Reports: Arena Football League chooses Cincinnati over Columbus as city to host Ohio team
The Arena Football League will have 16 teams when it returns from a four-year hiatus in 2024, it has announced, and one of those teams will represent the state of Ohio.
Although the league itself did not share which Ohio city would play host to the state's team, according to multiple reports, it will be based in Cincinnati.
Cincinnati has hosted the AFL before, as the Rockers played at Riverfront Coliseum as an expansion team in 1992 with former Ohio State Buckeye Art Schlichter as their quarterback. But Schlichter retired before the 1993 campaign. He had been arrested for passing a bad check and admitted he had a relapse of his gambling problems.
"We felt it might be time for Art to move on," Rockers general manager Keith Sprunk said. "Art felt it was time to move on. Being around football doesn't help Art's problem."
The Rockets subsequently went 2-10 and ceased operations amid low attendance.
Columbus, meanwhile, has a somewhat longer history when it comes to the AFL.
The city played host to the Thunderbolts in 1991. After one 0-10 season, they relocated to Cleveland. Columbus also had an AFL team from 2004-2008 when the Destroyers played at Nationwide Arena. That iteration of the team made it to ArenaBowl XXI in 2007 before falling 55-33 to the San Jose SaberCats, one season before the AFL suspended play. In 2019, the Destroyers returned for one summer and went 1-11 before the league filed for bankruptcy.
The 2024 AFL season is set to kick off in April.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Arena Football League not bringing back Columbus Destroyers yet
