BREAKING NEWS!!!

They're the team that came to define amateur football in this state.  They're a seven-time national championship squad.  They're one of the oldest football teams in America.  And they're finally coming home.  Or rather, finally coming closer to home.

Over the weekend, the MSFL released their 2010 additions.  In addition to securing the Roscoe Rush, former challengers to the IFL throne, the MSFL also scored a major coup when they courted, and signed, the Racine Raiders.  The Raiders have been chased in recent years quite heavily by the IFL, and just last year the WSFL threw their hat in the ring as potential suitors when word leaked the team was unhappy with the NAFL.  However, the WSFL was a long shot, given the uneven parity in the league, and when the SEFL announced it would delay by at least a year the Rush helped talk the Raiders into joining them in the MSFL.

Fans of football in Racine will now finally get to witness a match-up that has been in the making for years - the Raiders and the Threat.  The Threat have quickly built up from an upstart WSFL team to MSFL champs (2009) in a few short years.  They're no longer seen as the little step-brother to the big boy Raiders, but will have their work cut out for themselves as they will ultimately face the Raiders throughout the regular season if they wish to remove the label.  Racine comes in having had a statistically great season in the NAFL, especially offensively, and ultimately fell to the eventual Champs in the playoffs.

Joining the Rush and Raiders will be the Country Club Hills Stallions, a team with a slightly higher profile currently thanks to a US Cellular television commercial featuring a Stallions player.  Should all three teams stay in the MSFL heading into the season (let's not forget we're talking about semipro football ultimately), the MSFL will have 17 teams covering three full states - Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

Interestingly, the NAFL, headquartered in Minnesota, has seemingly lost tremendous traction in the Upper Midwest in the past year.  Every team from the former Great Lakes Dells Division is now elsewhere, as are the 2009 National Champion St Paul Pioneers (who left for the NEFL).