Arena Football 2 (2001-2009)
Arena Football League (2010)
Tombstone
Born: 2001
Moved: 2011 (New Orleans Voodoo)
First Game: April 7, 2001 (L 63-57 vs. Birmingham Steeldogs)
Last Game: July 31, 2010 (L 62-56 vs. Dallas Vigilantes)
ArenaCup Championships (AF2): None
Arena Bowl Championships (AFL): None
Arena
CenturyTel Center (12,500)
Opened: 2000
Marketing
Team Colors:
- 2002: Black, Silver & White
Ownership
Owners:
- 2001-2003: Dr. Michael Plaman
- 2004-2010: Dan Newman
Background
The Bossier-Shreveport Battle Wings were a minor league Arena Football team that competed for nine seasons in northwestern Louisiana. The team was known as the Bossier City Battle Wings from 2001 to 2003. It adopted the Bossier-Shreveport moniker in 2004 after an ownership change.
The Battle Wings were members of Arena Football 2 (AF2), a small-city offshoot of the Arena Football League (AFL) that operated from 2000 to 2009. In a model similar to many other early AF2 teams, the Battle Wings shared ownership with the local minor league hockey team. Original owner Michael Plaman was a chiropractor from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Plaman already owned the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs of Central Hockey League.
At the end of the 2003 season, Plaman sold the Battle Wings to Dan Newman, giving the team local ownership.
Quincy Carter
Expectations were low for Bossier-Shreveport entering the 2007 season. The Wings finished 3-13 in 2006. On the final day of January 2007, the Battle Wings signed former Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback Quincy Carter. It was unusual to see an NFL veteran in the bare bones AF2, where the average game check was around $200. But drug problems drummed the former NFL 2nd round pick (#53 overall, 2001) out of the NFL and the Canadian Football League by age 27. By the time Carter turned up in Bossier City, he hadn’t played a competitive down in two years.
Carter led the Battle Wings to a 5-1 start. Then head coach Jon Norris suspended Carter for missing team meetings and he sat out for a month in the middle of the season. Replacement Gary Cooper of Grambling won three out of four starts. Carter returned to the starting role with the Wings sitting at 8-2. Despite a late season slump, the Battle Wings made their deepest ever playoff run, advancing three rounds to the Conference Finals.
Coincidentally, Bossier City’s CenturyTel Center had been chosen as the host of the 2007 ArenaCup championship game prior to the season. All that stood between the Battle Wings and hosting the AF2 title game was a showdown with the Tulsa Talons in the semi-final. The Wings held a 47-46 lead late, but fell apart in the 4th quarter. Quincy Carter threw two picks in the final frame and the Wings gave up 21 unanswered points to lose 67-47.
Several weeks later, Carter was arrested on drug possession charges in Shreveport in October 2007. He did not return to the team in 2008, moving up to the top tier Arena Football League for a brief stint with the AFL’s Kansas City franchise.
Demise of AF2 and Voodoo Part Deux
After the 2008 season the original Arena Football League suffered an investor crisis of confidence and shut down. The major market AFL did not operate at all in 2009. AF2 continued on and staged a 2009 season. But the league closed its doors in the wake of the AFL filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in August 2009. (The AFL owned 50.1% of AF2).
Several AF2 owners, including Bossier-Shreveport’s Dan Newman, banded together with a handful of former AFL owners to acquire the name and trademarks of the defunct AFL from the bankruptcy court. They re-launched a zombie version of the Arena Football League in 2010 the effectively replaced both AF2 and the original AFL. The new AFL was an unwieldy mix of major markets like Orlando, Phoenix and Tampa with small cities like Hunstville, Alabama and Spokane, Washington.
The small cities were soon pushed aside by the economic realities of a nationwide air-travel league. Bossier-Shreveport was no exception. After one season in the new AFL, owner Dan Newman moved the franchise to the Big Easy in 2011 in an attempt to revive on the most popular teams of the original AFL: the New Orleans Voodoo (2004-2008). The original Voodoo were operated by the Benson family, owners of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints and packed huge crowds into New Orleans Arena. Newman’s team never re-captured that audience. The ex-Battle Wings/new Voodoo muddled along for four more seasons before folding for good in 2015.
Trivia
In August 2009, Battle Wings owner Dan Newman was one of ten men inducted into the inaugural class of the AF2 Hall of Fame. The league folded several weeks later.
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