AAF Announces First Four Team Names and Logos

The Alliance of American Football announced Thursday the names and logos of their first four franchises. The Atlanta Legends, Birmingham Iron, Memphis Express and Orlando Apollos will be joined by teams in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and San Diego that will be named at a later date.

The AAF will kick off the week following the Super Bowl in 2019, beginning one year prior to the revived XFL kicking off in 2020. The AAF will be broadcast by CBS and its own app.

The team names are mostly original with some minor exceptions. The Birmingham Iron appears to be the first usage of the name, although baseball historians record the similar Birmingham Ironmakers as the name of a minor league team in a former incarnation of the Southern League in 1887 (although baseball team names were highly informal in this era). The Memphis Express was previously the name for an amateur soccer team competing in the Premier Development League from 2002 through 2005. Neither the Atlanta Legends or the Orlando Apollos names appear to have been used by any teams previously.

The league also announced that these teams would be placed in an Eastern Division, with the remaining four clubs in a Western Division. The Western Division team names and logos will be announced next week, the league announced.

The logos for the four Eastern Division teams are below: