The Marshals (NIFL)

The Marshals were a professional indoor football team based out of Dayton, Ohio. They played their 2007 home games out of Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio, but are more famous for playing as the Cincinnati Marshals at U.S. Bank Arena for their two seasons before a failed plan to move home games to Wall2Wall Soccer arena in nearby Mason, Ohio. The Marshals played their 2004 inaugural season in Waco, TX, as the Waco Marshals.

The Marshals started out as the Waco Marshals in 2004, but finished their inaugural season with a disappointing 2-8 record. For the next season they relocated to Cincinnati and became the Cincinnati Marshals.

The NIFL took over operations mid way through the 2004 season after realizing that the ownership had "floated" a phony check for the franchise and the league had to assume financial burden to a team that had never paid a penny to even join the league due to the fraudulent payment by ownership. The league then agreed to sell the rights to Tony Williams and Manuel Ramos, who was serving as the Defensive Coordinator and Special Teams Coordinator respectively, at the time. Williams and Ramos reign as owners didn't last much longer after it was found that they could not make payments either to the H.O.T. and had bounced employee paychecks, did not pay bills to companies for services and did not have the required insurance for the players; same as their predecessors. Several new players were signed, as the NIFL managed the Marshals for the remainder of the 2004 season.

In 2005 owner H.P. Patterson gave up the team after he did not pay players for well over a month, and then fled the United States after being suspected of money laundering. The mismanagement resulted in the resignation of the team's coach, former Houston Oilers coach Ed Biles, and the dissolution of the Diamond Deputies cheerleading squad, after they claimed weeks of unpaid game checks. In Addition, the Assistant Coach Hubbard Alexander and the Equipment Director Josh Reasoner followed Coach Biles out.

Despite all this, new coach Tony Wells and quarterback Brett Dietz led the team to the finish of an 8-6 record, which tied them for 2nd in their division with the Dayton Warbirds. In the First round of playoffs they upset the River City Rage, who was ranked first in the same division as the Marshals with the Marshals with 67 points and the Rage with 64 points. In the next playoff round they defeated the Fayetteville Guard 70 to 69. In the Atlantic Conference Championship they had no such luck, falling to the Rome Renegades 51 to 41.

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Wikipedia