The West Texas Desert Hawks were a professional indoor football team and an inaugural member of the relaunched Arena Football League. The Desert Hawks were based in Odessa, Texas, with home games at the Ector County Coliseum. The team played their first several seasons as the West Texas Warbirds.
On October 2, 2019, Champions Indoor Football (CIF) announced an expansion team to be based in Odessa for the 2020 season with the team planning to represent West Texas and use it in their team name.[1] A name-the-team contest was held, with Warbirds being announced as the team's name on December 18, beating the "Warriors," "Law," "Outlawz", and "Thunder" in the contest.[2]
The Warbirds' planned inaugural 2020 season was cancelled due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The CIF then delayed the 2021 season, but the local capacity and interstate travel restrictions in Texas led the Warbirds and the Amarillo Venom to withdraw from participating in the 2021 CIF season. The Venom and Warbirds instead launched the Lone Star Series, a series of games between the two CIF Texas teams and a few other Texas-based semiprofessional teams.[3] The Warbirds defeated the Venom, 79–60 to claim the Lone Star Series championship.[4]
Amarillo and West Texas officially left the CIF and turned their Lone Star Series from the previous season into the Arena Football Association (AFA) in November 2021. The new league also announced its initial membership consisting of former Lone Star Series member Texas Jets, former American Arena League champions North Texas Bulls, the dormant Rio Grande Valley Dorados, and the Texas Crude.[5]
National Arena League (2023)/Arena Football League (2024)
Warbirds' final logo (2023)
In 2023, the Warbirds joined the National Arena League (NAL). After one season in the NAL, the team announced on July 18, 2023, via their Facebook page, that they will join the relaunched Arena Football League (AFL) in 2024.[6] On August 22, 2023, the team changed their name to the West Texas Desert Hawks.[7][8] They were officially announced as the second team to join the AFL on August 31.[9] NAL commissioner Chris Siegfried left that position to join the Desert Hawks as head coach.[10] The NAL unsuccessfully filed for an injunction to prevent the Desert Hawks from playing, accusing the team of breach of contract for its departure from the NAL and its joining of the AFL.[11] The Desert Hawks counterargued that it was not the same legal entity as the Warbirds and thus could not be covered under any contract to the former team.[12] After the NAL was granted a preliminary injunction on May 6, the Desert Hawks issued a statement indicating it would defy the injunction and continue playing its AFL schedule.[13] On May 10, 2024, the Desert Hawks and NAL reached a settlement to drop the injunction and allow the team to resume play in the AFL.[14]
The End of the Franchise
On June 18, 2024, a unnamed player and unnamed AFL official reported that the Desert Hawks have ceased operations, following the unannounced dismissal of head coach Chris Siegfried nine days prior. The AFL official indicated that the league was still discussing the matter internally before making any public announcement; the team had one further game on their schedule, a June 22 away game against the Salina Liberty,[10] in which the Cedar Rapids River Kings played in the Desert Hawks' stead.[15] On June 20, the league confirmed the Desert Hawks had ended their season early "for reasons that we will not disclose" but that it had not folded.[16]
On June 21, 2024, owner Zack Bugg held a press conference announcing that he would no longer be the owner of the Desert Hawks nor any other arena football team and that he did not anticipate finding a new owner for the team. He blamed the fiasco on promises that Lee Hutton had made to the Desert Hawks and the rest of the league—particularly accusing Hutton of embezzling money that Bugg had put forth to have the Desert Hawks' second game aired on NFL Network—while praising his replacement Jeff Fisher and failing to answer why he continued to operate the team as normal for six weeks after Hutton's ouster, other than to maintain obligations as best as possible.[17] In regard to joining another indoor football league, Bugg noted that none of the other leagues had the kind of robust paying television contract needed to provide shared revenue.[18] Bugg also noted that the team was in a dispute with Ector County Coliseum vendors over concessions revenue and said that other teams that played at the Coliseum got to keep all concession revenue while the Desert Hawks did not.[19]
