Major League Lacrosse

Major League Lacrosse was founded in 1999 by Jake Steinfeld, Dave Morrow and Tim Robertson. Steinfeld is the creator of the Body By Jake line of exercise equipment and videos. Morrow is a former All-American lacrosse player at Princeton and the president of Warrior Sports.[4] Tim Robertson is the son of televangelist Pat Robertson and the former CEO of The Family Channel.[5][6]

Steinfeld was a former lacrosse player at Cortland State (NY), read an article about Dave Morrow. After reading the article, Steinfeld couldn't believe that with the excitement the sport of lacrosse has, there was not a professional outdoor league.[7] Steinfeld said, "For years, America's top collegiate lacrosse players have not had the opportunity to play in a professional outdoor league at the conclusion of their collegiate careers. Those days are over with the creation of Major League Lacrosse."[7]

The league held two separate drafts to stock the six teams for the 2001 season. The first draft took place in 2000 for post-collegiate players. A second draft was held on June 1, 2001, in Baltimore, Maryland, for players whose college eligibility had expired in 2001. Ryan Mollett of Princeton was selected first overall by the Rochester Rattlers. In addition, each team was assigned three franchise players to each team before the initial draft.[8]

MLL began play in 2001 with six teams in the northeastern U.S. split into two divisions. The American Division included teams in Boston, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and on Long Island; the National Division included teams in Baltimore, New Jersey, and Rochester. All teams were owned by the league, which assigned three franchise players to each team before the initial draft.[9]

The first MLL game took place on June 7, 2001, with the Baltimore Bayhawks defeating the Long Island Lizards 16–13 at Homewood field in Baltimore, Maryland. Chris Turner scored the first goal in MLL history.

The MLL played a 14-game regular season its first two years, then the schedule was cut to 12 games. After the first year, the league's playoff format had the top teams in each division advancing to the semifinals, with two wild card playoff spots going to the teams with the next-best records regardless of division.

The first MLL Championship Game saw the Long Island Lizards beat the Baltimore Bayhawks 15–11 in September 2001. The game was played at the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Paul Gait was named the game's MVP.

Four out of the first five championship games were between the Long Island Lizards and the Baltimore Bayhawks. The Lizards won titles in 2001 and 2003, while the Bayhawks won in 2002 and 2005. The recently relocated Philadelphia Barrage beat the Boston Cannons 13–11 in 2004's final.

In 2003, New Balance became a "founding member" and major sponsor of MLL.[6] New Balance founder and CEO, Jim Davis got very involved in the operation of the league, including providing financial support. Davis still owns the Dallas Rattlers.[10]

In 2005, Andrew Goldstein became the first American male team-sport professional athlete to be openly gay during his playing career.[11] Goldstein played goalie for the Long Island Lizards from 2005 to 2007, although he only appeared in two games in 2006.[12]

MLL added four teams for the 2006 season, bringing the league's number of teams up to ten. The expansion markets were Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and San Francisco, extending the league across the country and into top media markets. MLL combined the original six teams into the Eastern Conference and put the new teams into the Western Conference.

Lizards at Rattlers in 2008

The Los Angeles Riptide were owned by the Anschutz Entertainment Group and played its home games at the Home Depot Center. Denver Broncos' owner Pat Bowlen brought the Denver Outlaws to an NFL stadium, Mile High. The other new franchises were the Chicago Machine and the San Francisco Dragons.[13]

Despite winning championships in 2006 and 2007, Philadelphia didn't attract more than 2,500 fans to their games. So in 2008, the Barrage tested out new markets by playing all of its "home" matches in five other cities: Cary, North Carolina; Hillsboro, Oregon; Irving, Texas; St. Louis; and Virginia Beach. In addition, the Barrage's "home game" against the Cannons was played in Boston.

At the end of the 2008 season, four teams – Los Angeles, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and San Francisco – folded due to financial problems. Several of these teams suffered from poor attendance, San Francisco drew 2,808 per game and only 1,920 in New Jersey.[14] This contraction forced the remaining six teams to form one conference.

The Rochester Rattlers won the 2008 Steinfeld Cup but like the Barrage, struggled at the gate. At the start of the 2009 season, a new ownership group in Toronto bought the rights to the Rochester franchise. The Toronto Nationals inherited the staff and players of the team, but the Rattlers' name and team colors were left in Rochester for the possibility of a future team.[4] That same group of players went on to win another championship in 2009 playing for a different team in a different country.

The Chicago Machine played the entire 2010 season as a traveling team testing expansion markets for the league, before deciding that the franchise would be moving to Rochester and adopting the Rattlers name in 2011.[15]

In 2010, the Bayhawks and Lizards met for the fifth time in the championship game. The Bayhawks prevailed 13–9, almost the same score as when they beat Long Island 15–9 five years earlier. The newly renamed Chesapeake Bayhawks went on to win two more championships in the next three years, in 2012 and 2013. Their five Steinfeld Cup trophies are the most in MLL history.

The league's attendance peaked at 6,417 per game in the 2011 season. The individual franchises had a wide range of local support. Denver lead the league in attendance, drawing 12,331 fans per game in 2011, while the relocated Hamilton Nationals had 1,214 people per game, one-tenth of Denver's attendance.[16]

In late 2009, Kyle Harrison, Scott Hochstadt, Craig Hochstadt, Xander Ritz, and Max Ritz formed the LXM Pro Tour.[17] The tour would feature two teams playing games across the country at special events involving the LXM Pro game and youth activities. The tour competed for players with the MLL as the more established league would not let players under contract play in other professional lacrosse events.

On February 13, 2014, MLL announced a partnership with the LXM Pro Tour, a week after the league announced a new equipment deal with STX, a sponsor of one of the LXM Pro teams. The deal moved LXM to the MLL off-season and allowed players to participate in both MLL and LXM.[18] However, LXM Pro didn't hold any tour stops after the announcement.

Jordan Wolf dodging vs. Chesapeake Bayhawks in 2017

During the early years of MLL, the league did not have any teams in the southeast. In January 2011, Commissioner David Gross announced that Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as Columbus, Ohio, were granted expansion teams for the 2012 season. The Ohio Machine and Charlotte Hounds opened play in April 2012, with both teams missing the playoffs in their inaugural season. With the expansion, the league grew to eight teams and expanded its schedule to fourteen games.

In November 2013, the Hamilton Nationals folded and an expansion franchise was awarded to the Florida Launch for the 2014 season. The Launch inherited the Nationals roster.[19] The Atlanta Blaze became the ninth MLL team in 2016.[20] The Rattlers relocated [again] from Rochester, New York, in 2018 to Dallas, Texas, and began play as the Dallas Rattlers in 2018.

On April 1, 2019, just two months before the start of the season, the league announced that the Charlotte Hounds, Florida Launch, and Ohio Machine would not be playing in 2019. While the Hounds announced they would be back in 2021 under new ownership in a renovated stadium, the Launch and Machine effectively folded.[21] The announcement dropped the league down to six teams, the fewest teams since 2011, and meant all remaining owners owned only one team. Jim Davis, owner of New Balance, had owned the Hounds, Launch, and Machine, but he now owns only the Dallas Rattlers.[10]

Returning from a two-year retirement, 44-year-old John Grant Jr. broke the record for career points scored during the 2019 season.[22] Also in 2019, MLL saw its first goal by a Japanese player, Kohta Kurashima, who is also the first Japanese born player in MLL history.[23] The Rattlers ceased operations after the 2019 season.[24] and the staff and roster were shifted to an expansion team called the Connecticut Hammerheads.[25][26] The Atlanta Blaze also ceased operations after the 2019 season[27] and were replaced by a resurrected Philadelphia Barrage.[28] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the league announced they would play a week-long quarantined season in Annapolis at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium with no fans. Every team would play each other once (five total games) before a four-team playoff as normal.[29]

On December 16, 2020, it was announced that the MLL had agreed to merge all operations with the Premier Lacrosse League.[30][31] Under this agreement, the leagues will operate as one under the "PLL" brand and model. In order to accommodate the influx of players the PLL will be expanding the league to include its eighth touring team, known as Cannons Lacrosse Club, paying homage to the 2020 MLL champions, the Boston Cannons. The roster of this new team was determined by the 2021 expansion draft.

Italics indicates a defunct team