My beginnings

I first became interested in arena football when my home town of Scranton, PA received a AF2 franchise in 2002. Now the Arena Football League (AFL) has been around since 1987 when only four teams existed in the league: Pittsburgh Gladiators, Denver Dynamite, Chicago Bruisers and Washington Commandos. The four teams only played a 6 game season where each team would face each other twice. The two teams with the best records faced off in what's still known today as the Arena Bowl. The #2 Denver Dynamite defeated the #1 Pittsburgh Gladiators 45 to 16 for the league's first Arena Bowl.

The AFL has seen many different franchises come and go throughout the years after that first season. The league has swelled up to as much as 19 teams (in 2001, 2004 and 2007) and has never had back-to-back seasons where the same exact and number of teams have all come back. Only five seasons exist where the league didn't add an expansion team for the upcoming season. So the AFL has been an evolving and growing league every since its induction.

Due to the league's success, it found the Arena Football 2 League (AF2) to bring the game to mid-sized markets in an attempt to expand the product. This "minor league" was unique because it didn't act as one for it's older brother the AFL. Team's weren't designated AF2 teams where players could develop for their respective AFL franchise. The AF2 provided the means for a player to develop, but that player could be signed by any team in the AFL. It created an equal playing field in terms of acquiring young talent for the AFL while also expanding arena football throughout the country.

The AF2 started in 2000-2009 where it met it's end after the model for the AFL came to an abrupt end in 2009. The AFL didn't play its 2009 campaign, but the AF2 did which became its final season of operation. My team (Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pioneers) made it all the way to the Arena Cup (the AF2's championship game) for the second time in club history. The Pioneers started play in 2002 and also made it to Arena Cup VIII in 2007 in a loss to the only other team to have a better record than the Pioneers, the Tulsa Talons, 73 to 66. The Pioneers also came out on the losing end in Arena Cup X as the Spokane Shock (AFL mainstay to this day) trampled on the Pioneers' hopes with a 74 to 27 victory.

My hometown team was lost after that season due to a horrible financial structure that forced the AFL to suspend operations in 2009. The AFL transformed the entire makeup of the league by eliminating the AF2 and combining previous AFL franchises with the most financially sound AF2 teams in what's known today as the AFL. Small and large markets now compete among each other in an environment where either type of club could succeed despite disparities in revenue.

Thankfully for me the Philadelphia Soul were reinstated in 2011 even though the season turned out the complete polar opposite than it did in 2008 when the Soul took home Arena Bowl XXII 59 to 56 over the San Jose SaberCats. Now after a 6-12 finish in 2011, the Soul look to rebuild the team into a championship contender and I for one can't wait to see how 2012 turns out.