Daytona Beach Hawgs

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The Daytona Beach Hawgs were a professional indoor football team. They were a member of the NIFL. They played their home games at Ocean Center.

The Hawgs got off to a 7-3 start in the 2005 season before an interesting turn of events. The team was temporarily locked out of the Ocean Center after its rent checks bounced. Players, coaches and staff complained of non-payment, and Head Coach Ervin Bryson was fired despite leading the team to the verge of a division title.

Bryson was replaced by Pepe Pearson, a former Ohio State standout, who commuted to Daytona Beach on gamedays only. His tenure was marred by the team having to fly out to Everett, Washington on the day of the game; a road trip to Fayetteville, N.C., without travel expenses, and a regular season finale in Rome, Ga., where the team traveled in mini-vans and had to share equipments. Despite this, the Hawgs still won their division championship with an 8-6 record and the right to host a playoff game.

The playoff game never came to fruition. The Hawgs' ownership group announced that it had been kicked out of the NIFL playoffs for using an ineligible player in the Rome game. Hawgs players insisted that league president Carolyn Shiver gave the player permission to compete in a conference call and speculated that the Hawg ownership group either did not have the money to host the playoffs or simply did not want to incur the expense.

As the situation was developing, the owner of the team's title sponsor, a local business machine supplier, had attempted to buy the Hawgs to no avail. However, the sponsor struck a deal with the rival American Indoor Football League for an expansion franchise and secured a two-year exclusive with the Ocean Center, thus denying the Hawgs a suitable place to play. That team, the Daytona Beach Thunder, begins play in 2006 with Bryson as the head coach and many players and staff jumping over to the new team.

To this date, it is uncertain whether any players received any compensation. The Hawgs were removed off the NIFL web site shortly after the 2005 season concluded, and recently the Hawgs web site was taken offline.