Days after announcing its inaugural season was canceled, the Salem-based arena football team Oregon Blackbears said they have restarted their season and will play on Saturday at the Washington Wolfpack at Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett, Washington.
Team president Pat Johnson said that a local owner, who he declined to identify, was in the process of purchasing the rights to the team, and that the deal would be completed before the team’s 3 p.m. Saturday game.
“We have the new ownership in, the old minority group in, and we’re able to move forward,” said Johnson, who was named team president on the day of the team’s preseason game.
The Blackbears announced the team was operating again with a press release on Friday.
The Arena Football League added the Blackbears Saturday game at Washington to the schedule after previously deleting the team from its schedule.
This was the first year for the team and the first for the restarted Arena Football League. The league was operated through a licensing deal with Lee Hutton III and Travelle Gaines and the G6 Sports Investment Group, which purchased the rights to the league out of bankruptcy.
In a February contract with the Oregon State Fairgrounds, Gaines was listed as the CEO of the team. The only other name from the team listed is Justin Butler, who has a Los Angeles address.
The Blackbears were one of four the league identified as having no owner earlier in the week by acting league commissioner Jeff Fisher. The Blackbears were left out when the league announced on Tuesday it would be reduced to 10 teams.
The team played three preseason games at The Pavilion at the Oregon State Fairgrounds.
The Blackbears are 2-0 after wins on April 27 and May 4. The team was originally scheduled to host a game on May 11. That game was changed to a road game against Washington, but that game was canceled.
According to a public records request from the fairgrounds, the team still owes the fairgrounds $5,600 in rent for the canceled game. Johnson said it would be up to the new ownership group to determine how to deal with that debt.
Johnson said the rest of the Blackbears schedule has not been determined, though it still has home games scheduled for The Pavilion on June 11 and June 18.
Johnson said the team has been practicing since the announcement from the league.
He said that finding the new ownership group has been an around-the-clock process over the past few days.
“The fact that we can continue and we got a local partner to come in and take this thing over, it’s so much better,” Johnson said.
Bill Poehler covers Marion and Polk County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com
