SFL Sets Alignment for historic 25th Season

by Cameron Irvine

The Simulation Football League will compete with 23 teams in Season 25, spanning five divisions across three countries once again. Two divisions will compete with four teams. In those two divisions, teams will play one divisional opponent twice.

The season begins at the 2025 SFL Convention in Baltimore, Maryland on Friday July 11. Mexico City is the 2x defending champion heading into the season. Alignment adjustments include the Lexington Miners shifting to the East Division with the Detroit Maulers heading to the North Division. Detroit is relocating from Indianapolis, where they have been known as the Ramblers the entire franchise history.

West Division:

  • Arizona Scorpions
  • Los Angeles Lycans
  • Sin City Samurai
  • Vancouver Legion
  • Washington Trident

South Division:

  • Albuquerque Atoms
  • Bossier City Steamers
  • Fort Worth Toros
  • Houston HeadHunters
  • Mexico City Aztecs

Central Division:

  • Chicago Warriors
  • Denver Nightwings
  • Minnesota Legend
  • Oklahoma City Renegades

East Division:

  • Carolina Skyhawks
  • Charleston Predators
  • Florida Storm
  • Lexington Miners

North Division:

  • Baltimore Vultures
  • D.C. Dragons
  • Detroit Maulers
  • Pittsburgh Riverhogs
  • Queen City Corsairs

The alignment comes after the Atlanta Swarm and Nashville Tempo organizations folded this off-season. Budding rivalries between franchises like Detroit and Minnesota, as well as Lexington and Pittsburgh will be preserved on the schedule despite the adjustments to divisions.

In an effort to prioritize quality ownership over quantity, the league is not aggressively pursuing replacements or call-ups for the franchises that folded.

"In the APF era of the SFL, quantity was a much more effective business model because of how easy it was to start up a team," said Commissioner Cameron Irvine. "Teams did not need to design stadiums or uniforms, the league propped up low-retention organizations with COVID-sized rookie classes and expansion drafts. Today, it is much more difficult to start a team from scratch and often teams not prioritizing business strip or withhold all their valuable assets before they are actually sold. We have higher standards for leadership now and that is going to give us more quality of teams long-term and allow us to create a higher quality product and more depth-of-production each time we are live."

Teams will continue to play a 12-game regular season over 15 weeks, with 12 teams making the four-week playoff trek to a Championship. Each division winner will clinch an automatic playoff berth. The exception is if a winner of a four-team division has a worse record than the 12th best record in the standings.