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Battlehawks Team Formation
The BattleHawks are the only XFL team not to share its market with a current National Football League franchise; St. Louis had hosted NFL football in 1923 with the All-Stars, 1934 with the Gunners, 1960 to 1987 with the Football Cardinals, and again from 1995 to 2015 with the Rams, which relocated to Los Angeles in the 2016 season. There is a significant negative sentiment against the NFL in St. Louis, as both the Cardinals and Rams relocated to new markets, citing a division between the teams’ ownership and both the city & county governments of St. Louis to adequately provide a new stadium and the unacceptable condition of the Dome at America’s Center. (The Dome was the last NFL stadium to be built with a fully opaque and fixed roof, which led to a lack of ambient light and, coupled with the Rams’ decision to switch to a darker uniform color palette in the early 2000s, resulted in one of the darkest stadium environments in the NFL.) As St. Louis was one of the most recent cities to lose an NFL team, with acceptable facilities by XFL standards, the area was seen as a good choice to take advantage of a newly empty football market.
St. Louis has very little history of hosting alternative professional football. None of the major alternative outdoor leagues of the late 20th and early 21st centuries had a team there, and the Arena Football League’s only presence was the St. Louis Stampede of 1995 and 1996. Some indoor football teams have played at Family Arena in suburban St. Charles, Missouri, including the RiverCity Rage and River City Raiders. St. Louis has also been devoid of NCAA Division I Football since 1949, when the Saint Louis University Billikens dropped football as an intercollegiate sport; the nearest FBS football squad, the Missouri Tigers, play in Columbia.
The St. Louis BattleHawks share the Missouri winter sports market with one other major professional team, the National Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues, and with the Billikens’ and Tigers’ college basketball teams.
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XFL and Battlehawks Covid-19 Shutdown
The Battlehawks inaugural season was cut short due to the 2019 – 2020 coronavirus pandemic and the XFL officially suspended operations for the remainder of the season on March 20, 2020.
The St. Louis BattleHawks is a professional American football team based in St. Louis, Missouri. The team is an owned-and-operated member of the XFL (2020) begun by Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment. The team will play its home games at The Dome at America’s Center.
Established
2020
City
St. Louis
League History
2020 – Present / XFL
Team History
2020 – Present / St. Louis Battlehawks
Nickname
Battlehawks – “This name is objectively horrible. Let’s get that out of the way immediately. St. Louis is getting the No. 2 spot because they have a team NAMED THE BATTLEHAWKS,” James Dator wrote in his review. “I don’t know what the hell a Battlehawk is. It’s a hawk that likes to battle, I assume. It sounds like a 1980s cartoon with a Kenny Loggins-esque theme song — probably with a robotic hawk and a dude in a futuristic Stetson. It’s also the name of an old video game …
Championship
XFL Championships 0
Stadium
2020 – Present / The Dome at America’s Center
Owner
2020 – Present / Alpha Entertainment, LLC
Coach
2020 – Present / Jonathan Hayes
Retired Number
*Blue is this team’s history
