Counting down Southwest Georgia’s Top 10 sports stories of 2014 — No. 9: Albany Panthers football team folds

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Herald’s sports staff has chosen Southwest Georgia’s Top 10 sports stories from 2014. Today marks the second of the 10 we’ve picked as having a significant influence as we count down to No. 1, which will appear in the Jan. 1 addition. Look for No. 8 in Thursday’s Herald.

ALBANY — It was a painful ending to one of the more successful professional sports teams in the city of Albany. But when the Albany Panthers arena football team failed to raise enough money to keep the season alive, the team folded last February.

One of the Professional Indoor Football League’s premier teams met the same fate as most of the city’s other professional sports franchises, like the Albany Polecats baseball team and the Albany Sharpshooters basketball organization.

But they didn’t go down without a fight. Last January, team officials held an 11th-hour plea to sponsors and fans, hoping to keep the season alive.

When the PIFL mandated the team raise at least $100,000 in a week to keep the team running, officials made every effort possible.

“There is an equation we use every year where sponsorships make up a significant portion of the revenue we have for the team,” Chappell told the Herald last January.

“Over this off season, we have a significant amount of sponsors that have not renewed yet. So this is a call-out for those sponsors.”

When club failed to reach that goal established by the PIFL and the team couldn’t meet its financial obligations, the plug was pulled on the team. Then about a month later, city officials revealed the team would be kicked out of the Albany Civic Center, its home venue, for defaulting on its lease.

It wasn’t the first time the Panthers, who had been a franchise since January 2010, struggled financially, but Chappell said the budget deficit in previous seasons had been small enough for him to personally cover.

It was a crushing blow to the players and head coach Lucious Davis, who had hoped the team could stay around.

“This means a lot to them,” Davis told the Herald. “For some of these guys, this is their world. A lot of guys live for this. A few of us have talked about it the last couple of days, but it is what it is.”

The Panthers, who had won league titles in 2011 and ’12, finished with a 7-6 record in 2013 with a semifinal loss to Alabama. Nobody at the time figured that would be the last game in franchise history.

Chappell added that Albany had been one of the more successful indoor football sports clubs during the previous four seasons.

The Panthers’ demise dropped the PIFL to a seven-team league and left the Columbus Lions as the only franchise in the state.