AF2
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The AF2 (often styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football rules and style of play. League seasons ran from April through July with the postseason and ArenaCup championship in August. The AF2 continued to operate while the AFL suspended operations for its 2009 season. The league was effectively disbanded in September 2009 when no team committed to playing in 2010, but several of the stronger franchises transferred into the reconstituted AFL.[1]
Like most other minor sports leagues, the AF2 existed to develop
History
The AF2 was founded in 1999 by the Arena Football League in an attempt to bring the game to mid-sized markets following the success of AFL on the national level.[6] The AF2 was not intended to be a farm system for the AFL like the American Hockey League and Minor League Baseball are to the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball, respectively. The league was instead designed as a league that would develop the players in the interest of the higher league as a whole. The lack of AFL–AF2 team affiliations would prevent the AFL from "stashing" players in the lower league for later use. Players in the AF2 were signed to one-year contracts, after the expiration of which they essentially became free agents to sign with whichever league and team they would prefer. The 16-week contracts with the individual AF2 teams also prevented players from leaving for the parent league mid-season; this preserved the quality of play in the lower league and did not destroy team dynamics with players coming and going throughout the season as they do in the NHL and MLB.[7][8]
The foundation of the AF2 was a response to the launch of several small-market indoor football leagues in the mid-to-late 1990s, including the
The Xtreme Football League was another upstart league trying to capitalize on the arena football phenomenon. Founded in
The AF2 finally took the field in March 2000 in a game between the
The first season concluded with over 868,000 people attending AF2 games, averaging over 7,200 per game; several teams ended with average attendances over 10,000 fans. Deemed a success, the league returned for a second season and returned all 15 original teams as well as 13 expansion teams.
Dissolution
For legal purposes, the league was effectively dissolved on September 8, 2009, when no team submitted the paperwork to return in 2010. Since the original AFL had suspended 2009 operations and later suspended all operations indefinitely after declaring bankruptcy, the minority owners (as the AFL owned 50.1%) of AF2 were wary of being owned by and paying money owed to the bankrupt league's creditors.[1]
The remaining teams and Board of Directors of AF2, and some former members of the AFL joined to create a new league, originally called "Arena Football One", which was announced at a press conference on September 28, 2009. Legally, Arena Football One, later doing business as the Arena Football League, was an entity independent of the original Arena Football League and AF2 and was made up of former AFL and AF2 teams with several new (expansion) teams and one team from another league.[13] After acquiring the assets of the former Arena Football League in a bankruptcy court sale, the new entity formally became the "new" Arena Football League. Unlike the previous Arena Football League and AF2, the new AFL was an entity-model league in which the league owned the individual teams and hired local management groups to operate them, rather than the traditional North American sports league model where each team is a separate business and the league is a non-profit association formed and controlled by the various team owners in order to co-ordinate and govern operations.
Rumors of a return
There had been rumors of a possible return of AF2, after Arena Football League commissioner Jerry Kurz had stated a return of the league for 2013, but that did not materialize.[14][15]
ArenaCup
The
With the exception of
ArenaCup IX, as well as the season in its entirety, was broadcast online via NiFTy TV.[18]
Teams
The league's teams were divided into two conferences, the American and National Conferences. The conferences were further subdivided into three divisions each. Each division represented a region of the country in which teams played. Unlike most sports leagues, the alignment of teams into divisions was not even; in 2009, the Central division featured three teams while the West featured five teams. Teams were placed in divisions based on geographic rivalries to reduce travel costs as teams played division opponents more often than non-divisional opponents. Alignment was subject to change each year as new teams joined the league and others dropped out.
Because of legal issues regarding the bankruptcy and subsequent dissolution of the original Arena Football League, no team committed to continue with arenafootball2 operations. This list is the final alignment of AF2 at the end of the 2009 season.
League expansion
In a June 2003 interview with Sports Illustrated, AFL commissioner David Baker briefly mentioned the AF2, saying how one day he envisioned the league growing to 100 teams. The AF2 started off with 15 teams in 2000, then expanded to 28 teams in 2001, and finally to 34 in 2002. The number of teams the league fielded dropped every year from there on after, until the 2006 season; 27 teams were fielded in 2003, 25 in 2004, and 20 in 2005. Finally, in 2006, the AF2 saw its first expansion in four years, fielding 23 teams, and continued that into 2007 with 30 teams.
The drop in teams between 2002 and 2006 could be partially attributed to the league expanding too rapidly in its first three seasons. Many teams were financially unstable and folded. This could have been at least in large measure due to higher expenses, even compared to those of similar leagues. Franchise fees in the league ranged from $600,000 to $1 million.[19] Historically, massive sports league expansions have had little success, either in indoor football or other sports. For instance, the National Indoor Football League, a rival indoor league, saw large numbers of expansion teams after beginning play in 2001 but many struggled financially and played only briefly, incurring considerable financial losses before folding. In more recent years, the American Basketball Association has exhibited the same situation to an even greater degree.
Nine new expansion teams were approved for 2007 in the AF2: the Boise Burn, the Cincinnati Jungle Kats, the Fort Wayne Fusion, the Laredo Lobos, the Lubbock Renegades, the Mahoning Valley Thunder, the Texas Copperheads, the Tri-Cities Fever, and the Corpus Christi Sharks. The Texas, Laredo, and Tri-Cities teams moved to the AF2 from other indoor football leagues. For the 2007 season, the league fielded 30 teams. After the 2007 season, three of those teams folded, the Fort Wayne Fusion, the Cincinnati Jungle Kats, and the Laredo Lobos. The Everett Hawks, Alabama Steeldogs, and the Bakersfield Blitz also ceased operations.
For 2008, the league fielded one team fewer, at 29. Two teams were reactivated: the
Continuing teams
When AF2 folded, some teams joined the AF2 Board of Directors in forming the new "Arena Football 1" that soon became the new Arena Football League. Iowa, Milwaukee, Tennessee Valley (which changed its name to Alabama to reflect the state, rather than the region), Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Bossier-Shreveport, and Spokane all moved to the new AFL to join "old" AFL teams Arizona, Orlando, Tampa Bay, Chicago, and Cleveland, along with expansion teams in Dallas and Jacksonville, and the American Indoor Football team in Utah that had also been in the old AFL. Kentucky, Tri-Cities, and Arkansas also committed to the new league, but Kentucky folded, and Tri-Cities and Arkansas followed Green Bay and Amarillo to the Indoor Football League. Albany did not play in 2010 while seeking an expansion into the "new" AFL in 2011, along with a planned addition in Toledo.
By the conclusion of the
After the conclusion of the 2019 AFL season, the Arena Football League filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ceased operations in November 2019.[22]
See also
- Defunct AF2 teams
- List of leagues of American and Canadian football
References
- ^ a b Johnson, Dan (September 9, 2009). "Barnstormers hope to land in top tier of redefined league". Des Moines Register. Retrieved September 29, 2009. [dead link]
- ^ "They play arena football for love, not money".
- ^ "AFL closure won't affect Pirates, af2".
- ^ "ArenaFan Originals — Interview with Head Coach Adam Shackleford ". ArenaFan.com. Retrieved 22 August 2015.
- ^ "Arena lands off-the-wall bathroom". 2001-07-25.[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b c d "A Brief History of Arena and Indoor Football".
- ^ "The Jim Foster Interview Part 1". 2000-05-08.
- ^ "The Jim Foster Interview Part 2". 2000-05-14.
- ^ Mike Vergane (October 23, 2000). "The Bigger, Better af2". www.oursportscentral.com. OurSports Central. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
- ^ "AF2 Announces Kickoff 2000". 2000-01-11.
- ^ "2000 af2 attendance chart".
- ^ "ArenaCup History".
- ^ "Arena Football 1 to launch in 2010". September 28, 2009. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- ^ AF2 or something, ArenaFan Message Board, May 25, 2012
- ^ af2 to return in 2013? Chris Menn, bostonafl.blogpost.com, May 26, 2012
- ^ "2006 ArenaCup to be played in Puerto Rico". AF2. 2006-07-21. Retrieved 2007-03-26.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "2008 ArenaCup returns to highest seed format". AF2. 2008-03-20. Retrieved 2008-03-20.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "arenafootball2 Fans Can Watch Their Home Team Score With NFT's Online Broadcasting Technology" Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, NiFTy Online Television, 2008-03-25.
- ^ Lowe, Mike (2006-09-01). "Arena football discussed". Portland Press Herald. Archived from the original on 10 February 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
- ^ "VooDoo, Outlaws Cease Operations". www.arenafootballleague.com. Arena Football League. August 9, 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-08-11. Retrieved August 9, 2015.
- ^ "Arena Football to Return to Portland in 2014". Arena Football League. Archived from the original on 2013-10-19. Retrieved 2013-10-18.
- ^ Gleeson, Scott (November 27, 2019). "Arena Football League files for bankruptcy, ceases all operations". USA Today. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
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