Arena Re-alignment
John Hoh
Monday October 29, 2007
Well, well, take a few weeks off and one returns to some heady news coming from the league.
As was speculated at the end of the 2007 season became fact as the Austin Wranglers were granted the right by the league to move down to af2. Of course this means the players the Wranglers had on their roster, with bona fide AFL contracts, won’t be going down with the Wranglers. They will be dispersed in a Dispersal Draft. I’m surprised that the Austin owners didn’t try selling the AFL franchise rights to an owner in another city. The windfall would have helped build a solid af2 team. Seems the ownership will also change as several ex-NFL stars are cashing out as something called Texas Football enters that picture.
“Bud” Adams must have learned running an AFL team takes a little more effort than running an NFL team. Perhaps he forgot the lessons learned in the founding years of the American Football League, of which he was a charter member with his then-Houston Oilers? Again, were there no potential buyers for the franchise? Or is it now cheaper to start a new team from scratch rather than buy an existing team with debt? Bud tells us there weren’t enough fans and not enough money to make a go of things in Nashville.
Of course in perusing the Dispersal Draft I noticed at first a trade made between Colorado and Cleveland. At first I thought it was a typo and meant “Columbus.” But no, I go to the “Teams” drop down menu and there, lo and behold, is “Cleveland AFL.” I clicked and found out Bernie Kosar is involved. Can’t be bad. Dig a little more and behold the team is actually not new but the Las Vegas Gladiators, nee New Jersey Gladiators, nee New Jersey Red Dogs finding a new home in Cleveland. I wonder what the odds of survival are for Jim Ferraro in Cleveland? The team should be able to build a rivalry with Columbus.
The dicey part of that equation is that this is the third city for the franchise. That historically has been the “kiss of death” for Arena teams.
The off-season isn’t over by a long shot. Who knows what else may happen before the first kick-off of the 2008 season?
