2021 Fan Controlled Football season
The 2021 Fan Controlled Football season is the first season of the Fan Controlled Football (FCF), a professional indoor football league. The FCF, which sees itself as "Esports and traditional sports colliding together" is unique because the league leans heavily on fan interaction to make important decisions, such as play-calling, drafts, rules, team names and seasonal awards with voting done through a mobile app, a concept the owners first tested in the Indoor Football League when they owned the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles, later giving up ownership of the team when they started the  FCF. The Fan Controlled Football League's (FCFL) first season initial start date was originally in 2018 but was postponed. It was later slated to start in summer 2020 in Las Vegas with eight teams, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The league shortened its name to Fan Controlled Football (FCF) and announced it would play with four teams in February 2021 in a bubble environment at the Infinite Energy Arena in Duluth, Georgia. (FCF thus became the third different high-profile professional football league to play in the weeks immediately following the Super Bowl in as many  years, following the Alliance of American Football in 2019 and the XFL in 2020; FCF was the first of those to complete its inaugural season as scheduled.) The league began play on February 13, 2021, with four teams competing in a 12-game-format over six weeks. The league uses Internet streaming as its main television platform and is streamed on Twitch and VENN on Saturdays, with reruns on FTF; the league championship is carried on the digital subchannel network LX. The FCF saw a steady increase in its viewership through its first five weeks, from 735,000 in the first  week to 2.1 million in the playoffs. Following a four-game season where the Beasts took home the regular season championship, the playoffs concluded with the #1 seed Beasts losing to the #4 seed Glacier Boyz in an upset and #2 seed Wild Aces easily defeating the #3 seed Zappers. The Wild Aces beat the Glacier Boyz 46–40 in the final, named the People's Championship, as voted by the fans, on March 20, 2021. Players were paid weekly minimum of $400 to $750 plus room and board, while coaches got paid $3,500 per month with housing  and meal plan. Teams. The 2021 season was originally said to have eight teams, which was reduced to four due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All teams have no geographic location that they are based in, similar to ESports teams. All teams share position coaches, doctors and trainers, marketing staffs and practice squad. Players. The FCF started its combines and scouting for players as early as January 2019, starting originally with asking fans to recommend players and then later holding combines in Atlanta, Dallas, Columbus and then Las Vegas. Following the cancellation of the Summer 2020 season, the league held further  combines in October 2020 in Houston and Pittsburgh then another in Atlanta in November 2020. In December 2020, the FCF signed former Heisman trophy winner and NFL first round pick, quarterback Johnny Manziel and Florida State quarterback Deondre Francois. They also signed former NFL player Quinn Porter, Douglas McNeil III, Jeremiah Poutasi and former XFL players Damon Sheehy-Guiseppi and Quinton Flowers. The league has no set teams with all players being drafted to teams before the first week of the season. This draft is done via voting by fans in the FCF app. The same is done every week  until the playoffs. To stop a player from being drafted by other teams, fans can vote on using a "franchise tag" which will permanently attach the player to the team for the entire season. Players can be selected by their own team in the draft to stop them from being drafted by another team. Josh Gordon signed with the FCF on March 6, 2021 after being released by the Seattle Seahawks, entering the bubble soon after to appear in Week 4 as his FCF debut with the Zappers. Robert Turbin also signed at the same time though entered the bubble  later, making his debut appearance for the Beasts in the playoffs. Franchise Players. Franchise Players are players that were voted to be "protected" from other teams in the draft. Playoffs. Fans voted for which team would face the top-seeded Beasts in the semifinal. Statistical leaders. Records reflect statistics through four regular season games played by all teams.