Font Resize- Utah Blaze
- Aug 3:
- Are Blaze, AFL gone for good?
Forget about watching indoor football in Salt Lake City anytime soon.
Confirming media reports that its demise is imminent, the Arena Football League announced in a one-paragraph news release Tuesday afternoon that it has suspended operations indefinitely.
"The AFL Board of Directors took this action after they were unable to reach any consensus on restructuring the League over the past eight months," the release says. "Regrettably, the AFL's Board of Directors believes there are no other viable options available to the League right now."
The announcement means that the Utah Blaze, who competed in the 22-year-old league for three seasons (2006-2008), will certainly not play in 2010, Blaze owner John Garff acknowledged Tuesday.
Garff continues to hold out hope that a group of owners can revive the league in time for the 2011 season, but he is in the minority. Those prospects appear even more bleak after Tuesday's terse announcement.
As of now, every indication nationally is that the league is dead.
Jim Renacci, a majority owner of the Columbus Destroyers and acting commissioner of the financially beleaguered league, told the Columbus Dispatch on Monday that the league owners voted to suspend operations indefinitely.
"At this point, we're suspended indefinitely until we come up with the next plan," Renacci told the Dispatch .
Brett Bouchy, the Arizona Rattlers' majority owner, told
Signs that the league was in jeopardy first came in 2008 when longtime commissioner David Baker resigned during the week leading up to the ArenaBowl championship game.
In December of that year, the owners announced they were suspending play for the 2009 season but vowed to return in 2010, perhaps with fewer teams.
In April, the league announced it had "finalized a revitalized business model that will enable the league to return to competition in time for the 2010 season."
However, Garff told The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday that the owners could never reach a consensus on that plan.
"We needed a 75 percent vote to move forward, and on four or five different plans we have not been able to get the required number of votes to move forward," he said. "So that's the problem."
Bouchy told the Sentinel that the owners were divided into two factions -- "one that wanted to keep going, and one that didn't."
Garff said Monday afternoon that he was among the group of owners committed to keeping the league afloat, and reiterated that sentiment after Tuesday's announcement.
"While this announcement seems a bit ominous, the reality is that this is the necessary next step to coming back in 2011," he said late Tuesday afternoon.
