Tennessee Valley Vipers / Alabama Vipers

Arena Football 2 (2000-2004 & 2006-2009)
Arena Football League (2010)

Background

The Tennessee Valley Vipers were actually a pair of separate Arena Football franchises that played at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama for ten seasons between 2000 and 2010.

The original Vipers club took part in the 2000 debut season of Arena Football 2 (AF2), a small-market developmental off-shoot of the more established Arena Football League (AFL). At first, AF2 had a distinctly southeastern U.S. geographic base and many of the original investors were owners of East Coast Hockey League franchises familiar with operating in the region’s 5,000 – 10,000-seat arenas. Vipers founder Art Clarkson owned the ECHL’s Birmingham Bulls for most of the 1990’s.

Unhappy with the direction of AF2, Clarkson pulled the Vipers out of the league and jumped to the obscure United Indoor Football (UIF) for the 2005 season. As part of the move, the team changed its name to the Tennessee Valley Pythons, which later had to be changed again to the Tennessee Valley Raptors following a threat of legal action from AF2 officials.

Vipers Version 2.0

The Raptors UIF team lasted only one season in Huntsville and moved away to Rockford Illinois in 2006. At the same time, AF2 established a new expansion team at the Von Braun Center under new ownership and re-established the old Tennessee Valley Vipers name and colors after a one-year absence. The new Vipers took to the floor in the spring of 2006.

In 2009 the sport of Arena Football underwent seismic changes. The original Arena Football League declared bankruptcy and folded, done in by the Great Recession, labor strife and a crisis of confidence among the league’s well-heeled investors. While the AFL went dark that year, Arena Football 2 soldiered on with its tenth and final season. At the end of the campaign, the league disbanded.  But a group of AF2 owners purchased the intellectual property of the defunct Arena Football League from the bankruptcy court an announced plans to revive the league in 2010, with a mix of big and small cities. The Vipers joined the resurrected Arena Football League in 2010 and adopted a name change to the “Alabama Vipers”.

The new league brought higher expenses and the small-market Vipers went out of business once and for all following the 2010 season.

In Competition

The first Vipers franchise, in particular, was an indoor football powerhouse. The snakes compiled a combined regular season record of 63-17 over five seasons in AF2 between 2000 and 2004. They made the playoffs (easily) every year and played in the first Arena Cup title game in August 2000. In that contest, the Vipers ran into the undefeated 16-0 Quad City Steamwheelers and lost 68-59 before 9,201 fans on the road in Moline, Illinois.

The rebooted Vipers were not as dominant, alternating losing and winning campaigns. But they did claim Huntsville’s finest moment as an indoor football town. In August 2008, the Vipers advanced to AF2’s Arena Cup championship game for the second time. After a 10-6 regular season followed by three playoff victories, Tennessee Valley would face the top-seeded Spokane Shock on the road. The Shock came into the game with a 18-1 combined regular season and playoff record.

Four plays into the game, Vipers starting quarterback Kevin Eakin had to be helped off the field and was unable to return. Backup Tony Colsten, who had attempted only four passes all season, entered the game and threw 7 touchdown passes and ran for two more, plus a title-clinching two-point conversion in overtime as the Vipers upset Spokane 56-55.

The re-named Alabama Vipers went 7-9 in their first and only season in the Arena Football League in 2010 before folding.

Tennessee Valley Vipers Shop

Tennessee Valley Vipers Video

A 45-minute compilation of Vipers highlight video from the team’s first four seasons from 2000 to 2003.

Links

Arena Football 2 Media Guides

Arena Football 2 Programs

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