Connection To NFL
Running Back Fred Jackson rushed for over 1,000 yds. as the starting Running Back for the 2009 Buffalo Bills, and his high quality play earned him a spot on USA Today's All Joe Team. Jackson played the early part of his professional football career for the Sioux City Bandits of the Indoor Football League. Probably the most notable player to come out of Arena Football into the National Football League is Kurt Warner, former MVP quarterback of the Super Bowl XXXIV champion (2000 game, 1999 season) St. Louis Rams, who had previously quarterbacked the former Iowa Barnstormers of the AFL. The National Football League has removed a ban that had been in place on any of its owners owning teams in any other sort of football operation with respect to Arena football only, and several of them have bought or started Arena teams. However, the NFL allowed to lapse an option it had negotiated allowing it to purchase up to 49% of Arena football, and as of early 2007 seemed to have backed away from any plan it may have had to use Arena football as a developmental league in any sort of "official" sense, perhaps in the interest of not undermining its then-existing "official" developmental league, NFL Europa.
Several NFL owners owned Arena Football League teams in their own cities prior to the league's bankruptcy. At the end of the 2008 season, Jerry Jones and the Dallas Desperados (who have similar colors and logos to the Dallas Cowboys), Arthur Blank's Georgia Force, and the Colorado Crush (whose shareholders included Broncos owner Pat Bowlen and Rams then-minority owner Stan Kroenke) were still in the league. San Francisco 49ers owner Denise DeBartolo York and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder had future expansion rights to their respective cities. Tom Benson's New Orleans VooDoo and Bud Adams's Nashville Kats had folded. None of the NFL owners with AFL franchises returned to the league after its reformation in 2010, and most favored abolishing the league entirely.
Several former and current NFL players also have/had been owners of indoor football franchise.
- Ahman Green - Green Bay Blizzard
- Stuart Schweigert - Saginaw Sting
- Terrell Owens and Drew Pearson - Allen Wranglers
- Marques Colston - Harrisburg Stampede
- Tim Brown - Texas Revolution
- Macey Brooks - Kane County Dawgs
- Derrick Brooks - Tampa Bay Storm.
Read more about this topic: Indoor American Football
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“Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)