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The Georgia Force are an Arena Football League based in Atlanta that plays in the Southern Division of the National Conference. The team, which relocated to Atlanta in 2002, began as the first Nashville Kats team from 1997 to 2001. The original Kats played in the Gaylord Entertainment Center in downtown Nashville and were initially coached by Eddie Khayat in 1997 and 1998, who was succeeded by Pat Speurduto for the balance of the team's time in Nashville. The Kats were the league's Organization of the Year for their inaugural year of 1997, and were in the playoffs for every season of their relatively brief existence, even playing in the ArenaBowl each of their final two seasons, albeit losing both times they reached the AFL's championship game. Their departure from the Nashville market was not really related to lack of success either on the field or at the box office, but rather their inability to negotiate a favorable lease with the arena's primary tenant and manager, the National Hockey League's Nashville Predators. The rechristened Force initially played in Atlanta's downtown Philips Arena, home of the National Basketball Association's Atlanta Hawks and NHL Atlanta Thrashers, prior to relocating to suburban Duluth and playing in the Gwinett (County) Arena prior to the 2003 season.
The franchise was purchased from the owners of the former Denver Dynamite, a charter AFL member which had not played since 1991. At first, the Force continued the Kats' tradition, making the playoffs each of their first two years in the Atlanta market. After being purchased by Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank in September of 2004, it was announced that the franchise would return to the downtown Philips Arena for the 2005 season in response to fan desires as expressed in a poll.
On August 2, 2004 it was announced that a new Nashville franchise in the Arena Football League would play during the 2005 season in the GEC, a result of an agreement worked out between Bud Adams, owner of the National Football League's Tennessee Titans, and the Predators' arena-management arm, Powers Management Corporation. On November 1, 2004 it was announced that Adams had sold an undisclosed (but presumably substantial) minority interest in this new Kats team to Nashville resident and country music singer Tim McGraw.
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