On Friday February 14th, in a late evening news dump it was announced that the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Mavericks were not going to be participating in the inaugural 2025 season.
Talk about heartbreak on Valentine's Day, folks.
There's a lot to break down, so I am going to start brain-dumping my thoughts here and see if we can make a cohesive blog post about this. Let's start with the timing of the announcement.
Timing
I don't think there is an ideal time to announce that a team is not participating in the season, but having the news break a week before training camp and weeks before the season kicks off is brutal.
The biggest question to me about this whole announce is how long was it known that the Mavericks likely weren't going to be able to participate?
In article published by The Times-Tribune (Scranton's local publication), it was stated that the reason for the opt out was "An overwhelming lack of local interest and sponsorship ultimately proved to be an insurmountable barrier."
WOOF -- that's a tough one to swallow. The team was announced in September of 2024, meaning in the five months since the announcement they determined there was no interest? They had to have reached this conclusion and known the inevitable sooner.
The team was in a scramble to secure their arena deal on a tight timeline and realistically (hindsight is 20/20, I know) should have been plotting for a 2026 debut from the jump.
Back when the team was announced I touched on some of the apprehension from fans about expanding too quickly -- ironically enough, on the episode with the interview with the Wilkes-Barre owner.
The Schedule Ripple Effect This is going to be a scheduling NIGHTMARE for the AF1. The entire East division has their schedule flipped upside down.
Albany - Week 8 in Wilkes-Barre, Week 11 in Albany, Week 14 in Albany
Orlando - Week 2 in Wilkes-Barre, Week 6 in Orlando
Nashville - Week 1 in Wilkes-Barre, Week 5 in Nashville, Week 13 in Wilkes-Barre
Another schedule you can crumple up and throw in the trash
Orlando got screwed over schedule wise arguable the most in 2024 in the AFL, and now all 3 of these 'legacy' Arena Football brands are left with giant holes in their schedule.
One third of Albany's home games are gone. One of the biggest draws in arena football and most successful franchises is now left with Jake Molonich-sized schedule holes.
Arena dates have already been locked in by this point, as we're about 3 weeks before the season starts. What else can they do? The NAL has gone through some similar issues this offseason (despite what some folks may claim) and they have resorted to scheduling out of league opponents in their newfound schedule gaps. It's definitely not an ideal solution, but at least it gets a team in the building?
Coaches & Players
This is the group that people need to be empathizing with the most. Coach Shawn Liotta left a job as Offensive Coordinator of the Wheeling Miners to take this job, and recruited and collected a pretty good group of players. They were definitely going to make some noise in the East division this season, but they won't even get the opportunity to take the field.
I mean, Coach Liotta was just featured on AF1 on One a month ago talking about roster building and what he was excited for the most with the Mavericks:
It really sucks that players are always on the losing side of these types of situations -- and now we're at a point where rosters are probably full across multiple leagues heading into training camp and there may not be as much opportunity as there was before.
RIP Potential Uniform Greatness
Now this one is such a minimal impact compared to the players & coaches literally being out a job, but the light blue, white & red could have been a banger of a uniform.
We've seen success with similar color schemes in other leagues, so you can probably piece together what could have been. But dang it this uniform going against the Orlando Predators black, red & white could've been a great aesthetically pleasing event.
Where Do We Go From Here?
One of the things that the AFL struggled with the most in 2024 was getting too big too quickly without a plan. It's painful to see some of the same mistakes repeated this offseason heading into AF1's inaugural campaign, because it feels like they have a plan, but are still trying to get too big too quickly.
Monterrey was pushed to 2026.
Stockton was pushed to 2026.
Wilkes-Barre is out for 2025.
Three expansion franchises that were initially announced for 2025 are not competing. Combine that with the fact that Arizona still hasn't announced their home arena (even though a deal is supposedly in place), the expansion efforts have been a flop so far for the league.
It's frustrating because there is a ton of leadership experience in the arena & indoor game in the building for the AF1, yet some of the same roadblocks are being run into at 45 mph.
The mindset needs to change from "We're in competition with the IFL & NAL as the PREMIER 50-yard football league" to "we need to be the best league that we can be with what we have and earn the public's trust back".
I love the arena game and want to see it succeed so badly, but times like this make it so frustrating to be a fan because they continually find ways to prove the skeptics and naysayers right.
I'm hoping that when the football season kicks off that we'll be able to have conversations centered around the action that takes place on the field, but getting there in one piece feels like more of an uphill battle than it should.
Follow Off The Wall on Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok & BlueSky and let me know if you agree, disagree, have a counter point, whatever it is -- let's talk about it!
Comments