Pro football in Gainesville must wait another year.
The All American Football League will delay its inaugural season until 2009 due to financial problems.
Gainesville was one of six host cities for the league, which hoped to mix a college atmosphere with professional talent.
"Any time that you have a business plan, you make certain assumptions," league founder Marcus Katz said. "In our case, one of the assumptions that we made was incorrect. We anticipated that fans would really love this concept and step forward and show that with purchasing tickets in advance."
They didn't, but Katz doesn't blame them.
"If Hannah Montana was going to do a concert and come to The Swamp, they'd probably sell 89,000 tickets in an hour because every parent would be hounded by their daughter. There's a big demand for it," Katz said. "I'm sure that's true for a lot of other rock stars. If Florida was going to play in a bowl game, their tickets would sell out pretty quickly. We didn't have that going for us."
The news deals a major blow to the upstart league, which was scheduled to begin training camp this month and its regular season games in April.
Slow ticket sales were not the only reason for the downfall.
Team Florida coach Shane Matthews said Katz did not receive a large sum of money to help keep the league afloat.
Katz delved deeper and blamed a collapse in the student loan market last year just as the league was starting to grow.
"It basically blindsided us. We were just getting going in August and September when all this came down," said Katz, who made his fortune in the student loan business. "We had three possibilities. One, a much larger player would step in with much deeper pockets that would see the future of this league. Two, the markets would settle down. Three, the fans would say, 'This is going to be great fun. Let's go buy tickets and go sit together.' None of those three things happened."
Of the six host cities, which include Birmingham, Ala.; Little Rock, Ark.; Detroit; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Houston, Gainesville and Team Florida seemed to have their act together more than any other site.
"We had sold over $300,000 worth of tickets, and we had great momentum going," said Matthews, a former UF quarterback. "We did it the correct way, which I was proud of. Get as many local products, local players, state of Florida players that fans can relate to. We had quite a few."
Those included former Gators Chris Leak and Eric Kresser at quarterback, Chris Doering, Travis McGriff and Willie Jackson at wide receiver and defensive standouts Bam Hardmon and Fred Weary.
Ex-Florida State star wide receiver Peter Warrick and Miami wideout Ryan Moore were also drafted.
All of the players on Team Florida's roster will be allowed to seek employment elsewhere. Some already jettisoned to the Arena Football League and the Canadian Football League, Matthews said.
The league is in the process of doling out refunds to everybody who bought season tickets.
Katz, Matthews and other league brass are not giving up yet, but the future prospects of the league just got a whole lot dimmer.
"If we had just gotten out there and had one good year, there's no telling what it could have become," Katz said. "Now it's going to be a little tougher."
