The 1996 Arena Football League season was the tenth season of the
Arena Football League. It was succeeded by
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...
. The league champions were the
Tampa Bay Storm, who defeated the
Iowa Barnstormers in
ArenaBowl X. The AFL finally stabilized its scheduled number of games. It expanded to a 14-game season, which would remain until 2003. Previously, the scheduled number of games had not stayed the same for more than three years.
Team movement
The
Texas Terror joined the league as an expansion team.
Meanwhile, the
Fort Worth Cavalry were relocated to
Minneapolis and became the
Minnesota Fighting Pike
The Minnesota Fighting Pike were an Arena football team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They joined the Arena Football League (AFL) in 1996 as an expansion team. The Fighting Pike were the first ever attempt at an arena/indoor football team in t ...
; the
Las Vegas Sting moved to
Anaheim, California, becoming the Anaheim Piranhas, and the
Miami Hooters
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at the ...
were renamed to the Florida Bobcats. The franchise rights to the
Denver Dynamite were sold and the team announced they would return in 1997 as the
Nashville Kats
Standings
Playoffs
All-Arena team
{{DEFAULTSORT:1996 Arena Football League Season