Most teams in arena & indoor football have a coaches show in some capacity, where they can plug sponsors and make public appearances in their community. Sometimes it's on the local radio station and other times it is broadcast live on the internet for the entire world to see.
Some teams do it better than others, but one of the most entertaining and consistent shows you'll see if the Albany Firebirds 'Flock U Coaches Show'. They brought us the HITS this past season, including the classic post Albany-Billings regular season meltdown "The Refs CHEATED in Billings", and they seem to find ways to keep tuned in through the offseason.
This week on the Flock U Coaches Show, they gave owner Mike Kwarta a hot mic and let him go!
He just...said it lol.
Now, if you have been paying very close attention to the arena football world over the past 9 months, hearing Arizona get announced isn't a shock. It was somewhat expect, especially after they made several posts alluding to "Big News Coming" earlier this month.
They were original slated to join the AFL in 2025, but when some of the partners that the Arizona Bandits seemed to have an agreement with were unceremoniously hit with the ban-hammer, things got a little dicey.
And there's only so many places that they could be going. The legendary Arizona Rattlers are already in the IFL and in the greater Phoenix area -- which is where the Bandits will supposedly be playing. So I doubt the IFL would even consider that.
The NAL doesn't seem like a likely destination based on comments that the Arizona Bandits ownership has mentioned in the past -- plus they already have a 'cowboy hat and bandana covering the face' team logo in the NAL, so they couldn't possibly have 2 in the same league... right?
Now that I say it out loud the Bandana Bowl does sound sweet
So that realistically leaves one destination -- Arena Football One. The wikipedia page for the Arizona Bandits was edited to show being a part of AF1 on September 7th, but you gotta take that with a massive grain of salt here. The profile that made the edits has edited numerous Arena football team pages and is probably just an ambitious fan of the game.
But it makes sense geographically to continue to build out the West if Arizona is indeed the next team annoucned:
Everett, WA
Billings, MT
Stockton, CA
Monterrey, MX
And now Phoenix, AZ
HOWEVA -- what does not make sense is going into a market that already has the most prestigious and longest running arena/indoor football franchise of all time in the Arizona Rattlers (fresh off of a IFL National Championship, mind you).
Then add in the fact that there are teams in Northern Arizona AND Tucson in the IFL as well, the Bandits are going into a very, very, very crowded marketplace for indoor and arena football.
It can succeed, but choosing to go head-to-head with one of the biggest players in the space as an expansion team in a different league without their vested interest in your success seems like a bold decision and is going to be a tough uphill battle in addition to all of the typical challenges expansion teams face.
We'll see if/when the AF1 announces Arizona as the next expansion market, but a tip of the cap to our friends in Albany for giving us this scoop on their weekly show.
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