Orlando Apollos
professional American football team playing in the AAF
The Orlando Apollos were a professional American football franchise based in Orlando, Florida, and one of the eight members of the Alliance of American Football (AAF), which began play in February 2019. The team played its home games at Spectrum Stadium on the campus of the University of Central Florida. They were coached by Heisman Trophy winner and former college and National Football League (NFL) head coach Steve Spurrier. NFL front office veteran Tim Ruskell was the general manager and longtime college athletics executive Michael P. Waddell was the team president.
The team's name was inspired by the Greek god Apollo, and his and Florida's connections to the Sun, while the team's colors of orange and navy were tributes to Florida's sunshine and the Apollo program, respectively. The team's helmets depicted Apollo, who is commonly pictured as an archer, shooting a bow-and-arrow.
On April 2, 2019, the league's football operations were reportedly suspended, and on April 4 the league allowed players to leave their contracts to sign with NFL teams. The league filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on April 17, 2019.
History
On April 7, 2018, Orlando was announced as the first Alliance team along with its coach, Steve Spurrier. On September 20, the league announced four inaugural eastern franchises' names and logos including the Orlando Apollos.
The public source identifies “Orlando Apollos” as professional American football team playing in the AAF. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Orlando, Apollos and professional.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q54322444. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Orlando Apollos” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.