AFL Wont Play In California Due To Insurance, What’s San Antonio Excuse?
San Antonio Force 2
The Arena Football League returned to play this past weekend but chose to not return to the state of California due to the states workers compensation system, which allows retired players to receive $100,000 or more for claims that would be inviable in any other state.
The AFL had regularly operated teams in the state with the Los Angeles Avengers and the San Jose SaberCats in 2008, before the league ceased operations. Ownership groups have inquired about placing teams in Fresno, Los Angeles-Anaheim and the San Jose markets, but cost for insurance became so high after retired athletes filed claims that the AFL decided not to return.
The AFL purchased a league wide insurance policy for 2010 from American International Group and distributes the cost evenly among the 15 teams, regardless of their states. But California brings such high liability for football-related injuries that an ownership group would have to absorb most of the insurance cost for all the teams itself.
Claims cost AFL teams the same as their NFL counterparts, $100,000 to $150,000, but operate with far slimmer profit margins.
If California can’t have a team due to insurance claims, whats San Antonio excuse? Bring back the San Antonio Force at least for Rudy J since he never got to use his 1993 season tickets he purchased.
New Arena League To Air On NFL Network
Might As Well
The NFL season may be over, but live football will return to NFL Network as soon as April.
NFL Network is set to sign a one-year deal to televise games from the new Arena Football 1 league beginning this April and the deal will have an option for a second season. NFL Network will air live, Friday night telecasts throughout the season, as well as the league’s championship game.
The AF1 replaces the old AFL, which folded after the 2008 season. In recent years, the AFL had television deals with ESPN/ABC (2007-08), NBC (2003-06) and OLN/Versus (2006).
The AF1 is expected to be rebranded as the AFL by the start of its inaugural season.
Kurt Warner Retires From National Football League
Never Giving Up
Kurt Warner has called an end to one of the great storybook careers in NFL history. The 38-year-old quarterback announced his retirement from the game after a dozen years in a league that at first rejected him, then revered him as he came from nowhere to lead the lowly St. Louis Rams to two Super Bowls, winning the first of them. Written off as a has-been, he rose again to lead the long-suffering Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl a year ago.
Warner walked away with a year left on a two-year, $23 million contract, knowing he still had the skills to play at the highest level.He had one of the greatest postseason performances ever in Arizona’s 51-45 overtime wild card victory over Green Bay Packers on Jan. 10, but sustained a brutal hit in the Cardinals 45-14 divisional round loss to the New Orleans Saints six days later.
Warner leaves the game with a legacy that could land him in the Hall of Fame even though he didn’t start his first game until he was 28. In a comparison with the 14 quarterbacks to make the Hall of Fame in the last 25 years, Warner has a better career completion percentage, yards per pass attempt and yards per game. Only Dan Marino had more career 300-yard passing games.
In 124 regular-season games, Warner completed 65.5 percent of his passes for 32,344 yards and 208 touchdowns. He and Fran Tarkenton are the only NFL quarterbacks to throw for 100 touchdowns and 14,000 yards for two teams.
He was also the fastest player in NFL history to 10,000 yards passing and tied Dan Marino as fastest to reach 30,000. He has the top three passing performances in Super Bowl history. His 1,156 yards passing in the 2008 playoffs broke the NFL record of 1,063 he set with St. Louis in 1999.
He played three seasons in the Arena Football League and one in NFL Europe, mixed in with a sting stocking grocery shelves back in Iowa. Warner made the Rams as a backup in 1998, then was thrust into the starting role in 1999 when Trent Green was injured.
What followed was a masterful and wholly unexpected season, when he led the Rams to a 13-3 regular-season record, then a Super Bowl triumph over Tennessee Titans. He was named the league and Super Bowl MVP. St. Louis was upset in the first round of the playoffs the following season, but Warner had them back in the big game in 2001, where “The Greatest Show on Turf” lost a squeaker to New England Patriots. The season earned him a second NFL MVP award.
But after an injury-plagued 2002 season, he was sacked six times and suffered a concussion in a 2003 season-opening loss to the New York Giants. He never started for St. Louis again. He signed a free agent contract with the Giants for 2004, but was replaced by rookie Eli Manning after nine games. Warner came to the Cardinals in 2005 and was an off-and-on starter before replacing the injured Matt Leinart part way through the 2007 season.
Warner had to beat out Leinart the following spring, then led the Cardinals to the NFC West crown and playoff victories over Atlanta, Carolina and Philadelphia before the narrow loss to Pittsburgh Steelers in last year’s Super Bowl, where he threw for 377 yards.
Warner’s departure leaves Leinart the presumed replacement. The former Heisman Trophy winner has started 17 games for Arizona but only one in the last two years.
Some People Just Won’t Let The AFL Die
Let It Go
A news conference is planned Monday to announce the formation of a new league called Arena Football 1 with teams from the former AFL and arenafootball2 leagues. Representatives of the af2 teams Oklahoma City Yard Dogz, Arkansas Twisters, and the Spokane Shock, intend to participate. The number of franchises in the new league isn’t yet known.
The old AFL canceled its 2009 season before eventually folding in August, ending a 22-year run for the high-scoring indoor brand of football. Play in af2 was never disrupted, but teams ended the season unsure of what would happen next.
“When the AFL went bankrupt and dissolved the AFL, because the af2 was an arm of the AFL, af2 in a sense was dissolved as well. This is basically the af2 reforming itself, and then from there, whatever they’re going to do with the remaining AFL teams that want to continue to play,” said Troy Thompson, director of operations for the Arkansas Twisters.
Training camps will open in March and a 16-week season will begin in either late March or early April, the same basic time frame as before for the leagues. The business model of the new league will closely mimic that of af2, with players all receiving the same salary.
The residents of Des Moines, Iowa all have their fingers crossed.
Arena Football League To Fold
Going Out Of Business
The Arena Football League is unlikely to return from its one year hiatus.
The AFL is set to shut down permanently, with a press conference expected Wednesday. This comes days after Tampa Bay Storm president Jim Borghesi said via Facebook that the league would disband. The AFL canceled its 2009 season late last year so it could fix its economic model. At the time, some players “doubted the league would come back” in 2010. The first sign of trouble for the league may have been during the week of last year’s Arena Bowl, when Commissioner David Baker stepped down. Then, in the offseason, the relatively successful New Orleans Voodoo folded. As perhaps a final blow, a deal with Platinum Equity — a company that was set to take a majority stake in the league worth $100 million — fell through.
The end of the Arena Football League would conclude a 21-year run that began in 1987. The league arguably reached its pinnacle earlier in this decade, after a television deal with NBC resulted in unprecedented exposure.
