United Indoor Football

United Indoor Football

United Indoor Football logo
Sport	American football
Founded	2005
Ceased	2008
No. of teams	8
Country	United States
Last champion(s)	Sioux Falls Storm
Official website	www.unitedindoorfootball.com

United Indoor Football (UIF) was a United States indoor football league that started in 2005. Ten owners from the National Indoor Football League, including one expansion (the Dayton Warbirds, which never played a game in UIF) and two from arenafootball2 (af2) took their franchises and formed their own league. The league was based in Omaha, Nebraska.

On July 22, 2008, it was announced that the UIF would be merging with the Intense Football League 2009 season. The merged league is known as the newest incarnation of the Indoor Football League.

United Indoor Football was played exclusively indoors, in arenas usually designed for either basketball or ice hockey teams. The field was the same width (85 feet) as a standard NHL hockey rink. The field was 50 yards long with up to an 8-yard end zone. (End zones could be a lesser depth with League approval.) Depending on the stadium in which a game was being played, the end zones may be rectangular (like a basketball court) or curved (like a hockey rink). There was a heavily padded wall on each sideline, with the padding placed on top of the hockey dasher boards. The field goal uprights were 9 feet wide, and the crossbar was 18 feet above the playing surface. Unlike Arena football, the ball was not "live" when rebounded off the nets behind the end zone or their support apparatuses.

A player was counted as out of bounds on the sidelines if they came into contact or fell over the boundary wall.

Each team fielded eight players at a time from a 21-man active roster.

The ball was kicked off from the goal line. The team with the ball was given four downs to gain ten yards or score. Punting was illegal because of the size of the playing field. A receiver jumping to catch a pass needed to get only one foot down in bounds for the catch to be deemed a completed catch. Balls that bounced off the padded walls that surrounded the field were live. The defending team could return missed field goal attempts that fell short of the end zone. If a free kick struck the ceiling or any object hanging from said ceiling while over the field of play, it was immediately dead and belonged to the receiving team 5 yards from mid-field.