Regional Football League (1999)

Background

The Regional Football League was another in the long-line of spring football failures that followed in the footsteps of the higher-profile USFL and the World League of American Football. Unlike many of the other spring football busts though, the RFL actually made it to the starting gate, launching in the spring of 1999 with 5 teams in the Deep South, plus an outlier club in Toledo, Ohio.

The original plan called for a 12-game regular season beginning in mid-April and culminating with the first RFL Bowl on July 18th. The league’s original model called for a 37-man roster with a $1.1 million salary cap (a range of $20K to $60K per player, with one exception for a franchise player earning up to $200K). 30 of the players had to come from a team’s designated region (hence the league’s name).

Things went crooked fairly quickly on the financial side. The league abruptly shortened its planned 12-game slate and moved its playoffs and championship game up a month to mid-June. The Mobile Admirals won the RFL’s first and only championship on June 19, 1999. Former Dallas Cowboys and University of Alabama running back Sherwin Williams of the Mobile Admirals earned league MVP honors.

The RFL folded quietly sometime in the months following the 1999 title game.

Regional Football League Franchise List

##