In second season, Brigade will encounter familiar company

The Baltimore Brigade will kick off their second Arena Football League season tonight at Royal Farms Arena against the Washington Valor, but if you can’t make it to the first meeting of the Ted Leonsis-owned franchises, don’t worry.

There will be a second meeting. And a third. And a fourth. And possibly a fifth and sixth in a playoff matchup, too.

With the Tampa Bay Storm folding in December and the Cleveland Gladiators suspending operations for the next two seasons, the AFL is down to four teams, its fewest since the league’s inaugural 1987 season: the second-year Brigade and Valor, the expansion Albany Empire and the two-time defending champion Philadelphia Soul.

The Brigade will play each team four times, twice at home and twice on the road, before a guaranteed home-and-home semifinal series. (After finishing 4-10 overall and fourth in the five-team AFL last season, the Brigade lost a one-and-done semifinal to top-seeded Philadelphia.)

The league’s veterans are by now accustomed to these scheduling quirks. They also know what such familiarity breeds. Firstyear Brigade quarterback Randy Hippeard recalled that whenhis Storm faced the Valor four times in an eight-week span last season, each game seemed increasingly competitive. The result never changed, but Tampa Bay’s margin of victory did, from eight and six points in their first two meetings to one and four points in the final two.

“We are creatures of habit,” Brigade defensive lineman Justin Lawrence (Morgan State) said. “It’s not like we’re going to change the way we play one week from week to week. Maybe the schemes will change, but you as a player, you are going to be you.”

The teams themselves, though, Hippeard speculated, will look completely different by year’s end. Comeplayoff time, “there’s going to be so many new wrinkles that there’s no point almost in watching the first half of the season” on film, he said.

That wasn’t always the case, of course. Not long ago, the regular season was more than just a runway to the postseason. Brigade coach Omarr Smith played in the AFLduringits heyday in the 2000s, whenas many as 19 teams vied for an ArenaBowl title. And now?

“We’ve got four teams,” he said. He carried on as if it didn’t matter. “On July 28, there’s going to be a team that’s on a podium, holding a trophy, and on a ring, it doesn’t say how many teams are in the league.”