It's been rumored for a while, but the Arena Football League has made it official... the indoor football circuit will not play in 2009.
The league voted late Sunday to suspend operations for the coming year, with an eye on restructuring - the AFL reportedly hopes to resume play in 2010, but that's not a certainty.
Since this isn't Ohio Sports Watch, we only note this because it means Good Karma sports WKNR/850 "ESPN 850" will lose one of its play-by-play properties through no fault of its own.
The AFL's Cleveland Gladiators started play in 2008, and were actually quite successful. But with no league operating, the Gladiators flagship radio station won't have any games to air. We haven't tracked the other AFL team in Ohio, the Columbus Destroyers, but they obviously won't be playing, either.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports today that "at least six" Gladiators employees are now without jobs, including sales staffers and the team's media relations director.
Play-by-play voice Mike Case's "day job" is over in Youngstown, as live reporter on Vindicator-owned NBC affiliate WFMJ/21's morning news...and analyst and former Brown Hanford Dixon surely has enough media work to keep him busy.
Gladiators co-owner and team president Bernie Kosar will presumably continue his on-air appearances through his deal with "ESPN 850 WKNR". At times, the former Browns quarterback is nearly as entertaining as the call of actual football games...
Monday, December 15, 2008
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3 comments:
Bad enough there's Arena football.
There's actually an Arena2 league as well. Toledo is getting an expansion team that will play at it's new arena... that holds a paltry 10-12k ppl.
Lakewood HS's stadium holds 10k.
AF2... expansion!?!?
I don't get it.
http://www.af2.com/
OH....this is better...
The Toledo AF2... called the "Bullfrogs".
Very aggressive.... kidding.
http://www.toledobullfrogs.com/
Chuck, you are correct... the AF2 folks have announced that they are continuing to operate in 2009, and aren't connected to the AFL shutdown.
And there is one AF2 team in Northeast Ohio, the Mahoning Valley Thunder.
http://www.mahoningvalleythunder.com/
We don't know if they'll be on Cumulus sports WBBW/1240 "ESPN 1240" again in 2009, but it does appear they'll be playing along with the other AF2 teams...
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