The Philadelphia Soul’s start to the Arena Football season is the definition of a shitshow. If you were jonesing for some Soul games this summer to hold you over before the Eagles returned, bad luck. The season was cancelled, really before it even started in a wild sequence of events. On Friday, the Soul pulled the plug via their Twitter account:

To be honest I didn’t even know the Soul were back. Probably because to me they weren’t really the Soul. Sure, by name they were, but they were playing home games in Trenton and there was no Bon Jovi or Ron Jaworski at the helm. SoulMan was nowhere to be seen. Not my 3x Arena Football League Champion Soul. This would be like reviving the KIXX and not giving Peter Pappas a role on the squad.

The Soul were supposed to play their first game on April 27th. The head ball coach, Patrick Pimmel, quit a couple days before. The night before they were supposed to fly out and play the Louisiana Voodoo the team was kicked out of their Super 8 Motel for not paying their bills via Christian Red at the Inky:

Kicker Connor Mangan detailed the scene at the Philly airport. No coaches and only a handful of players showed up for the flight and they never boarded the plane:

 

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They ended up cutting everyone.


But the game still went on using replacement players from an Arena League 2 team in Dallas. The owner of that Dallas Arena team became the new head coach and they got their doors blown off 53-18. At the game the sideline pads were held up by people:

Now the league has had games cancelled 30 minutes before they were supposed to begin. Other teams have cancelled their season. The NFL Network TV deal fell through. The Arena Football League is Livin’ on a Prayer.