San Antonio Toros Ready to Relaunch in 2026
The San Antonio Toros were a football powerhouse in the 1960s and ‘70s in the Texas Football League. Now 50 years later the Toros are coming back in 2026 in the Continental (CoFL) Football League.
“We will be playing at UIW starting in May. Our 1st game will be May 24th at Benson Stadium. We are looking forward to being the only outdoor professional football team in San Antonio,” said Managing Partner Joshua Mair who is also the Assistant City Manager in Converse.
The league is starting with 8 teams across the country. The Texas teams are San Antonio, Plfugerville/Austin, Midland/Odessa and Fort Worth.
Tickets available at https://cofltoros.com
Toro’s Ownership
Spring/summer football isn’t new to the area with indoor and outdoor teams coming and going over the last several decades. But those teams have left, often because of the ownership of the leagues, but Mair said this team is 100% locally owned.
“It’s more a project of passion. I am a big football fan and all the other managing partners of this group are football fans. We had teams here. They’ve left us in the past. A lot of times those teams were owned by outside people, not necessarily by San Antonians. This team is owned by San Antonians. I was born and raised here (as are the rest of the managing partners). I went to Southside High School. We want professional football!”
“We are tired of having some billionaire from Arlington or Orlando or someplace else around the country deciding whether San Antonio deserves football or not. We are taking a shot at doing it ourselves and relying on the community. We already have tremendous fan support.”
Mair says that a big difference between those teams and the Toros is that fans can be investors, like the Green Bay Packer fans, and own a piece of the team. “It’s a league for the fans by the fans. One of the most important parts is that anybody can be an owner of this team. What’s the difference between going to a game and not have any equity in that team and going to a game and having equity in that team is control. If you own it, no one can take it from you.
We’re local and we have former San Antonio Toro players that still live in San Antonio supporting this relaunch. We have a grandson (of an original player) signed to our team. That’s more part of the community than any other team before us that could have been. They didn’t have that opportunity because they weren’t the Toros. We are from here. We are here.”
League Rules
The league will play by 2 sets of timing rules. The 1st 3 quarters will be played by standard NFL rules, with the traditional kickoff, but the 4th quarter will be played by Canadian Football rules such as 3 downs to get a 1st down and the Canadian-favorite rule of 1-point rouges.
“It speeds the game up when you go from 4-down football to 3-down football so it’s going to be a lot faster pace. It’s a lot more exciting. The Canadian Football League is the 2nd-longest tenured professional football league in North America. They’ve been around for 112 years. We’re as a league trying to tell players and coaches that ‘we’re going to help you take that next step professionally,’ we don’t want to corner ourselves into only saying, we are only trying to get you to the NFL. We also want the CFL to have game footage and see players playing their game in real time.”
The roster will be made up of former college players trying to get to the NFL, players who were in the NFL trying to get back, and players who are playing because they want to continue their career.
Jerry Glanville, who was a long-time head coach in the NFL, will join the team as defensive coordinator and the roster will feature a lot of local players as well as others who have played in the NFL and are looking to get back to the NFL. Stan Bedwell will be the head coach and offensive coordinator.