Founder: indoor football has it made in the shade.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: SPORTS SECTION

American Indoor Football League founder Andrew Haines insists that he is still enthusiastic about the future of his sport in North Carolina. So far, five indoor-football franchises, from his league as well as two others, have failed in the state. But Haines says he is confident that the team now based in Raleigh will succeed. He also says that he's seeking owners for franchises he would like to place elsewhere in the state. The man drips with positivism.

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You have to wonder why. Since 1996, professional indoor-football teams that were started in Charlotte, Greensboro, Fayetteville, Raleigh and Asheville have either collapsed or fled to a different locale. The most recent batch of problems cropped up with Asheville's AIFL franchise. In March, Carolina Ghostriders owner Robert Boyd shut that team down after he was unable to sell it back to the league, which charges $125,000 for a franchise. Even the Raleigh Rebels, the team for which Haines has such high hopes, went through a sudden change of ownership in April when Greg Ellis, facing financial troubles, was forced to sell it to Harry Pierce, a former Home Depot executive who lives in Rome, Ga. The Rebels are the second indoor-football team to try making a go of it in Raleigh.

Haines' AIFL is a lower-level competitor of the higher-profile Arena Football League and Arena Football 2. The former was started in 1987; it has drawn an average of one million fans a season and landed a national television contract with NBC, which started in 2003. The Arena Football League is in New York and Los Angeles and other larger cities. Arena Football 2 was a spinoff; it has 23 teams, in such places as Birmingham, Ala.; Louisville, Ky.; and Memphis, Tenn. The AIFL is two years old. Haines says he might put a franchise in Concord next season.

Even teams from the original Arena Football League, thus far the sport's biggest success story, have not done well over the long haul in North Carolina. The Charlotte Rage opened in 1992 and folded in 1996. The Carolina Cobras, who started play in Raleigh in 2000, moved to Charlotte for two seasons and closed in 2004.

So why is Haines certain arena football can flourish in North Carolina? "There is a lot of college football in that area, and there are a lot of athletes in the Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh areas," says Haines, a former high-school football player from Lancaster, Pa., who is now based in Canton, Ohio. "There are also nice facilities...