Another attempt at minor league indoor football is on its way to failure. Every year, a new professional indoor football league is founded. Every year, another professional indoor football league fails. Obviously, somebody thinks the format has potential. Right now, there are 7 notable leagues operating in the US, from the Arena Football League, complete with network TV coverage and a team owned by Bon Jovi, down to the Continental Indoor Football League, founded in 2006 and already boasting 5 defunct teams.
If these minor leagues want to survive, they need to join together and emulate some of the successful minor league structures of other sports. Many teams in these leagues have left one league to join another. Some have even joined up with af2, the Arena Football League's second division. To me, this seems like the perfect place to unleash a European-style system of promotion/relegation and cup competitions on American sports fans.
In indoor football, you have the AFL, af2, and then everybody else. AFL has substantial TV coverage, many NFL-quality players and teams who play in larger NBA/NHL arenas. The af2 is a developmental league, with teams in slightly smaller cities and slightly smaller arenas. There is some TV coverage, but not nearly as much. The other leagues are largely interchangeable. Most fans attending these games couldn't tell you the difference between the Continental Indoor Football League and the American Indoor Football Association.
Through a series of mergers and affiliate agreements, these leagues could one day operate similarly to England's Football League. My first step would be to organize a large, multi-league knockout tournament, incorporating all teams in all leagues.
The seven leagues operating in the US have a total of 104 members. Teams would be seeded according to league finish and (at least at this point) their league's age. AFL teams are rated highest, while CIFL (the newest league) teams are rated lowest. I do it this way because we don't really have a good way to compare the level of quality of each league, though after a few years it should become clearer.
In my cup competition, I would start with a qualification round of 8 games. Here, the 16 worst teams are randomly drawn into 8 games. Winners move on to the first round. The first round consists of 64 teams. The top 32 receive byes - in this case, the entire AFL and half of af2. Again, the 64 playing teams are randomly drawn into 32 games. The winners move on to round two. Here, the first-round byes enter the competition, giving us 64 once again. Each round from here on will be begin with another random draw, so any combination of teams can play anywhere. Bon Jovi's Philadelphia Soul could draw Lehigh Valley Outlawz away, or they could host AFL an rival like the New York Dragons.
Eventually, we would get a feel for the comparative quality of each league, and thus be able to realign the teams into 5 divisions. Promotion and relegation could be introduced for the top and bottom finishers. Will this ever happen? Doubtful, but anything is better than this current jumble of leagues.
