American Football
While there are various semi-professional football leagues, none have any affiliation with the National Football League. The NFL and its teams have had working relationships with several independent leagues in the past, including the Association of Professional Football Leagues, the Atlantic Coast Football League, and most recently, the league owned-and-operated NFL Europe League. Many consider the Arena Football League to have been a de facto minor league, since several NFL owners had teams in it in the mid-2000s, prior to its bankruptcy and restructuring. Arena football is played under very different conditions, and the AFL had its own minor league, af2, until 2009. Several other independent indoor football leagues that play a similar game exist. Similarly, the Canadian Football League, though it has developed ties with the NFL in recent years and has moved away from competing with the NFL for talent, plays a visibly different game than the American game, and the two sports favor different types of skills. Several minor and developmental leagues independent of the NFL have come and gone; two such leagues currently exists, the United Football League, which began play in 2009 as a complementary top-level development league, and the Stars Football League, which began play with a soft launch in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Minor League
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