Arizona Hotshots

Alliance of American Football (2019)

Tombstone

Born: May 18, 2018 – AAF founding franchise
Folded: April 2, 2019

First Game: February 10, 2019 (38-22 vs. Salt Lake Stallions)
Last Game: March 31, 2019 (W 23-6 @ San Antonio Commanders)

AAF Championships: None

Stadium

Sun Devil Stadium (53,599)
Opened: 1958

Marketing

Team Colors:

Ownership

Owner: AAF (Tom Dundon, et al.)

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Arizona Hotshots Logo T from Old School Shirts

Background

It’s been a mercifully quiet stretch on the Fun While It Lasted beat of late. The economy is relatively strong. High-risk leagues like the Arena Football League, WNBA, National Lacrosse League and the National Women’s Soccer League all managed to survive the winter with their full roster of franchises intact. But we were probably a bit overdue for what happened yesterday, when the 8-week old Alliance of American Football went belly-up under still-murky circumstances.

We’ll get to all eight newly-defunct AAF clubs eventually, but we’ll start today with the Arizona Hotshots. Either because we are going alphabetically, or because it’s the only AAF team we’ve been able to track down a game program for the anchor the article. (R.I.P. game programs, by the way).

The Team

The Hotshots were tied atop the AAF’s West Division with a 5-3 record when the league folded on April 2, 2019 with two games left unplayed in the regular season. Head Coach Rick Neuheisel had been through this spring football rollercoaster before, as a quarterback with the San Antonio Gunslingers of the USFL in 1984 and 1985. (Tempe’s Sun Devil Stadium, home field of the Hotshots, was also a USFL venue.) Neuheisel and his Gunslinger teammates never received all their pay for the USFL’s final season in 1985 but, unlike the Hotshots, managed to complete their schedule.

Hotshots running back Jhurell Pressley led the AAF in rushing with 431 yards when the league shutdown.

Quarterback John Wolford out of Wake Forest University led the league with 14 touchdown passes and ranked second with 1,616 passing yards.

Oddly, the team’s most familiar name (well, to Fantasy Football players anyway) was its placekicker, 11-year NFL veteran Nick Folk. Folk kicked the longest field goal in the brief history of the AAF, a 55-yarder against the Orlando Apollos on March 16, 2019.

Demise

A full picture of the AAF’s midseason meltdown hasn’t come into focus yet.

What’s clear is that internal disputes between co-founders Charlie Ebersol and Bill Polian and its primary financial backer/Chairman Tom Dundon fractured the organization. Ebersol and Polian advocated a slow growth plan for the AAF. They envisioned a multi-year emergence as the de facto developmental partner of the NFL.

Dundon’s motivations remain the subject of debate. The subprime loan king and billionaire owner of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes stepped in with a $250 million pledge seven weeks ago, after rumors spread that the league was already having cash flow problems after just on week of action. Dundon reportedly put $70 million of actual cash into the AAF since that time, single-handedly keeping the league afloat. The investment made Dundon the league’s chairman and, apparently, the only decision maker that still counted. In late March, Dundon publicly broke from the slow growth approach. He made a seemingly unnecessary public declaration that the league would consider folding unless the National Football League Players Association swiftly agreed to rules changes that would allow NFL bottom-of-roster players and practice-squadders to play in the AAF. Days later, Dundon followed through on the threat and pulled the plug.

An inevitable comparison for football junkies will be Donald Trump’s destruction of the USFL in the mid-1980’s. Whether Dundon’s actions with the AAF were just a Trumpian stew of hubris, ignorance and careless negotiating skills or whether it was a more insidious example of calculated vampire capitalism remains to be seen. League co-founder Charlie Ebersol often promoted the AAF to the press as a technology company with a football league attached. One emerging theory is that Dundon’s goal all along was to acquire the AAF’s proprietary gambling app technology while swiftly euthanizing the money-bleeding football operation.