Soul are back playing arena football, but as a replacement team amid claims of ‘clown behavior,’ unpaid bills

His plane ticket still in hand, Conor Mangan strolled through Philadelphia International Airport on Friday morning, sporting a white T-shirt and a weary face, though his optimism and thick Irish brogue were still intact. The plane that was supposed to take Mangan and the rest of his Philadelphia Soul teammates to New Orleans for their Saturday night Arena Football League opener against the Louisiana VooDoo had already departed.

Mangan, however, and all but a handful of the Soul roster remained behind.

“I just wanted to give you an update here on the Philadelphia situation. I’m the kicker for the Philadelphia Soul,” Mangan said in the video he posted on Instagram. “I’m on my way home from the airport because, I didn’t uh, well, I got to the airport, I got to the gate, there was maybe one or two [Soul] players there. There was no coaches, there was no staff. We were supposed to be playing the Louisiana VooDoo [Saturday] night in the first game of the AFL season. But that doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not from my perspective.”

Mangan’s first-person account was one of numerous social media snapshots that described a chaotic and unsettling 48 hours for the Soul and the AFL reboot. Soul coach Patrick Pimmel stepped days before the team’s first game, and many of the Soul players had received release forms.

The relaunch of the AFL — which the league had hyped with a March press release that announced AFL games would be shown on the NFL Network — did get underway Saturday night but without the games on NFL Network. When the AFL posted a Week 1 schedule of games on X (formerly Twitter) earlier Saturday, the Soul’s matchup against the VooDoo in Lafayette, La., wasn’t even listed. The Soul actually did end up playing a game that night, but a large asterisk could be placed next to the team’s box score, a 53-18 drubbing by the VooDoo, since replacement players from another indoor league took the field in Soul jerseys, and Pimmel’s replacement had been named Saturday morning.

By then, the backlash against the Soul and AFL was at full throttle. Soul fans and supporters were starting to learn what happened in the lead-up to the team’s flight to Louisiana.

In a thread posted on X, Mangan said that the Soul players were supposed to be picked up from their Philly-area Super 8 motel by bus on Friday for the trip to the airport.

“The bus did not come,” Mangan posted.

Tristen Burnett, a certified sports agent based in Fredericksburg, Va., who represents Joe Mancuso, the Soul’s scheduled starting quarterback, said in a phone interview Friday that his client had a demoralizing experience at the Super 8. Burnett said the Soul players were kicked out of the motel and into the street early Friday morning, that the motel bill wasn’t paid, and that the players’ luggage was taken from them and locked in a motel room.

“Law enforcement got their stuff from Super 8,” Burnett said. “Joe is just down. He left a good situation in the IFL [Indoor Football League] with the Vegas Knight Hawks. He took a bet on himself in a new league. He had a nice apartment for his young son and wife in Henderson [Nev.], and he comes to this? The [Soul] players were promised apartments. There were drugs and prostitution coming in and out of this motel. It’s been a disgrace. Joe was like, ‘I haven’t gotten a W-2 yet to get paid.’ With no players association, nobody is going to stick up for these guys.”

Mancuso, 26, said that he had already signed papers Sunday morning to return to the IFL and play for the Duke City Gladiators, whose home city is Albuquerque, N.M. Mancuso said the AFL front office hadn’t endeared itself to the Soul players.

“That was something, I tell ya. Nothing I’ve ever experienced before. In terms of the Soul, I don’t know if that’s in my future. With the current ownership, they did us wrong, so there’s no trust,” said Mancuso, who played college football at the University of Richmond. “[Friday] when we got kicked out of the motel, I wanted to go home, so I came back to North Carolina. Internally, our Soul team was good. We would have shined. But everything outside wasn’t aligning for us.”

The cracks in the Soul foundation started to appear last month, when word began to leak that the AFL would take ownership of the Soul after a venture group led by Philadelphia native and former NBA player Mustafa Shakur backed out of its ownership deal.

“I can tell you, you have nothing to worry about,” AFL commissioner Lee A. Hutton said in a March 14 interview on an AFL podcast, when asked about the switch in Soul ownership. Hutton also announced the Soul would play their home games in Trenton.

In a recent interview, Shakur declined to discuss why his group pulled out of the Soul deal.

Pimmel, a veteran football coach at various levels who had a coaching stint with the Knight Hawks, was hired to lead the Soul when the venture group was announced last fall as the new ownership group. After the AFL took over ownership last month, Pimmel stayed onboard, and Kelly Logan, a Willingboro native who had past arena football coaching experience, was brought in to be the Soul’s general manager. The two were part of an April 3 Soul media day call on Zoom, when they expressed optimism for the upcoming season.

“We really do got a good mix of vets and young kids,” Pimmel said then.

In a separate phone interview April 16, Logan said he did not “know exactly what happened” with the ownership renege, but said he was confident in the league taking over the ownership reins.

“I always say this, ‘There’s a reason for everything.’ I respect that the league decided on keeping us,” Logan said. “One thing, [the AFL] could have said, ‘You know what? We’re going to fold the Philadelphia Soul.’ But they didn’t. They had faith in the Philadelphia Soul.”

But 24 hours before the Soul was to play against the VooDoo, Pimmel confirmed to The Inquirer that he was out as coach. Around the same time, Mangan and other Soul players had already started detailing the team’s implosion on social media.

One of the few league responses to the Friday social media firestorm came from AFL deputy commissioner Travelle Gaines: “Believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see …” he posted on X.

“Believe YOU!? Clown behavior,” Clifton Duck, a Soul defensive back, posted on X in response to Gaines. Duck did not make the trip to Louisiana.

Malik Honeycutt, a Soul wide receiver who signed with the club in February, posted a video to his Instagram Story on Saturday, when he repeated over and over, “It’s crazy.”

“Louisiana is playing the Philly team. But that is not the Philadelphia team, nor coaching staff. They just made another head coach today. It’s a team from another league that’s gonna put on our jerseys and play as us,” Honeycutt said in a second video.

Tyrone Washington was announced the day of the game as the Soul’s new coach, and players from the Dallas Falcons, an American Arena League 2 team, replaced most of the current Soul roster. Videos showed the field barriers being held up by people on the sideline, and a field conditions right out of a rec league venue.

Representatives for the AFL did not return requests for comment.

Emery Sammons, a Soul wide receiver who had returned to the franchise a decade ago and been the voice of optimism for the team all spring, did make it to Louisiana on Saturday. Sammons was one of three current roster members to be part of the season-opening disaster. He tried to paint a sunny future outlook after the game.

“Good evening friends family and Soul fans, we were blessed to make it out of the game safely. The guys who played with us showed great sportsmanship and gave it everything they had,” Sammons wrote on Facebook. “The loss was unfortunate, but things will change for the better very soon. However, in order for things to be right, and to be a successful AFL as we’ve always known it to be, you have to start with the fuel to your engine (the players/coaches) and most of all, the fans, give them what they want and crave for, which is arena football as they only know it …#GOSOUL #soulforever.”