American Indoor Football Association - History

History

The league has its roots in the Atlantic Indoor Football League, which began play in 2005 under the leadership of Andrew Haines. The league (originally proposed under the name "United States Indoor Football League" in 2004) began with six teams, all of them based in the eastern United States. Two teams played all of their games on the road, and the regular season was cut short two weeks because of teams being unable to secure venues for playoff games. In the 2005-06 offseason, the league changed its name to the American Indoor Football League, while nine expansion teams entered the league and a tenth (the Rome Renegades) joined from the National Indoor Football League.

The 2006 season was marred by the folding of two teams, and the league used semi-pro teams to fill scheduling vacancies. The league was briefly acquired by Greens Worldwide, Inc., the owners of the amateur North American Football League, during the 2006 season, but they terminated the contract soon afterwards. Nine teams left the league after the season, including four who split off to create the short-lived World Indoor Football League. On October 2, 2006, a massive reorganization took place as Morris and Mink set up a new league, which absorbed all of the remaining AIFL franchises, and Haines was ousted. (Haines would go on to create the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League in 2007, before similar stability problems led to the forced divestiture of that league as well. Haines would, in April 2010, announce he was relaunching his league as the Ultimate Indoor Football League beginning in 2011 and revived two defunct former AIFL teams.) The league took on the American Indoor Football Association name at the same time.

The 2007 season was relatively successful for the league, as all 112 scheduled games were played and no teams folded mid-season, a major improvement over the past two seasons (when the AIFA was known as the AIFL). The AIFA Championship Bowl I was a neutral site game held in Florence, SC. In addition, the league held its 1st All-Star Game the same weekend, also in Florence. League owners stated that the neutral site was chosen so that both games could be televised to obtain nationwide exposure for the league.

The league has since expanded nationwide and individual teams have been able to acquire several players with NFL experience, a sign that the league has achieved a level on par with leagues such as af2. The league had earned a major television contract as well: On September 17, 2007, The American Indoor Football Association owners John Morris and Michael Mink announced that the league signed a three-year national television broadcast, mobile phone broadcast, and webcast licensing agreement with Simply 4Me Incorporated (d.b.a. SimplyMe TV), who would produce a live broadcast and relay the games on the Internet and through the ION Television network in exchange for US$2,500,000 in rights fees for the AIFA. Without any public explanation, these games never made it to broadcast in any medium. ION subsequently dropped the league from their schedule and replaced it with Western movies. It was not until April 15, 2008 that SimplyMe, after having not produced a single broadcast by the midpoint of the season, reported in a letter to the league that it would no longer produce AIFA games. Later in the season, FSN Pittsburgh agreed to pick up the remaining games; Erie, Pennsylvania-based Image Sports Network also televised local games of the Erie RiverRats.

Eight teams participating in the league in 2007 did not return for the 2008 season, including the 2007 champion Lakeland Thunderbolts. The AIFA is the third league since 2004 (excluding the folded WIFL and NIFL before its folding) to lose its standing champion (the 2004 NIFL champion Lexington Horsemen left to join the newly created UIF and are now in af2, and the 2006 champion Billings Outlaws also left to join two years later.) However, nine teams signed on to begin play in 2008, and the league created a Western Conference. In 2007, the team farthest west was based in Mississippi; in 2008, the team farthest west was based in Arizona. Three of the four teams who have won the league championship are no longer active league members.

The 2009 season culminated in AIFA Championship Bowl III, hosted by the Western Conference champion Wyoming Cavalry on July 25, 2009. The game, played before 6,500 fans at the Casper Event Center, saw the Reading Express defeat the Wyoming Cavalry for their first title, 65-42.

As the 2010 season approached, AIFA continued to expand its nationwide footprint. Expansion franchises have been added in Richmond, Virginia; Yakima, Washington; Wasilla, Alaska (believed to be the smallest city in America to host a national professional football franchise) and Wenatchee, Washington. The moves give the AIFA a much more significant presence on the West Coast of the United States. To accommodate this, and to keep travel expenses down, for the 2010 season the AIFA adopted a scheduling system that effectively treats the Eastern and Western conferences as separate leagues, with no regular-season crossover between the two conferences. The league also secured a television contract with AMGTV, which will syndicate a "Game of the Week" package to regional sports networks and its network of low-powered broadcast stations.

In 2010, the Baltimore Mariners completed the league's first-ever perfect season by winning all fourteen regular season games and winning AIFA Championship Bowl IV.