ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Columbus has been awarded a franchise in the United Football League, which plays its games in the spring.

The team will be known as the Columbus Aviators and will play its home games at Historic Crew Stadium, according to a league press release.

The team will begin play in the spring. The UFL season is scheduled to start on March 27.

It’s the city’s first professional football team since the Columbus Destroyers of the indoor Arena Football League. The team and league ceased operations after the 2019 season.

The Aviators’ team colors are light blue, dark blue and red. The team logo includes a winged “C” wrapped around a red “A” with an airplane propeller across the middle of the “A.”

Columbus is one of three new franchises announced by the league earlier this week, along with the Louisville Kings and Orlando Storm.

Those teams replace teams that had been in San Antonio, Detroit and Memphis, Tenn., all of which have been disbanded.

The three new teams join current UFL teams the Birmingham Stallions, DC Defenders, St. Louis Battlehawks, Houston Gamblers and Dallas Renegades.

League officials said that head coaches will be announced in the near future for the three teams, along with new uniform designs for all eight teams.

Entrepreneur Mike Repole, who is in charge of the league’s business operations, said he isn’t daunted or discouraged by the long odds facing pro spring football as a business model.

“If you told me something was a 99 percent chance, I’d have no interest,” said Repole. “But if you tell me it was a 1 percent chance, I’d be super excited by it. That’s how my mind works.”

The league is set next year to join the USFL from the mid-1980s as the longest-running spring league at three seasons, with plenty of failed attempts since then.

The changes in franchises are part of a broader strategy to get into smaller stadiums, league officials said. All three of the new teams will play in soccer stadiums with capacities of about 20,000 or smaller.

The remaining Texas teams have changed their names and stadiums.

The Dallas Renegades, formerly the Arlington Renegades, will move from the former home of baseball’s Texas Rangers to the Major League Soccer home of FC Dallas in nearby Frisco.

In Houston, the Gamblers, formerly the Roughnecks, will play in that city’s MLS stadium instead of the University of Houston’s home field.

“It’s going to feel real, real different, and it’s going to show better on TV,” Repole said. “The sound is going to be better, and the experience and the engagement is going to be better.”

League headquarters will remain near Arlington’s Globe Life Park, the stadium the Renegades are leaving, and the hub model of all eight teams practicing in the Dallas area during the week won’t change. Repole says some players will spend more time in their host cities to try to boost fan engagement.

The DC Defenders won last year’s league championship.

Repole, who co-founded Vitaminwater, Smartwater and BodyArmor and sold those brands to Coca-Cola, is encouraged by the UFL’s ratings, saying they compare favorably to regular-season games in the NHL, NBA and MLB.

The 56-year-old said he is all in on the UFL as a developmental arm of the NFL.

There is no formal developmental link between the NFL and UFL, and Repole doesn’t think there needs to be. The UFL reportedly went through some labor unrest last season, and Repole’s developmental vision touches on that topic.

“If they have the drive and the passion and they want to make the NFL, and that’s their dream, then we want to help them,” Repole said. “But if they’re looking for, ‘Hey, where’s my next check, or am I going to play next year?’ then this is probably not the league for you. And if you’re in this league four or five years, you probably shouldn’t be here. You should probably go into coaching or do something else.”

Repole believes the league can sell out stadiums in smaller venues, and he hopes to double the size of the league to 16 teams by the mid-2030s. He joins an investor group that includes RedBird Capital Partners, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Dany Garcia, FOX and ESPN.