Fans of what is sometimes known as ‘alternate football leagues’ (everything except the NFL) have been giddy with the return of the USFL last year, the announcement that it will in fact be coming back in 2023 and the impending XFL (3.0, if you will) set to make its own return later this month.
Both of those are outdoor spring leagues (with a brief overlap between the end of the XFL season and the opening week of the USFL schedule), and there is also the IFL, which has a working agreement with the XFL. But as far as indoor gridiron action goes, the Arena Football League has been the undisputed leader.
It has a great run, launching in 1987 and even had a developmental league -af2 – which itself lasted for a decade. The AFL had to temporarily cease operations for one season in 2009 due to what was reported as “internal issues,” but came back and played until 2019 when they announced that the league had filed for bankruptcy. It was a sad end for a league that at its peak had 19 teams all across the country.
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But with the renewed interest in these leagues, the AFL officially announced that they will be taking the field once again in 2024. The early plan is for 16 unnamed teams to play a 10-game regular season and a post season to follow. The league put out a short, but strong, statement on Twitter:
