{"id":204808,"date":"2026-03-25T02:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T02:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/204808\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T02:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T02:02:14","slug":"central-floridas-new-football-team-the-orlando-storm-has-its-first-game-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/204808\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Florida\u2019s new football team, the Orlando Storm, has its first game Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Football League’s Orlando Storm<\/a> opens its inaugural season Sunday at Inter&Co Stadium against the Columbus Aviators.<\/p>\n

And the league is making it a real event with DJ and record producer DJ Khaled performing at the halftime show, the “407 Kickoff.”<\/p>\n

Head coach Anthony Becht, formerly with the UFL’s St. Louis Battlehawks, said he hopes DJ Khaled will draw a crowd and those fans — and the city itself — will give the team a chance.<\/p>\n

“[Y]eah, you know, he does say \u2018we the best.\u2019 He also says \u2018all we do is win, win, win,\u2019” Becht said. “That’s what we’re trying to do. We want to win every single game, and that’s going to be big.”<\/p>\n

Becht said he’s focused on delivering “a great product” for Orlando in a league that wants parity and quality games.<\/p>\n

The Storm will play 10 regular season games, including five home games.<\/p>\n

“And I just want fans to give us a try,” he said. “Whether you pick one game out of the five, or you get season tickets and come to them all, or you just procrastinate and just decide, hey, I’m coming this week. I don’t care, show up for us, and I promise you, you’ll have a great time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UFL spring football regular season runs 10 weeks beginning this weekend and ending May 31. The league has eight teams and added Orlando, Columbus and Louisville last fall.<\/p>\n

The Storm’s roster includes six players from Florida colleges, including guards Samuel Jackson and Cole Schneider, out of the University of Central Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United Football League’s Orlando Storm opens its inaugural season Sunday at Inter&Co Stadium against the Columbus Aviators.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-204808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}