American West Football Conference

After being unable to join the Indoor Football League or Champions Indoor Football citing financial and travel issues, Chris Reynolds, owner of the Idaho Horsemen announced that his ownership group Platinum Events & Security, LLC, created a new indoor league, the American West Football Conference (AWFC).[2] The league was created to fill the void of a lack of west coast teams and leagues and to decrease travel costs of operating the regional teams.[1][3] The league was announced with four teams: the Horsemen, Reno Express, Tri-Cities Fire, and the Wenatchee Valley Skyhawks. The AWFC later added the Sacramento Spartans, but the team's facilities did not meet league standards and was removed a month before the start of the season.[4]

The first game in league history was the Wenatchee Valley Skyhawks at the Idaho Horsemen on March 23, where the Horsemen won 33–22.[5] The season's first forfeit came on May 4 when the Skyhawks did not travel to play the Reno Express, who instead played a local semiprofessional team in order to fulfill its lease agreement. The following week, the only scheduled game was also postponed citing travel issues with the Tri-Cities Fire visiting Idaho, but was made-up on June 19. Idaho went undefeated and won the championship game 40–20 over Reno.

For the 2020 season, the league announced expansion teams in Yakima, Washington,[6] and the San Francisco Bay Area,[7] although the Bay Area team never launched.[8] In February 2020, the Reno Express was removed from the schedule[9] and the Tri-Cities Fire folded,[10] which led to the Idaho Horsemen and Wenatchee Valley Skyhawks both announce they would play independent schedules.[11][12] The league then announced it would be playing the 2020 season with three teams — Idaho, Wenatchee, and Yakima — while looking for non-league teams to fill in the lost games including the minor outdoor team, Tri-City Rage, filling in for the Fire's six scheduled away games.[13]

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