Inside the implosion of the Philadelphia Soul amid a chaotic start to the AFL season: ‘Teams have been lied to’

The Philadelphia Soul folding last week was only one of what has become a slew of dominoes to fall in the disaster that is the Arena Football League.

On the heels of Soul general manager Kelly Logan announcing on Friday that the team had folded after playing just two games, AFL commissioner Lee Hutton was ousted Tuesday after a short and tumultuous stint at the top. Jeff Fisher, the former NFL coach and current AFL Nashville Kats president of football operations, was named interim commissioner, according to a news release by G6 Sports Investment Group, LLC, the owner of the league and its intellectual property.

The release also said the current team owners voted unanimously — in alignment with G6 Sports Group — to have Fisher take the interim title.

“I don’t have any experience in the league as a commissioner, but I do have experience as I was involved in the Alliance [of American Football], and I was involved [in] the USFL, and I moved a couple of NFL franchises [Houston to Nashville and St. Louis to Los Angeles]. So I have that kind of experience,” Fisher told reporters. “And I have relationships.”

Steven Titus, the owner and president of the Billings Outlaws, told The Inquirer on Tuesday that a new AFL front office regime was needed after the chaotic start to the 2024 AFL season. The Soul, Georgia Force, and Iowa Rampage have folded. The latest casualty was the Minnesota Myth, whose owner is Diana Hutton, Lee’s wife.

“We need leadership with credibility, someone with connections to advance the AFL’s image moving forward,” Titus said. “I can guarantee with 100% certainty that the Billings Outlaws will finish the 2024 season. I’m sure that a lot of the other [AFL] organizations feel the exact same way. We’re going to have a football season. We just have to get through the administrative issues at the AFL front office.”

Titus’ remarks follow a bizarre 24 hours in which the Myth had told their players to go home and that the franchise was folding.

Lee and Diana Hutton are law partners in their own self-titled firm, based in Minneapolis, but Diana Hutton’s firm email was deactivated as of Monday night, and a notice said all emails should instead be sent to her husband’s address.

Titus had been critical of the AFL’s leadership group even before the start of the season, but his frustration mounted after Week 1, when problems such as players not being compensated and the NFL Network not televising games started to become public.

“A lot of the teams have been lied to as far as what the league would be providing in terms of player compensation, travel reimbursement, network deals, things of that nature,” Titus said. “None of those were ever carried out as promised. Because of that, all the teams have been monetarily harmed. We’re the laughingstock of the arena/indoor football industry right now because we all depended upon Lee Hutton and [deputy commissioner] Travelle Gaines’ leadership, when it seems like we were just victims in a fraud.”

Logan told The Inquirer in a telephone interview Saturday that he was still coming to terms with the Soul’s end. He was supposed to be in Nashville for Mother’s Day weekend and the Soul’s Week 3 game against the Kats, but it never happened.

The 2024 Soul didn’t resemble the Philly arena football team with a glittering resumé that includes three championships and Hall of Fame rocker Jon Bon Jovi as a previous owner. Before the April 27 opener against the Louisiana VooDoo in Lafayette, La., Soul coach Pat Pimmel stepped down, the team’s players were kicked out of their Philly-area motel the morning of their flight because of an unpaid bill, and only three rostered players ended up making the trip south.

And that occurred in a 24-hour window.

» READ MORE: The Soul returned to arena football, but as a replacement team amid claims of ‘clown behavior,’ unpaid bills

To add to the humiliation, replacement players from another indoor league team — the Dallas Falcons of the American Arena League 2 — donned Soul jerseys so the team’s opener could be played. The VooDoo cruised to a 53-18 rout.

“Right when we got kicked out of the motel, I thought right then, ‘If we have problems paying that bill, it’s going to be really bad when it’s time to pay payroll,’” Logan said, before pausing to chuckle. “I thought when we went to Louisiana, I was going to meet with the [Soul] owners. However, it was just me and three other players.”

Matters didn’t improve the following week in Minnesota, where Logan traveled with the team to play the Myth. Although Logan finally spoke with Hutton — who assured Logan that “everything will be fine” — the texts and phone messages Logan was receiving from players were unsettling.

“They kept asking, ‘Will I get paid?’ When you’re focused on so many other things like that, it’s very difficult to win football games,” said Logan, alluding to another Soul thrashing, this time a 47-12 loss to the Myth.

By the middle of last week, leading up to the Soul’s game in Nashville, Logan finally heard the death knell from the league office.

“Still upset about it. I’m hurt. Very disappointed,” Logan said. “The last couple days have been very stressful. The most important thing to me is how our players wouldn’t get taken care of.”

Hutton did not return multiple messages from The Inquirer to comment, nor did the AFL issue any news release about the Soul’s end. Logan said that when the original Soul ownership group — led by Philadelphia’s Mustafa Shakur, a high school and college basketball star who also played in the NBA — backed out and paved the way for the league to take the Soul’s ownership reins, the hope was that there would be stability.

“We were counting on the league to take care of us,” Logan said.

Instead, the chaos surrounding the team started to build as the opener approached. Joe Mancuso, who left the Indoor Football League for a chance to be the Soul’s starting quarterback, told The Inquirer in a previous interview that up until the week of the first game, Soul players didn’t have shoulder pads and other equipment. Mancuso also told his agent, Tristen Burnett, that players hadn’t received any W-2 forms before the opener, an ominous sign.

After the indignity of being kicked out of the Super 8 motel on April 26, Mancuso was one of many Soul players who abandoned ship. The same weekend of the disastrous loss in Louisiana, Mancuso signed with the Duke City Gladiators of the IFL. Mancuso was 11-for-18 with 118 yards and four touchdowns in a loss to the San Antonio Gunslingers on Saturday.

“If the league is broke and is not able to meet the contractual obligations, I don’t understand what other [AFL] franchises are expecting,” Burnett said. “I get [other AFL teams] wanting to finish out the year for the fans, but if the league isn’t paying players and they do not have the proper equipment and everyone involved is in ghost mode or leaving, what does that say? I wouldn’t be surprised if some people proceed with civil lawsuits in the future.”

(Burnett said AFL players are supposed to receive $1,000 before each game, as well as meal vouchers and housing. Unlike other pro sports leagues, the AFL does not have a players’ union.)

Titus said he was “really crushed to hear what happened in Philadelphia,” and added that some Soul players were contacting him after the club folded. Titus said he would pay players out of his own pocket if it ever came to that in Billings. But he said his franchise is stable on all fronts.

“We need someone with experience who understands the arena football industry. No doubt it’s tarnished now,” Titus said, referring to a new league front office.

Emery Sammons Jr., a Soul player who was the team’s most ardent supporter and had been cheerleading through social media in videos and posts, tried to maintain a positive outlook after the season was canceled two games in.

“How could the league not want to keep this team going?” Sammons asked on a video posted on his Instagram account. “I want to personally give a special thanks to the fans, the most important people of the arena football game. I just want to thank you guys for holding on tight, staying strong. … We fought through this as long as we could.”

Not all players who suited up for the Soul were disappointed with the experience. Jim Terry, an indoor/arena football kicker who has played on more than a dozen teams during a 24-year stretch, was contacted by Logan the day before the game in Minnesota, since the Soul were without a kicker. Terry said he would drive from where he was based, Branson, Mo., to Minnesota nonstop and be ready to suit up with the team by kickoff. Logan gave the green light, and Terry was in a Soul uniform by Sunday’s start time.

He said he wasn’t surprised the Soul folded soon thereafter, however, given the ownership turmoil.

“Will the AFL survive? Yes, 100 percent. This won’t be enough of a burn to kill the league,” said Terry, 47. “Five years from now, it will start back up again. Arena Football is like a cockroach — it will never die.”

That’s the attitude that Logan is trying to maintain, as well as the AFL, which announced it would move forward with a 10-team league and discuss perhaps the inclusion of other teams.

“The Soul needs to find an owner willing to give 120 percent of their time and their finances,” said Logan, who is a New Jersey private investigator outside of football. “I’m still going to be a fan of the Soul, and if they allow me to be a part of the team in some kind of way — equipment boy, coach, GM — I’m willing to do that because I have a love of the game and a love of the Soul fans.”