SPRINGFIELD, Mo–Professional indoor football is coming to Springfield in the summer of 2024.
The Arena League announced Thursday that Springfield is the very first city to be awarded a franchise.
Indoor football isn’t new.
But the Arena League will tweek things a bit.
First of all, the field will be 50 yards long, half the length of the traditional outdoor field.
Each team will have 15 players, only six are on the field for each play.
The quarterback can throw the ball to any player, but he can’t go past the line of scrimmage with the ball.
There are no kickers, and the league will own the franchises and teams in the first season.
Springfield’s team will play at the new $25 million dollar Wilson’s Logistics Arena at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds.
“I mean look, this is going to be wide open football. It’s going to be a matter of how can these guys survive? More then anything else. Certainly with 15 guys there will be enough players to rotate in and out. But yea I think it’s going to be great. This type of game is sort of a kin to what’s happening in the league now. Some of these teams when they get rolling they’re going pretty quickly,” said Arena League commissioner Tim Brown.
