415 people per game in 2007.[1] The AFL also maintains a minor league called af2.
Formation
"Playtest Game"
Eventual Arena Football League (AFL) founder Jim Foster, a former
National Football League and United States Football League executive, originally had a contract in hand in
1983 to play an exhibition game on the NBC television network, two decades before the first regular season games appeared on that network. He
abandoned the plan, though, when the USFL was formed and did not return to
his newly created sport until 1986. The first AFL game was played, called a
"playtest game", in Rockford, Illinois at the
MetroCentre between the Rockford Metros
and the Chicago Politicians. These teams were the first ever arena football
teams.
The AFL Begins
The AFL was founded in 1987 as an American
football indoor league. The league's inaugural season featured four teams: the
Chicago Bruisers, Denver Dynamite,
Pittsburgh Gladiators, and Washington
Commandos. The teams played a six-game season, culminating in Arena Bowl I, where Denver defeated Pittsburgh in
Pittsburgh.
In 1990, Foster was awarded a patent for arena football and the
equipment unique to it—the only known instance of a game being patented anywhere in the world. This means that other indoor
football leagues must play under significantly different rules; the patent, however, is scheduled to expire in September 2007.
The Rules
- The Field: An indoor padded surface 85 feet wide and 50 yards long with eight-yard endzones. Goal posts are nine-feet wide
with a crossbar height of 15 feet (NFL goalposts are 18 1/2 wide with the crossbar at 10 feet). The goalside rebound nets are 30
feet wide by 32 feet high. The bottom of the nets are eight feet above the ground. Sideline barriers are 48 inches high and made
of high density foam rubber.
- The Equipment: The official football is the same size and weight as the National Football League ball. Each ball is
manufactured by Spalding Sporting Goods.
- The Players and Formations: Eight players on the field; 20-man active roster; four-man inactive roster.
- Substitution:
- play both sides of the ball.
-
- 2007 season and future: The AFL now allows free substitution, the
new rule greatly limits the ironman concept of the game, but some players play both ways by either choice, or to step in due to
injury.
- Formation: Four (4) offensive players must line up on the line of scrimmage. Three (3) defensive players must be down linemen
(in a three of four-point stance). Only the "Mac Linebacker" may blitz on either side of the center. Alignment is two (2) or more
yards off the line of scrimmage. No stunting or twisting. Offensive motion in the backfield: One receiver may go in a forward
motion before the snap.
- Timing: Four 15 minute quarters with a 15-minute halftime. The clock stops for out-of-bounds plays or incomplete passes only
in the last minute of each half or when the referee deems it necessary for penalties, injuries or timeouts. Each team is allowed
three (3) time-outs per half.
- Movement of the Ball and Scoring: Four (4) downs are allowed to advance the ball ten (10) yards for a first down, or to
score. Six (6) points for a touchdown. One (1) point for a conversion by place kick after a touchdown, two (2) points for a
conversion by drop kick and two (2) points for successful run or pass after a touchdown. Three (3) points for a field goal by
placement or four (4) points for a field goal by drop kick. Two (2) points for a safety.
- The Kicking: Kickoffs are from the goal line. Kickers may use a one-inch tee. Punting is illegal. On fourth down, a team may
go for a first down, touchdown or field goal. The receiving team may field any kickoff or missed field goal that rebounds off the
net. Any kickoff untouched which is out of bounds will be placed at the 20-yard line or the place where it went out of bounds,
whichever is more advantageous to the receiving team. If a kickoff goes beyond the end zone and stays in bounds (such as kicking
it into the field goal "slack net" or if the ball goes under the net), the ball will come out to the 5-yard line. The same is
true if a missed field goal attempt goes beyond the end zone and under the net.
- Passing: Passing rules in Arena Football are the same as outdoor NCAA Football in which receivers must have one foot
inbounds. A unique exception involves the rebound nets. A forward pass that rebounds off of the endzone net is a live ball and is
in play until it touches the playing surface.
- Overtime Rules: Overtime periods are 15 minutes during the regular season and the playoffs. Each team gets one possession to
score. If, after each team has had one possession and one team is ahead, that team wins. If the teams are tied after each has had
a possession, the next team to score wins.
Early Years
From its inception, the AFL operated in a state of semi-obscurity; many Americans had heard the term "arena football" but knew
little to nothing about the league itself.
From the 1987 season until the late 1990s, the most exposure the league would receive was on
ESPN, which would air tape-delayed games, often well after midnight. The league would receive its
first taste of wide exposure in 1998, when Arena Bowl XII was
televised nationally as part of ABC's Wide World of Sports.
One of the league's early success stories was the Detroit Drive. A primary
team for some of the AFL's most highly regarded players, including George LaFrance, Gary
and Alvin Rettig, as well as being a second career chance for quarterback Art Schlichter,
the Drive regularly played before sold out crowds at Joe Louis Arena, and went to the
ArenaBowl every year of their existence (1988-1993). However, the
AFL's first dynasty came to an end when their owner, Mike Ilitch (who also owned Little
Caesar's Pizza) bought the Detroit Tigers, and sold the team.
Although the Drive left the league, the AFL still has a number of teams today which it considers "dynasties", including the
Tampa Bay Storm (the only team that has existed in some form for all twenty seasons),
their archrival the Orlando Predators, the San
Jose Sabercats of the present decade, and their rivals the Arizona Rattlers. The
Albany/Indiana Firebirds, though they only won one championship, could also be
considered a dynasty, based on the fact that they achieved the rare feat of remaining in one city for ten years.
In 1993 the league staged its first, and only to date, All-Star game in Des Moines,
Iowa, the future home of the Iowa Barnstormers, as a fundraiser for
flood victims in the area. The National Conference defeated the American Conference
64-40 in front of a crowd of 7,189.
While the aforementioned teams have enjoyed success, many teams in the history of the league have enjoyed little to no
success. There are also a number of franchises which existed in the form of a number of unrelated teams under numerous management
groups until they folded (an example is the New York CityHawks whose owners transferred
the team from New York to Hartford to become the
New England Sea Wolves after two seasons, then after another two seasons were sold and
became the Toronto Phantoms, who lasted another two seasons until folding). There are a
number of reasons why these teams failed, including lack of financial support from owners, lack of media exposure, to the city's
plain disinterest in the team. Today, this isn't seen as much of a problem, as team owners typically own other sports franchises
as well, receive adequate media coverage from their home cities, and most teams have a sizeable fan base.
The New Millennium
The year 2000 brought a heightened interest in the AFL. Then-St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt
Warner, who was MVP of Super Bowl XXXIV, was first noticed because he played
quarterback for the AFL's Iowa Barnstormers. While many sports commentators and fans
continued to ridicule the league, Warner's story gave the league positive exposure, and it brought the league a new television
deal with TNN, who, unlike ESPN, would televise regular season games live. While it
was not financially lucrative, it helped set the stage for what the league would become in the new millennium. Also, the year
2000 brought a spin-off league, the af2, intended to be a developmental league.
Growth of the League
Television
-
-
Beginning with the 2003 season, the AFL made a deal with NBC to televise league games, which was renewed for another two years in 2005. In
conjunction with this, the league moved the beginning of the season from May to February (the week after the NFL's Super Bowl) and scheduled most of its games on Sunday instead of
Friday or Saturday as it had in the past. In 2006, due to the XX Winter Olympic Games, the Stanley Cup playoffs and the Daytona 500, NBC scaled back from weekly
coverage to scattered coverage during the regular season, but committed to a full playoff schedule ending with the 20th
ArenaBowl. NBC and the Arena Football League officially severed ties on June 30, 2006, having failed to reach a new broadcast deal. Las Vegas owner Jim Ferraro stated during a radio interview that the reason why a deal failed is
because ESPN refused to show highlights or even mention a product being broadcast on NBC.
For the 2006 season only, the AFL added a national cable deal with OLN (now Versus) for eleven regular-season games and one playoff game.
On December 19, 2006, ESPN announced the purchase of a minority stake in the AFL. This
deal includes television rights for the ESPN family of networks. ESPN will televise a minimum of 17 regular season games, most on
Monday Nights, and 9 playoff games, including ArenaBowl
XXI on ABC. [2] The deal resulted in added exposure on ESPN's SportsCenter.
The AFL also has a regional-cable deal with FSN, where FSN regional affiliates in AFL
markets carry local team games.
- See also: List of ArenaBowl
broadcasters
Expanding the season
The practice of playing one or two preseason exhibition games by each team prior to the
start of the regular season was discontinued when the NBC contract was initiated, and the regular season was extended from 14
games, the length that it had been since 1996, to 16.
Video Games
The first video game based on the AFL was Arena
Football for C-64 released in 1988. On May 18, 2000,
Kurt Warner's Arena Football Unleashed was released by
Midway Games for the Playstation game console. On
February 7, 2006 EA Sports
released Arena Football for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. EA Sports
released another AFL video game, titled Arena Football: Road to
Glory, on February 21, 2007, for PlayStation
2.[3]
Literature
In 2001, Jeff Foley published War on the Floor: An Average
Guy Plays in the Arena Football League and Lives to Write About It. The book details a journalist's two preseasons (1999 and
2000) as an offensive specialist/writer with the now-defunct Albany Firebirds. The
5-foot-6 (170 cm), self-described "unathletic writer" played in three preseason games and had one catch for -2 yards.
Teams
| National Conference |
| Division |
Team |
Arena |
City/Area |
| Eastern |
Columbus Destroyers |
Nationwide Arena |
Columbus, Ohio |
| Cleveland |
Quicken Loans Arena |
Cleveland, Ohio |
| Dallas Desperados |
American Airlines Center |
Dallas, Texas |
| New York Dragons |
Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum |
Uniondale, New York (Long Island) |
| Philadelphia Soul |
Wachovia Center |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Southern |
| Georgia Force |
The Arena at Gwinnett Center |
Duluth, Georgia |
| New Orleans VooDoo |
New Orleans Arena |
New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Orlando Predators |
Amway Arena |
Orlando, Florida |
| Tampa Bay Storm |
St. Pete Times Forum |
Tampa, Florida |
| American Conference |
| Division |
Team |
Arena |
City/Area |
| Central |
Chicago Rush |
Allstate Arena |
Rosemont, Illinois |
| Colorado Crush |
Pepsi Center |
Denver, Colorado |
| Grand Rapids Rampage |
Van Andel Arena |
Grand Rapids, Michigan |
| Kansas City Brigade |
Sprint Center |
Kansas City, Missouri |
| Western |
Arizona Rattlers |
US Airways Center |
Phoenix, Arizona |
| Los Angeles Avengers |
Staples Center |
Los Angeles, California |
| San Jose SaberCats |
HP Pavilion |
San Jose, California |
| Utah Blaze |
EnergySolutions Arena |
Salt Lake City, Utah |
1987 Season
The Arena Football League played its inaugural season in 1987 with four teams to introduce the sport to the American public.
The Chicago Bruisers, Denver Dynamite,
Pittsburgh Gladiators and Washington
Commandos comprised the 4-team league that ran a schedule from mid-June to
August 1st. The AFL drew an impressive average of 11,000 fans per game and TV coverage on ESPN.
The four teams Denver (12,098/game), Pittsburgh (11,962), Washington (11,525) and
Chicago (8,638) drew fairly well in their respective facilities. Denver
played out of the old McNichols Arena, Pittsburgh in the Civic Arena, Washington at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD and Chicago at the Rosemont Horizon in
Rosemont, IL.
The AFL kicked off on Friday, June 19, 1987 when the host Pittsburgh Gladiators hosted the
Washington Commandos at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh before 12,177 fans.
AFL football officially began at 7:37 pm EDT that night when Washington's Dale Castro kicked
the ball into the slack net (the mesh between the field goal posts) resulting in a touchback. The Gladiators took over on their
own five-yard line. The very first play from scrimmage saw Pittsburgh quarterback Mike
Hohensee hit WR/DB Russell Hairston on a 45-yard touchdown pass; the play would set the
tone for the league's wide-open, high-scoring mandate that the game's inventor, James Foster, envisioned. Washington, however,
went on to win the game 48-46 in the final minutes.
The head coaches of the four AFL teams in 1987 were former CFL great
Ray Jauch (Chicago), current AFL coach Tim Marcum
(Denver), Joe Haering (Pittsburgh) and Bob Harrison
(Washington).
Some of the notable performers for Chicago in 1987 included QB Mike Hold, FB/LB Billy Stone, WR Reggie "Super Gnat" Smith, DB Durwood Roquemore and future NFL head coach QB Sean Payton, who saw
limited action during the season.
The Denver Dynamite would also featured a backup QB that would go onto an NFL head coaching career: Marty Mornhinweg, who backed up Whit Taylor. Also on the Dynamite
roster that year was FB/LB Rob DeVita, WR Durrell Taylor and
future AFL Hall of Fame WR Gary Mullen.
Continuing the theme of quarterbacks who would go onto future coaching opportunities was Gladiators QB Mike Hohensee, who
yielded the starting role with Pittsburgh early in the season to Brendan Folmar. Hohensee would
return to the ArenaBowl nineteen years later in July 2006 by capturing [[ArenaBowl XX] as head
coach of the Chicago Rush.
Gladiators WR Russell Hairston had a 67 catches in 1987, good for 1,126 yards and 18 touchdowns (in just 6 games) and would go
onto win AFL MVP honors. Also notable on the Pittsburgh roster was DB Mike Stoops who went
onto to coach the University of Arizona in 2005.
The Washington Commandos featured a high-scoring unit that had WR Dwayne Dixon (68 catches, 11
TDs) and QB Rich Ingold, who led the AFL with 29 TD passes and 1,726 yards.
ArenaBowl I that year featured the Gladiators hosting the Dynamite at Civic Arena; the Pittsburgh fans, however, went home disappointed as the Dynamite walked away with a 45-16
victory, a win that was the first of seven ArenaBowl titles for Denver coach Tim Marcum.
Expansion
The Arena Football League has expanded and contracted many times throughout its history. Every year in the AFL there has been
at least one team who did not play the previous season with the same name. The AFL has expanded to 19 franchises for the 2006
season. The league conducted an expansion draft in September 2005 in order to stock the Utah Blaze. Because of
Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans VooDoo
announced that they would suspend operations for 2006. Players under contract to the VooDoo were transferred to the expansion
Kansas City Brigade franchise. The 2007 season saw the return of arena football to
New Orleans. The AFL expanded to the birthplace of professional football as in
2008, Cleveland will receive the region's long awaited team.
* = The history of the Kats stayed in Nashville, similar to the agreement made between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens of the NFL.
+ = The Austin Wranglers changed leagues from the AFL to af2.
Championship Games
On June 11,2006 the Chicago
Rush defeated the Orlando Predators to win ArenaBowl XX in Las Vegas. It was the second straight year the
game was played in Las Vegas. All previous title games were on the home field of the team with the better record.
New Orleans Arena, home of the New Orleans VooDoo, served as the site of
ArenaBowl XXI on July 29, 2007. [4] [5] This was the first professional sports championship to be staged in the city since
Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. The
San Jose SaberCats earned their third championship in six years by defeating the
Columbus Destroyers 55-33. [6]
Commissioners of Arena Football
Possible Expansion
The following cities were publicly speculated by the AFL as possible future expansion sites during the Commissioner's
conference call prior to ArenaBowl XX.[7]
The following markets have potential owners with expansion rights:
See also
External links
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