The 2018 Arena Football League season was the 31st 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 ...
(AFL). Prior to the start of the season, the league contracted from five to four teams with one team folding, one going on hiatus, and one added expansion team. The 12-game regular season began on April 13 and ended on July 7.
League business
League organization changes
The offseason was marked by uncertainty until the AFL and Arena Football League Players' Union reached a new deal on a four-year
collective bargaining agreement
A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company (or with an ...
(CBA), nearly doubling player compensation and expanding health insurance benefits, replacing the previous CBA, which had expired after the 2017 season. The deal was finally reached amid rumors that the season and league's existence were in jeopardy when the two sides were failing to negotiate through several proposals and supposed ultimatums.
On March 27, 2018, the AFL announced commissioner
Scott Butera
Scott C. Butera is an American businessman and entertainment and hospitality executive who is best known for being the CEO at various casinos in the United States. He was the commissioner of the Arena Football League (AFL) from September 2014 to M ...
would be replaced by
Randall Boe
Randall Boe (born 1962) is the former General Counsel for AOL and has been involved in many notable cases regarding internet law. He was named the commissioner of the Arena Football League in March 2018. He was born in Ohio and grew up in Iowa Ci ...
. During Butera's three seasons as commissioner, the league had decreased from 14 members in the 2014 season to four for the 2018 season.
Teams
On August 23, 2017, the week of
ArenaBowl XXX
ArenaBowl XXX was the championship game of the 2017 Arena Football League season. The game was broadcast on AFLNow, Twitter and WPVI-TV. It was played between the Philadelphia Soul and Tampa Bay Storm
The Tampa Bay Storm were a professional ar ...
, multiple sources revealed that the AFL planned to expand to
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York City ...
, and
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Albany Empire was confirmed October 24, with the team owned by
Hearst Communications
Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, televi ...
executive
George Randolph Hearst III
George Randolph Hearst III (born 1955) is the publisher and CEO of the '' Times Union'' newspaper in Albany, New York, and a director of the Hearst Corporation.
He is the second child of George Randolph Hearst Jr. and Mary Astrid Thompson and g ...
and sharing non-football management with the
Philadelphia Soul
Philadelphia soul, sometimes called Philly soul, the Philadelphia sound, Phillysound, or The Sound of Philadelphia TSOP, is a genre of late 1960s–1970s soul music characterized by funk influences and lush instrumental arrangements, often feat ...
.
On November 28, the
Cleveland Gladiators
The Cleveland Gladiators were an arena football team based in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, and members of the Arena Football League (AFL). The Gladiators played their home games at Quicken Loans Arena, which they shared with the Cleveland Cava ...
announced that they would have to take a two-year leave of absence while their arena, shared with its primary tenant the NBA's
Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cleveland Cavaliers (often referred to as the Cavs) are an American professional basketball team based in Cleveland. The Cavaliers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference (NBA), Ea ...
, undergoes construction during the basketball offseason. The next month, the longest-tenured AFL team, with franchise roots to the inaugural AFL season, the
Tampa Bay Storm
The Tampa Bay Storm were a professional arena football team based in Tampa, Florida, US. It played in the Arena Football League (AFL). Originally the team was located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and operated as the Pittsburgh Gladiators. The f ...
, also suspended operations citing higher operating costs combined with lower revenues, but did not rule out returning in the future.
In February 2018, the 2018 season schedule was finalized with only the returning Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington teams and the expansion Albany team, but no Newark team, matching the size of the league in the original "demonstration season" in
1987
File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...
.
Schedule and playoff changes
The 2018 season consisted of a 13-week schedule during which each team played 12 games and had one bye week. With only four participating members for the season, the schedule for each team decreased by two games, continuing the trend of shortened seasons since the 2015 season. All teams played each opponent four times. Expansion Albany played seven home games, Baltimore and Washington six, and defending champion Philadelphia had only five.
At the end of the regular season, all teams participated in the ArenaBowl playoffs, in which the top seed faced the 4th seed while the 2nd seed faced the 3rd seed in a home and home series. The team in each series with the highest aggregate score advanced to the ArenaBowl. If the aggregate score in either series had been tied after the second game in the home-and-home semifinals, the game would have continued in the AFL's standard overtime format; this was not necessitated. While the semifinals consisted of two games in each pairing, ArenaBowl XXXI was still only one game.
With one week remaining in the 2018 regular season and a then three-way tie for first, the league announced the ArenaBowl would be hosted by the semifinal winner with the higher average attendance through the season instead of using any tiebreakers or home field advantage based on records. However, once the semifinals were completed, the higher-seeded Baltimore Brigade, not the higher-attended Washington Valor, would host ArenaBowl XXXI as the Valor's home field,
Capital One Arena
Capital One Arena is an indoor arena in Washington, D.C. Located in the Penn Quarter neighborhood, the arena sits atop the Gallery Place (WMATA station), Gallery Place rapid transit station of the Washington Metro. It has been largely considered ...
, had already scheduled summer renovations to begin at that time.