Sports leagues, like romantic relationships, can't survive taking a break. Last year AFL owners thought they were different, announcing that while they'd be spending the 2009 season apart, they weren't breaking up.

Again: Just need some space. Just taking some time off from each other before getting back together.

Well, this week, several AFL owners leaked to the press the date that they'll be getting back together: The 12th....OF NEVER!

The AFL is dead.

The disbanding means, alas, Dan Snyder won't ever bring us the AFL team he promised back in 1999.

(AFTER THE JUMP: MMA is the next arena football? How many Redskins blogs are out there? Dan Steinberg marvels at whose muscles? The Washington Times toasts Bruce Smith? Michael Vick is partying where? The Nats are still playing?)

Snyder bought the DC franchise rights for the AFL shortly after taking over the Redskins. He said back then that he was going to name the indoor team the Warriors, and registered trademarks for that name and for an arrow-and-feather logo and helmet design.

Then Snyder never made any move toward putting that team together.

At the time, I figured Snyder only registered the marks because it looked like he could lose federal trademark protections on "Redskins" for being racist, and he wanted a fall-back name ready.

All these years later, I still agree with myself. Guess we'll never know what his real intentions were.

No official announcement of the league's disbanding has yet appeared on the AFL's web site.

However, the league's "Mission Statement" is still prominently placed:

“To serve our community with pride and passion as a quality example of individual and team excellence on the field, in the office, at the arena and within the community by consistently exceeding our customers’ expectations by demonstrating the highest character, appreciation and respect for our game, customers, teammates and partners as a cost-effective and visionary organization providing a total entertainment experience.”

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....Among the few things I can think of more boring than reading the AFL Mission Statement is watching an arena football game.

Columnist Ray Ratto takes the indoor football and runs with it. Ratto links indoor football with Twitter, and says UFC is the next AFL.

I agree.

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In case you missed it: Dan Snyder's SIX Flags lost another $121 million-plus change this spring. Who's to blame? God, government, Mother Nature, Swine Flu, Jesus' death, and minimum wage employees, say Dan Snyder and Six Flags co-captain Mark Shapiro.

And so what if Six Flags is in the toilet? Dan Snyder just wants to win, dammit!

***

The Great Dan Steinberg marvels at the big muscles the Redskins have. Thank goodness the NFL has been so out-front in the drug testing realm, so that I and other media types, not to mention all football fans, don't have to waste a single second wondering whether ANY of these behemoths achieved this unnatural looking state through any means other than just eating real good and throwing lots of steel!

Way to keep it clean, NFL! Just say no, kids!

***

The Michael Vick Watch goes on off the football field, too. An event called the "Michael Vick Community Celebration" scheduled for this weekend in his hometown of Newport News, Va., was cancelled because, organizers said, Vick had to be in Atlanta for a Humane Society event.

But then no animal rights types in Atlanta would confirm that Vick is supposed to be there, either.

The big questions: What sort of creeps would organize a Vick "celebration" now? Who can even be near the guy and look at him without thinking, "Yucky!"?

***

Speaking of troubled Tidewater athletes: Real odd story in the Washington Times with longtime football writer Dave Elfin working mightily to try to rehab Bruce Smith's image just after the Hokie/Bill/Redskin's conviction on a third DUI arrest in 12 years.

The city of Virginia Beach cancelled a party that was going to celebrate Smith's induction to the Hall of Fame because of his drinking and driving problems.

Elfin argues that for a guy with three DUI arrests he's great with kids, and a great businessman, too, for a guy with three DUI arrests.

"If I hadn't done what I did on the football field," Smith  says of his buying things for an old football coach in his hometown, "I wouldn't have been afforded the opportunity to give back in such a fashion."

Well, there's that, Bruce, plus: you'd be in jail now.

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The blog DC Pro Sports Report has a compendium of all the Redskins sites out there. Good god, you won't believe how many there are.

***

Nats have a six-run eighth and beat Florida, 6-4. Greatest comeback win of the season! Three-game winning streak!

Uh, oh! This just in: Until further notice, it's still football season! Just as things were getting exciting! Darn!

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Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

And I forced it on people.

I put "Dead Balls Era" in print again and again and again and again. I'd search the web every so often, only to get the bad news that nobody was adopting my brainchild. In December 2007, nearly three years after I'd started lobbying for my phrase to become the official name of the all-steroids, all-the-time time in the National Pastime, "Dead Balls Era" was getting nine hits on Google.

NINE!

And all but one of them was either a link to something I'd written for Washington City Paper or a mistakenly pluralized stab at "Dead Ball Era," an accepted tag for major league baseball from the turn of the last century til when Babe Ruth made ladies love the long ball ("Dead Ball Era" is, I hope obviously, the inspiration for my, you know, cunning pun.)

But I never gave up hope that some day, some way.....

And then today, during another Googling expedition, I found this on a message board: "Given the effects of steroids on male body chemistry, we should call this the 'Dead Balls Era.'"

This comment came in a thread from May 28, 2009, that was originally about whether a game record or career record is more prestigious, but soon morphed into a discussion of the state of baseball. And the writer who typed that familiar-to-me-and-me-alone phrase was also the site administrator of the message board.

That would be Ken Jennings.

He's the guy who won $3,022,700 playing Jeopardy!, making him the greatest game-show contestant in world history.

What I'm getting at here, people, is this: KEN JENNINGS THINKS "DEAD BALLS ERA" IS CLEVER!

I don't care if he stole it or he made it up on his own.

KEN JENNINGS THINKS "DEAD BALLS ERA" IS CLEVER!

This guy's a genius! So...what does that make me?

In any case, thanks to Ken's addition, "Dead Balls Era" is up to 27 Google hits.