The 2016 Arena Football League season was the 29th season in the history of the
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...
. Prior to the start of the season, the league contracted to eight teams. The 16-game regular season then began on April 1, 2016 and ended on August 1, 2016. The league, however, kept its eight-team playoff format, which meant that every club qualified for the postseason.
League business
Teams
The
Las Vegas Outlaws and the
New Orleans VooDoo
Louisiana Voodoo (french: Vaudou louisianais, es, Vudú de Luisiana), also known as New Orleans Voodoo, is an African diasporic religion which originated in Louisiana, now in the southern United States. It arose through a process of syncretism ...
were dropped from the league at the end of the
2015
File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...
season because new ownership groups could not be found for either team. The
Spokane Shock jumped to the
Indoor Football League
The Indoor Football League (IFL) is a professional indoor American football league created in 2008 out of the merger between the Intense Football League and United Indoor Football. It has one of the largest number of currently active teams am ...
on September 1, 2015.
The AFL claimed ownership of the Shock name, forcing the team to rename itself the
Spokane Empire.
On October 30, 2015, the league announced that there would not be any expansion teams for the 2016 season; this event occurred just under three hours before what had been slated to be the expected announcement of an expansion franchise in San Antonio to be owned by the ownership group of the
San Antonio Spurs
The San Antonio Spurs are an American professional basketball team based in San Antonio. The Spurs compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its home ...
. The group owning the 2015 league champion
San Jose SaberCats
The San Jose SaberCats were a professional arena football team based in San Jose, California. The SaberCats had been members of the Arena Football League (AFL) since 1995 (the year in which the team was founded); and until 2015, they belonged to ...
returned the franchise to the league on November 12, 2015 for "reasons unrelated to League operations". Commissioner
Scott Butera said the league would try to find new ownership, but this was not forthcoming in time for the team to operate during the 2016 season to defend its championship.
Because the league was now down to eight teams for the 2016 season, there were still the American and National Conferences but no divisional play. The
Cleveland Gladiators were moved to the National Conference to maintain a balance between the conferences.
The league took over operations of the former Portland Thunder in January 2016 and rebranded it as the
Portland Steel
The Portland Steel were a professional arena football team based in Portland, Oregon and members of the Arena Football League (AFL). The team started as the Portland Thunder, joining the AFL in 2014 as an expansion team along with the Los A ...
.
The 2016 schedule was announced on December 10, 2015.
ArenaBowl Playoffs
All teams from both conferences qualified for the playoffs. As in the prior season, there were the Conference Semifinals, the Conference Championships, and
ArenaBowl XXIX.
In the American Semifinals, the Soul beat the Storm 63–41 in
Allentown, Pennsylvania. The Sharks beat the Predators 69–68 in
overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:
*by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society) ...
; the National Semifinals saw the Rattlers beat the Steel 84–40 and the Gladiators beat the Kiss 56–52 in
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
.
The Rattlers doubled up the Gladiators 82–41 in the National Conference title game. In the American Conference title game, the Soul edged the Sharks by a score of 55–50.
The Philadelphia Soul upset the heavily-favored Arizona Rattlers 56–42 in ArenaBowl XXIX in
Glendale, Arizona
Glendale () is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, located approximately northwest of Downtown Phoenix. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 248,325.
History
In the late 1800s the area that is now Glendale was all deser ...
for their second AFL title.
Alignment
Regular season standings
x - Clinched conference title.
Playoffs
Conference semifinals
Conference finals
ArenaBowl XXIX
All-Arena team
References
{{2016 Arena Football League