The AFL is hands down the most successful minor league system
for professional football in the history of the United States. Around since
1987 arena football was a creative idea executed smartly although modestly over
an extended period.
The AFL was the brain child of not big investors but of Jim
Foster. Jim played college football at the University of Iowa. Following
graduation he played for and eventually helped run different minor league
football teams. An example of this is the Newton Nite Hawks (extra credit if
you have any idea were Newton is) who Jim helped organize an international tour
of Europe (video of this tour can be found on youtube and is kind of fun to
see).
Jim understood the difficulties of minor league football. A
minor league team would be luck to draw 6,000 fans. For that size large
stadiums like those used by colleges and the NFL are out of the question. Minor
league teams ended up mostly playing in high school football stadiums. The
problem with that is high school football stadiums have a negative stigma, your
are limited to the kind of promotions you can do, you can’t serve beer or alcohol
which is were minor league baseball and hockey makes its money, and high school
stadiums are often poorly maintained.
There is also a lot of expense connected to keeping a full
roster (36 guys or more) on a football team lucky to draw 6,000 fans.
Jim saw the success indoor soccer was having during the 80s
and had a revolutionary idea. He took the game of football and smushed it down
to fit in a hockey rink. That way games could be played in indoor arenas around
the country. 6,000 fans at a 60,000 seat NFL stadium look pitiful but 6,000
fans at a hockey arena looks like a happin time! Since games were done in arenas you could sell
beer and do crazy promotions and venues were used for big name concerts and
other sporting events so there was no stigma.
Instead of playing 11 per side football the league played 8
per side and had an “iron man rule” where 6 players had to play both offense
and defense. This reduced the roster size down to only 20 players per team
making pay-roll a lot easier to get.
Jim Foster did a good job in the early days securing
sponsorships and television deals and eventually big name investors.
In the early days many of the players were former DII
college players and the league had a reputation of being a place players go when
their careers weren’t going to go anywhere else. Slowly over time the caliber of
players grew and there are along list of NFL players that used the AFL as a
stepping stone.
So the league did a good job managing both personal expectation
and fan expectation and a good job managing their pay-roll.
The main problem Arena Football has had is being accepted as
“real” football. In the early days the game was very gimmicky this was okay
because the league was trying to get noticed. When the league landed a national
TV contract with NBC the game needed to become more mainstream and more like
outdoor football. The ball size was too small, the iron-man rule became
out-dated, the defense was too restricted, there was no running game, the nets
at the end of the end zones seemed silly, the lack of out-of-bounds, the
regular flying of players into the crowd, the amount of video game like crazy
plays, All of these things kept the game from being accepted by the mainstream
football fan and all of these issues could have been addressed easily.
Because of this Arena Football eventually filed for bankruptcy.
The league is still around today. They currently have a pretty nice TV deal
with CBS Sports and teams in several major markets. The AFL is still the best
option for American football players to play professionally without going to
Canada.
