When it launched in 1987, the Arena Football League had four teams.

The last time the AFL played a season with six or fewer clubs was 1990, when its schedule, then only eight games, revolved around six teams.

The AFL's addition of a Baltimore franchise last month upped its team count to five, which, barring any more changes, would be its lowest for a season since 1989, when the league played with five clubs in Year 3.

That's perfectly fine, Arena league commissioner Scott Butera told us in a recent phone conversation.

"If we just had to go with what we have, we'd be OK with that," Butera said. "We are completely out of the mode of what do we have to do to be OK tomorrow? We don't want to sit here and say we have to add two teams to have a better process in 2017. We're going to get the right people, no matter how long it takes.

"We don't care," Butera continued. "We'll play with five, we'll play with six. We'd obviously like to get to 12 to 16 teams in the next few years. We're working furiously toward that goal. This league has suffered in the past from starts and stops. We'd get an owner and the next year he's done. That doesn't help the league. You can't develop your league that way. We need people 100% committed to the long term. We don't want them to fail."

That's happened far too often for the AFL over the years.

Since the end of the 2016 season — which was played with eight teams, the AFL's lowest team count in 25 years — five teams have folded operations or moved to another league. The Jacksonville Sharks joined the National Arena League, which will play its first season in 2017. The Arizona Rattlers are now part of the Indoor Football League, and the Orlando Predators, Portland Steel and Los Angeles Kiss shut down.

The massive fallout caused many observers, including us, to question the league's future.

But Butera, who became the league's seventh commissioner in September 2014, said the turnover is part of the league's plan to build around experienced, well-heeled owners whose AFL team can play in an arena in which another major sports team already resides. The Cleveland Gladiators — owned by Dan Gilbert and a popular weekend attraction at Quicken Loans Arena — are the league's model franchise.

"Everything has sort of been by design," Butera said. "We and the better owners always wanted this to be a really well-run, excellent sports league. We had a number of owners, and obviously we're fortunate in Cleveland to have a really strong one, who can make that happen and share that vision. And we had others that didn't.

"We essentially turned around years and years of mismanagement," Butera added. "Major restructurings take a great deal of time. A lot of damage was done that had to be unwound. We thought it was important to keep the product showing well while we fixed the other issues. We always had excellent football, we just have not had excellent management. We said, 'Let's get through the year, we had an outstanding season and Arena Bowl, and use that as a launching pad to do what we want to do.' "

Since the five teams left or folded, the AFL has added two teams — Baltimore and Washington — backed by billionaire Ted Leonsis, whose Monumental Sports & Entertainment owns the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, Washington Mystics and the Verizon Center. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Leonsis said his group's financial strength makes it much easier to undertake what he admitted could be the "crazy idea" of owning an AFL team during uncertain times.

"None of the owners who left owned a building or owned other sports teams in which they could leverage that infrastructure," Leonsis told the newspaper, in reference to his AFL clubs having ticket sales, marketing and game-day operations teams already in place.

That's precisely what Butera is trying to do. The question is whether the AFL can find enough owners who fit the mold of Gilbert and Leonsis.

"When the season ended, we started negotiating to get out the folks who didn't reflect that (model)," Butera said. "We consolidated around the core group and will use that as a platform for growth. It might look like a little bit of a step back, but watch how it accelerates our growth. In discussions we've had (with potential owners), people weren't so sure (because of previous ownership problems). Now we don't have that. We have people working toward that goal."

In October, a Cavs source told us it was "business as usual" for the Gladiators. The franchise hasn't revealed much else since, though it does remain committed to the AFL.

Under the AFL's ownership model, when owners don't pay their bills, the costs get passed on to the other members of the league.

"That's a problem," Butera said. "That's why you can't deal with that (happening). That's a huge problem. You gotta support the league. If somebody bails on you, you gotta pick up the tab. That's a hard pill to swallow."

It's one that might make potential owners leery. That's why the addition of Leonsis is so crucial. His ownership group has a subscription-based network, Monumental Sports Network, that will broadcast the Baltimore and Washington AFL games online. Leonsis said he is banking on regional rivalries generating more interest.

Butera told us the 2017 season will start in April, and the schedule "will look very similar," with one exception.

"You'll have teams playing each other a bit more," he said. "We'll develop some rivalries."

The AFL schedule expanded to 16 games in 2003. From 2011-15, the league played 18 contests in the regular season.

Last season, the AFL reduced its slate to 16 games.

If the league played with only five teams in 2016, a 16-game schedule would mean playing each team four times — plus create obvious complications because of the odd number of clubs.

Still, the AFL will get everything sorted out, Butera insists.

"We'll call it a reset here," the AFL commissioner said. "We're doing things in a very fundamentally sound way. We've done a lot of things internally to really professionalize the operation. It feels great. It's kind of like we're getting off a treadmill. It's boom, boom, rapid fire. I think the attitude toward the AFL externally has changed quite a bit. There are a lot of inbound inquiries. It's good to see there's good momentum. The other thing is with a few less teams, we're going to have some excellent football. There will be a lot of talent."

Asked about an arena football market that, with the 10-team IFL and the eight-team NAL, looks crowded all of a sudden, Butera compared the difference between the AFL and its competition to that of national and local restaurants.

"I think those are different models," he said. "I think those are for smaller cities that want to field a professional or quasi-professional team. I don't think those are models that are really leading toward franchise values or big media. The answer is yes, we can definitely exist the way local restaurants can exist with national restaurant chains. There's a home for both."

The NAL is mostly made up of teams in smaller markets. The same goes for the IFL, which is littered with former Arena league franchises. The Rattlers have joined the Iowa Barnstormers (who left the AFL after the 2014 season), the Spokane Empire (formerly the AFL's Shock), the Colorado Crush (an AFL team until 2008), the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles (the AFL's Utah Blaze folded after the 2013 campaign) and the Green Bay Blizzard (an Arena2 team prior to joining the IFL in 2010).

Is there enough arena football interest to go around? We'll find out soon enough.

For the time being, Butera says the AFL is trying to add more owners, but what's more important is the ones who are on board now are exactly what the league needs to be successful long-term.

"I hope there will be others," Butera said. "I'm not going to obviously say anything until things are done and owners are committed. If it's just that (the current five-team setup), that's a pretty darn good group. My attitude is you gotta look at who stayed and who left. That's where the answer lies. If it were the other way around, it would be, 'Houston we have a problem.' You can't ask for better ownership than what we have."

You also can't have a five-team professional sports league and thrive. Butera knows that.

He compared the AFL's current situation to Major League Soccer, which started play in 1996, but had some early difficulties.

"They consolidated around the (Lamar) Hunt family and AEG, and had a small core group of owners," Butera said. "There were some league-owned teams at the time. They built it into the league it is today based on that formula. We said, 'We like that idea. Let's do that.' So that's what we did."

The AFL commissioner said the recent departures "were all fairly friendly."

He added that "the folks who left knew it was a different strategy. Some went to other leagues that allowed them to continue to play, with less dependence for capital and resources, if you will. They were all cities we really liked. Now we're just full bore in adding to this league. What you saw in Baltimore was really the tip of the iceberg."

Butera had made bold proclamations in the past. Prior to the 2016 season, when the league downsized from 12 to eight teams, he told us the AFL would "probably add two to six (teams) in the following year."

Technically, the AFL has added two teams, but that still leaves it three clubs short of its 2016 total.

"Look, I think we are stronger than ever," Butera said. "I know the history of this league pretty well. The league is in the best shape for growth. It might not look that way to the naked eye, but you gotta look at the quality, not the quantity. Look at our ownership group and the ownership groups from the days that went by. Fraud, shell corporations, we've had it all. The integrity of this game, which has always been a bit of an issue, has never been more rock solid. If you don't just sort of rip the Band-Aid off, if you want to be great, you can't be accepting. You gotta get back to the fundamentals. That's what we've done."

The Band-Aid was discarded rather abruptly.

It's too soon to know, however, if the wounds are going to heal.

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