The league has its roots in the Atlantic Indoor Football League, which began play in 2005 under the leadership of Andrew Haines. The first team to join the AIFL was the Johnstown RiverHawks. The league began with six teams, all of them based in the eastern United States. Two teams played all of their games on the road, and the regular season was cut short two weeks because of teams being unable to secure venues for playoff games. In the 2005–06 offseason, the league changed its name to the American Indoor Football League, while nine expansion teams entered the league and a tenth (the Rome Renegades) joined from the National Indoor Football League.