Antonio Brown can’t catch a break. Oh wait, maybe he should have paid the bills, according to reports – and that part is slightly unclear, but either way- Cha-Ching! Brown’s team, the Albany Empire, was kicked out of the National Arena League when Brown FAILED to pay a required fee OR a fine they slapped him with after some public comments that didn’t sit well with someone, apparently.
ESPN had a quote from the NAL that explains why the Albany Empire was kicked out:
After exhausting all avenues, the NAL board of owners have decided unanimously to terminate the membership agreement of the Albany Empire,” the league said in a release. “The decision was reached after an emergency conference call of the members in good standing to discuss the Empire’s failure to pay their league mandated and overdue assessments.”
Antonio Brown hasn’t even owned the team for very long. He gained majority ownership only in April, so it’s been like two months and this guy is already in trouble with an arena football league. Not a good look, buddy. ESPN’s report further stated that all NAL teams have to pay ‘one-seventh’ of the NAL operating budget each month and that Antonio Brown didn’t pay the May 15 installment. He paid April, but not May. Brown was also fined $1,000 for behavior the league believed was ‘detrimental’ according to ESPN’s report. Brown also allegedly got his April payment credited back to him because he challenged it. Weird, I know.
That same report on ESPN also had more information from the NAL:
The NAL said the team accountant informed officials “that it didn’t seem like Mr. Brown was going to pay the assessment or fine,” leading to the emergency conference call.
The membership gave the Empire until noon ET Thursday to make the payment. When they didn’t pay, the NAL canceled the team’s Saturday home game against the Jacksonville Sharks, and it will adjust the rest of the league’s 2023 regular-season schedule without the Albany squad.
Imagine playing for the Albany Empire and get a call saying your team could be out of the league because your owner, Antonio Brown, is a dunce who can’t act like an adult for like 5 minutes and pay his bills. Unless there’s something more to this that the NAL is not telling us, then why wouldn’t Antonio Brown pay that bill?
On the flip side, Brown was suggesting he would play for the Empire and even caught some balls in practice, but I guess you can’t play on a team that no longer exists. Maybe Brown can fix this by paying the bills.
Photo: All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons