Los Angeles and San Diego will play in the South Division in 2025. Las Vegas joins the West.
January 9, 2025 by Alex Rubin in News
As expected following the introduction of the Las Vegas Bighorns franchise for the 2025 season, the UFA announced a new division alignment. The Los Angeles Aviators and San Diego Growlers will be moving from the West Division to the South Division while the Bighorns will take their place in the West. The Central and East divisions are unchanged from 2024. Each division will send three teams to the playoffs, with each division’s champion advancing to Championship Weekend as in 2024.
“It’s always fun to play against new opponents,” San Diego’s Kyle Rubin said. “We had great matchups with Austin the last time we shared a division, and obviously both Atlanta and Carolina are talented teams we look forward to competing against.”
This realignment evens out the UFA divisions at six teams apiece. Between the addition of the Bighorns and the offseason contraction of the Dallas Legion, the UFA found itself in a state of imbalance entering 2025. Just four teams remained from 2024’s South Division while eight called the west coast home including Las Vegas. The teams are balanced, but the South Division now spans from North Carolina to California and suggests more cross-divisional games are ahead.
“It’s interesting the way they’ve done it for sure,” Carolina’s Trevor Lynch said. “To be honest, it seems really logistically challenging to make a lot of cross-country double headers happen.”
There will be fewer long-haul flights than one might expect at first glance. Evan Lepler reported that the UFA is planning to have the south’s coastal opponents (Atlanta, Carolina, Los Angeles, and San Diego) only travel across the country for a double header once every two years, and once for a Texas doubleheader in the alternating years. The plan is for Atlanta and San Diego to travel cross-country in 2025 while Carolina and Los Angeles will be making arrangements to play in Austin and Houston. In 2026, it follows that Carolina and Los Angeles would travel to play each other while Atlanta and San Diego would spend their travel weekend in Texas.
After two years of playing each other over and over again in a small South division, this schedule portends big changes for Atlanta, Carolina, Austin, and Houston. “I thought with Dallas leaving we’d be playing Houston eight times! What a relief,” Austin’s Kyle Henke joked.
“Having six teams in the South again will hopefully provide a little balance to the scheduling,” Atlanta’s Brad Seuntjens said. “Texas teams get to branch out a little while us and Carolina may become just a tad less familiar with each other.”
This plan will lead to an unequal schedule1, but it creates more opportunities for cross-division matchups which have been popular since their introduction in 2017.
It is very likely that both LA and San Diego will play against the nearby Bighorns. Carolina will likely play games against teams like DC, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Last season, Chicago played games against Austin and Houston, and this season the UFA is likely to similarly schedule a Central Division team for a Texas doubleheader. Lepler reported that a West Division team will do the same. The full schedule is expected to be released in February.
Despite not necessarily knowing all of their matchups yet, coaches and captains around the league took little time to take in this new information before focusing their efforts on planning for the season ahead. “I believe we have the best coaching staff in the league,” Rubin added, “and I think when you have so many new opponents being able to scout and game plan effectively becomes that much more crucial to having success on game day. I think [San Diego coaches Kaela Helton, Jonathan Helton, and Kevin Stuart] share my excitement in this new challenge and we all look forward to the opportunity of showing we can compete in this new South Division.”
“I’m simply excited to see some new teams this season,” Seuntjens added. “It’s always enjoyable to mix it up and keep things fresh. It is easier to see some things when you play against opponents that haven’t seen you as often.”
for example under the plan outlined above, Atlanta and San Diego will play each other twice while Los Angeles and Carolina would not see each other during the regular season ↩
