Arena Football One commissioner Jeff Fisher speaks during Monday's press conference announcing the Kentucky Barrels will join the league. Evan Dennison | LINK nky

What you need to know

  • Kentucky Barrels to play at NKU’s Truist Arena in April 2026
  • First AF1 season for Barrels; league entering year two
  • Owned by NKU alum Corey Cunningham; coached by Cedric Walker
  • Arena football rules: 8-on-8, no punts, live-ball netting, sideline walls

Football is coming to Northern Kentucky University.

No, it’s not for the Norse, but the Kentucky Barrels, an Arena Football One team, will play their home games at Truist Arena on the campus of NKU starting in April 2026. A press conference was held Monday morning for the announcement.

It will be the inaugural season for the Barrels in AF1, heading into their second season as a league.

The team’s owner is NKU alum Corey Cunningham and will be coached by Cedric Walker. Cunningham is the owner of Prestige Worldwide, an IT company based in Cincinnati. Walker has over 20 years of Arena Football experience as a player and coach.

“As a kid from Cincinnati, launching a professional sports team and bringing something special to my alma mater is truly a dream,” Cunningham said. “I’m excited about what’s ahead — for the Barrels and for our community — and I can’t wait to see how we grow both on the field and off.”

The Barrels name was picked as a signature to Kentucky’s main product, bourbon. Mascot tryouts should be heavily attended.

Arena Football One was launched in September 2024, bringing in eight teams that survived the least year of the Arena Football League in the same year. The 2025 season wrapped up in June with an announcement later that month that they planned to add more expansion teams.

Kentucky Barrels owner Corey Cunningham addressed the crowd at Monday’s press conference at NKU’s Truist Arena. Evan Dennison | LINK nky

The league’s commissioner is Jeff Fisher, a longtime NFL head coach, who said the target is to have 10 to 12 teams by the start of the next season in April 2026. There’s a potential for up to 16 teams by 2027.

“We want to we want to make sure everybody’s properly vetted and we’re working out some major details at the league level right now,” Fisher said. “We got plans with national sponsors and everything, so we expect to grow significantly. We have teams that basically committed to us, not for the ’26 season, but beyond already. We’re strategically putting teams in different geographic regions which is important from a from a travel standpoint, because that can get pricey.”

Walker stated they’ll start to put a Barrels roster together come September 1 and the goal is to get some local players on the roster as well. They’ll have local tryouts for the team and put a coaching staff in place.

“It’s family, affordable and fast paced,” Walker said. “We want guys with great character and will get out there in the community. We’ll have some local workouts, some guys from the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area.”

The game varies from the typical football you see on Friday through Sunday at the prep, college and pro level. It’s 8-on-8 with no punting allowed. The field is 50 yards long and 85 feet wide, with 8-yard end zones. There’s a small window for field goals, but if the field goal attempt is unsuccessful, there’s 30-feet wide and 35-feet tall netting beside it that then becomes a live ball if it hits the netting and can be returned by the defense. The netting is also utilized on kickoffs and scrimmage plays, any ball that bounces off the nets is live and can be caught or recovered by either team. There’s also a wall for the sidelines, so instead of running out of bounds, a wall is there serving as the sideline.

“The wall is undefeated,” Walker said.

The 2026 season is laid out to plan for 12 regular season games with playoffs to follow. Games will be aired on Vice TV and streamed on EvergreenNOW!. The Albany Firebirds were the 2025 champion.

This isn’t the first time Arena Football has come to NKY. The Northern Kentucky River Monsters played at then Bank of Kentucky Center in Highland Heights at NKU in 2011 and 2014 in the Ultimate Indoor Football League in 2011 and the Continental Indoor Football League in 2014. The late Highlands alum Jared Lorenzen played for the River Monsters in 2011, earning league MVP honors. The team was founded in 2010, suspended operations in 2012, returned in 2014, and then folded later that year.

There was also a brief stint in 2016 as the Northern Kentucky Nightmare played in the American Indoor Football league for a season. They were a road-only team that played just five games before disbanding after the 2016 season.