AFL Looks To Be Taking Its Final Knee
After taking the 2009 year off, the 2010 year for the Arena Football League looks to be non-existent, as James Guidry, the regional director of the players association said that it “seems to be inevitable at this point” the AFL will fold. The demise of the AFL all started two days before the 2008 Arena Bowl, when David Baker, commissioner at the time, shockingly resigned. The owners did not look to find a replacement. ESPN had been the televisor of the games in the last year of operations. “This is entirely an internal AFL matter,” ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said. “Our telecast agreement with the league has been terminated.”
There was serious hope for Arena Football in 2010, but there was a disagreement with owners thinking about bringing in a private equity firm to invest in the league. That was basically the last straw for the league. “We weren’t creating enough revenue. Salaries were going up and without revenue coming in it was a bad business model,” Philedelphia Soul WR Chris Jackson said. “That’s one thing that they wanted to focus on and change some of those things. They tried. They tried to market the league as a whole instead of small franchises likes Grand Rapids vs. L.A. The owners knew there was too much money to be lost.”
I always enjoyed watching Arena Football, and was a big follower in the Columbus Destroyers, who were coached by Doug Kay. I remember when they made that run in 2007 to the Arena Bowl, and the upsets they had along the way. They came up short in Arena Bowl XXI, adding to the failures by my beloved Ohio teams in that year.
