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nksports
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Post by nksports » Fri Oct 14, 2016 4:58 am

[quote=""crixus""]Portland, LA, Orlando and Jacksonville are all dead. Butera is the worst commissioner in history of any sport. :mad: [/quote]

There are CBA people who would argue Isiah Thomas was worse.

crixus
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Post by crixus » Sun Oct 16, 2016 9:43 am

[quote=""nksports""]There are CBA people who would argue Isiah Thomas was worse.[/quote]

That's funny and quite possibly true. Thanks for the laugh. :D
Last edited by crixus on Sun Oct 16, 2016 9:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by crixus » Sun Oct 16, 2016 9:47 am

[quote=""crixus""]Portland, LA, Orlando and Jacksonville are all dead. Butera is the worst commissioner in history of any sport. :mad: [/quote]

Update: Portland, LA and Orlando are dead. Jacksonville is moving to another league which they haven't announced yet. And Arizona is moving to the IFL. So the AFL is down to only four teams (Cleveland, Philly, Tampa Bay and a new team in DC). And I don't think that line up will last much longer either.

RIP AFL...long live the IFL.

4th&long
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Post by 4th&long » Mon Oct 17, 2016 3:40 am

The league has a commissioner that's been running teams out of the league and bringing in the LA Kiss and LV was a drain.

Pittsburgh, San Jose, Spokane, Iowa either already moved or said 'I'm out' already.

Other than the name, why would any ownership join into the league? It's season is already too long, it's already hampered by not being real FB and now it's down to 3 teams and expansion Washington DC.

They should have gone with an outdoor league played a short winter spring season. That has more appeal by far than indoor FB.

Or just settle for a niche mostly regional schedule league. Then have the regions only meet in the playoffs. And try for regional tv and a few games and playoffs on national cable.

So either go real FB or the 'better to rule in hell than serve in heaven' approach.

4th :eek:

LordBy2014
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Post by LordBy2014 » Mon Oct 17, 2016 5:40 pm

My opinion:

AFL peaked in popularity in the late 1990's/early 2000's when they had stable ownership and a semi-partnership with the NFL. When Jon Bon Jovi and John Elway joined up and tried to change the rules and make it more like the NFL as far as free substitution/end of the Ironman era among other changes, that was the beginning of the end . . .

When AFL ceased operations for a season (2009) and then came back under the single-entity model, the fan base was lost from a national standpoint.

Will give the Arena Football League credit in that they managed to last a lot longer then I thought they ever would - looks like the IFL is your place to go to for arena-like football for the time being . . .
Last edited by LordBy2014 on Tue Oct 18, 2016 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Pounder » Mon Oct 17, 2016 8:14 pm

There's only issue that the "other message board" contemplates that gives pause to announcing the utter doom and bloody disintegration of the AFL.

What the frack is Ted Leonsis thinking? Why isn't he running away from this mess with the Kermit The Frog caterwaul and arms flailing over his head? Does he know something we don't?
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crixus
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Post by crixus » Tue Oct 18, 2016 4:35 am

[quote=""4th&long""]The league has a commissioner that's been running teams out of the league and bringing in the LA Kiss and LV was a drain.

Pittsburgh, San Jose, Spokane, Iowa either already moved or said 'I'm out' already.

Other than the name, why would any ownership join into the league? It's season is already too long, it's already hampered by not being real FB and now it's down to 3 teams and expansion Washington DC.

They should have gone with an outdoor league played a short winter spring season. That has more appeal by far than indoor FB.

Or just settle for a niche mostly regional schedule league. Then have the regions only meet in the playoffs. And try for regional tv and a few games and playoffs on national cable.

So either go real FB or the 'better to rule in hell than serve in heaven' approach.

4th :eek: [/quote]

You're right about the Commissioner running teams out. Scott Butera is the worst commissioner in league history. The last time the AFL had only four teams was when they were first starting out three decades ago. I don't think the AFL can survive the damage he's done. They might play one more season but I doubt it goes beyond that.
Last edited by crixus on Tue Oct 18, 2016 5:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Sam Hill
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Post by Sam Hill » Wed Oct 19, 2016 2:16 pm

[quote=""4th&long""]
They should have gone with an outdoor league played a short winter spring season. That has more appeal by far than indoor FB.[/quote]

Except that there's been indoor football played - actual games and stuff - at a variety of levels in this country continuously for the last 29 years.

Meanwhile the spring outdoor game that has far more appeal has had the USFL and XFL and nothing since 2001.

Appeal to you, I'm sure. But you thought the FXFL was worthwhile.

But not appeal to investors. Not appeal to sponsors. Not appeal to media outlets.

If it really had far more appeal, don't you think someone would have been able to play a game in the last 15 years?
Old enough to remember when bashing the ABA was fun.

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Gene Duryea
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Post by Gene Duryea » Mon Oct 31, 2016 4:08 pm

I'm going to go out on a strange limb and compare Inside Football to 1960s Science Fiction television. Butera has wound up being the Fred Freiberger of Arena Football.

Freiberger was the 3rd season producer of Original Star Trek. A show which (just before he took it over) had recently been shoved into a scum sucking time slot and had seen its original budget cut by close to 20%. And then he caught all kinds of Hell because ratings and the quality of the show suffered greatly during his tenure. But to paraphrase Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) and Willian Shatner (Kirk) ... "The poor man was a Producer who was being given no resources to produce with".

So let's look at what happened in the "Pre Butera" years.

AFL 1.0 had been forced into bankruptcy.

Arena 1 was then more than $6 Million in debt, after buying the assets of the old AFL and becoming AFL 2.0. And I honestly believe that adopting the AFL's identity was it's first major blunder.

Prior to the sale of the AFL assets ... AF2 had been doing reasonably well and IFL had been doing reasonably well.

So there was clearly a solid market for that level of inside football. Which means the logical move would have been to let Arena 1 continue as the successor of the old AF2 and then license the use of the AFL moniker to a group of owners who wanted to try and play their franchises at a higher level. This would have kept the AF2 level teams on sound financial footing while bringing in additional income from the insane money spenders who wanted to pay the price for trying to buy their way into Arena Football Valhalla.

(1) They didn't do this. (2) The sound & sane AF2 teams bolted for the IFL. (3) The remaining AFL members allowed themselves to be lead into a pattern of their league spending massive amounts of money trying to help this organization look successful.

While the IFL (and the teams that eventually combined to form the CIF) have been moving along in an organic fashion. Not spending money the league doesn't have. Encouraging a struggling team to leave on good terms for a different league and possibly return in the future.

By the time Butera took over, the AFL was already in a declining orbit. 2X amount of money was flowing in but 3X to 4X was already flowing out. He could try and rein in spending (which several teams were resistant to) or he could try a few Hail Mary moves and hope they panned out.

Those moves didn't work. And Butera is now getting screamed at for everything that went wrong ... Even though the seeds for much of what turned rotten were planted by the bad decisions originally made by Arena 1, when it chose to follow an unsustainable business model.

That's my 2 Shillings on the situation.

-Duryea -

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