The
Arena Football League (
AFL) is the highest level of professional
indoor American football in the United States. It was founded in
1987 by
Jim Foster, making it the third longest-running professional football league in North America, after the
Canadian Football League and the
National Football League. It is played indoors on a 68-yard field (about half the distance of an NFL field), resulting in a faster-paced and higher-scoring game. The sport was invented in the early 1980s and patented by Foster, a former executive of the
United States Football League and the National Football League.