Minor league in the context of "Ivan Miller (journalist)"

Arena football is a variety of gridiron football designed to be played indoors. The game is played on a smaller field than American or Canadian football, designed to fit in the same surface area as a standard North American ice hockey rink, and features between six and eight players for each team playing at any given time depending on the league, resulting in a faster and higher-scoring game that can be played on the floors of indoor arenas. The sport was invented in 1981, and patented in 1987, by Jim Foster, a former executive of the National Football League and the United States Football League. The name is trademarked by Gridiron Enterprises and had a proprietary format until its patent expired in 2007.

Three leagues have played under official arena football rules: the Arena Football League, which played 32 seasons in two separate runs from 1987 to 2008 and 2010 to 2019; arenafootball2, the AFL's erstwhile developmental league, which played 10 seasons from 2000 through 2009; and the China Arena Football League, which played two abbreviated seasons in 2016 and 2019 but was not directly affiliated with the now-defunct AFL. A 2024 reboot of the Arena Football League used the original league's rulebook with minor variations.

Professional sports leagues are organized in numerous ways. The two most significant types are one that developed in Europe, characterized by a tiered structure using promotion and relegation in order to determine participation in a hierarchy of leagues or divisions, and a North American originated model characterized by its use of franchises, closed memberships, and minor leagues. Both these systems remain most common in their area of origin, although both systems are used worldwide.

The Florida Panthers are a professional ice hockey team based in the Miami metropolitan area. The Panthers compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference. The team initially played its home games at Miami Arena before moving to what is now known as Amerant Bank Arena in 1998. Located in Sunrise, Florida, the franchise is the southernmost team in the NHL. The Panthers are one of two NHL franchises based in Florida, with the other being the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The team's local broadcasting rights were held by Bally Sports Florida (formerly SportsChannel and Fox Sports Florida) from 1996 to 2024 when they made a new broadcast deal with Scripps Sports. The Panthers are primarily affiliated with two minor league teams: the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League (AHL) and the Savannah Ghost Pirates of the ECHL.

The American Hockey League (AHL) is a professional ice hockey league in North America that serves as the primary developmental league of the National Hockey League (NHL). The league comprises 32 teams, with 26 in the United States and 6 in Canada.

As of the 2025–26 AHL season, all 32 NHL teams held affiliations with an AHL team. Historically, when an NHL team does not have an AHL affiliate, its players are assigned to AHL teams affiliated with other NHL franchises. The league offices are located in Springfield, Massachusetts, and its current president is Scott Howson.

Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a league system, based on their performance over a season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes called open leagues. In a system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in a lower division are promoted to a higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are relegated to the lower division for the next season. During the season, teams that are high enough in the league table that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the promotion zone, and those at the bottom are in the relegation zone (colloquially the drop zone or facing the drop). These can also involve being in zones where promotion and relegation is not automatic, but subject to a playoff.

An alternate system of league organization, used primarily in Australia, Canada, the Philippines, Singapore, and the United States, is a closed model based on licensing or franchises. This maintains the same teams from year to year, with occasional admission of expansion teams and relocation of existing teams, and with no team movement between the major league and minor leagues. Some competitions, such as the Belgian Pro League in football or the Super League in rugby league, operate hybrid systems which allow for promotion and relegation between divisions but which allocate this based on a mix of financial and administrative scores with competition performance.

In professional wrestling, the independent circuit (often shortened to the indie circuit or the indies) is the collective name of independently owned promotions which are deemed to be smaller and more regionalized than major national promotions.

Independent promotions are essentially viewed as a minor league or farm system for the larger national promotions, as wrestlers in "indie" companies (especially young wrestlers just starting their careers, and wrestlers in larger Indie promotions) are usually honing their craft with the goal of being noticed and signed by a major national promotion such as WWE, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) (which also owns Ring of Honor (ROH)), or Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in the United States, Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (which is owned by WWE) or Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre in Mexico, or New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Dragongate, All Japan Pro Wrestling, World Wonder Ring Stardom or one of the CyberFight promotions in Japan. It is also not uncommon for veteran wrestlers who have had past tenures with major promotions to appear on independent shows, either as special attractions or as a way to prolong their careers as free agents. There are also plenty of wrestlers who also wish to not sign with any of the major promotions and therefore primarily depend on the independent circuit for work.

The AF2 (styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the af2 played using the same arena football rules and style of play. League seasons ran from April through July with the postseason and ArenaCup championship in August. The af2 continued to operate while the AFL suspended operations for its 2009 season. The league was effectively disbanded in September 2009 when no team committed to playing in 2010, but several of the stronger franchises transferred into the reconstituted AFL.

Like most other minor sports leagues, the af2 existed to develop football players and also to help players adapt to the style and pace of arena football. In addition, the af2 was similar to other minor leagues because af2 teams played in smaller cities and smaller venues. While the AFL was played in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Chicago, the af2 fielded teams in cities which are part of metropolitan statistical areas ranging in size from Milwaukee (with 1,739,497 residents) to Albany, Georgia (with 164,000 residents). Also in common with other minor professional sports leagues, players also earned less than in the AFL, with each player making $200-$500 per game, with a minimum $50 victory bonus.

The Iowa Heartlanders are a professional minor league ice hockey team in the ECHL based in Coralville, Iowa. The team began play in the 2021–22 ECHL season, playing their home games at Xtream Arena.