History
The franchise was created in 2001, the second year of the af2. Olson's first successful move as owner operator was to bring in local football star Kevin Porter to coach the upstart team. Porter, an alumnus of Auburn University, and the Kansas City Chiefs was also an arena football veteran. Under his leadership, the inaugural team made the playoffs and was named "Expansion Franchise of the Year" by the league. He went on to coach the New Orleans VooDoo and Kansas City Brigade of the AFL.
Two seasons later, Porter led the Knights to the ArenaCup, af2's championship game, where the Knights lost to the Tulsa Talons 58–40. Afterwards, he left for the parent AFL and a number of his players followed.
Porter was replaced by AFL veteran Mike Hold. Despite his success with other franchises, Hold did not have as good a fortune in Macon. In 2005, after a bad start, Hold was replaced by Derek Stingley.
Stingley took a club that had fallen to 2–5 and, by season's end, managed to get them into the playoffs. The Knights however, lost to the Louisville Fire in the opening round.
After the 2006 season, the team announced they would be shutting down operations. [1] However, on October 10, 2008, the Macon Telegraph reported that an investor is "deeply interested" in relaunching the Knights franchise in Macon, as early as 2009, but no later than 2010. [2]
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional indoor American football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in 1987 season making it the third longest-running professional football league in North America after the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the National Football League (NFL) until the AFL closed in 2019. The AFL played a formerly proprietary code known as arena football, a form of indoor American football played on a 66-by-28 yard field, with rules encouraging offensive performance, resulting in a faster-paced and higher-scoring game. The sport was invented in the early 1980s and patented by Jim Foster, a former executive of the United States Football League (USFL) and the NFL. Each of the league's 32 seasons culminated in the ArenaBowl, with the winner being crowned the league's champion for that season.
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The Stockton Lightning were a professional arena football team based in Stockton, California. They were members of the Western Division of the National Conference of the arenafootball2 (af2). The Lightning joined af2 2006 as an expansion team. They played their home games at Stockton Arena in Stockton, California and were coached by Chad Carlson. The Stockton Lightning were owned by Michael Reinsdorf.
Rickey Foggie is a former gridiron football quarterback. Foggie was the starting quarterback for the Minnesota Golden Gophers for four seasons, before going on to play professionally in the Canadian Football League and Arena Football League. Foggie is currently a head football coach in high school football in Red Wing, Minnesota.
Derek Stingley Sr. is an American football coach. Prior to his coaching career, he had a nine-year playing career in the Arena Football League.
The Pittsburgh Power were a professional arena football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The team belonged to the East Division of the American Conference (AC) in the Arena Football League (AFL). Founded in 2011, the Power was the youngest franchise in the AC. The team played its home games at the Consol Energy Center, which they shared with the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League. The Power shared the same color scheme as Pittsburgh's other professional sports teams, the Penguins, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League, and the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball.
Kyle Rowley is an arena football quarterback who is currently a free agent. He also played in the former af2. He played college football at Brown.
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The Georgia Doom were a professional indoor football team based out of Macon, Georgia. They play their home games at Macon Coliseum. They started as a midseason road team filling in for the folded Dayton Wolfpack in the National Arena League in 2017 before becoming a charter member of the American Arena League in 2018. The team suspended operations during the 2019 season.
