Three strikes and you're out is a baseball rule, but it holds no sway in indoor football.

Three different leagues tried to get indoor football up and running in Bismarck but, despite a lot of success on the field, could not sustain it. A fourth group, United Indoor Football, is eyeing Bismarck for an expansion franchise.

There have been intermittent discussions about bringing a team to the Civic Center for some time, but a meeting with the UIF has been set up for February. The plan would be for Bismarck to begin play in March of 2007.

"It's really preliminary,"Dick Petersen, general manager of the Civic Center said. "… My gut feeling is it could happen, but nothing is final until a contract is signed."

The UIF, which is based in Omaha, Neb., has 10 teams and is getting ready for its second season. Most of the teams in the league broke off from the National Indoor Football League, the same circuit the Bismarck Roughriders played in during the 2002 and 2003 campaigns. There also are a couple of teams in the UIF that broke off from af2, the Arena Football League's secondary league.

Currently the UIF has teams in Omaha, Sioux City, Iowa; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Peoria, Ill., Bloomington, Ill.; Rockford, Ill. (Rock River); Evansville, Ind.; Lexington, Ky.; Wheeling, W. Va. (Ohio Valley); and Fort Wayne, Ind.

Petersen said the league is also exploring the possibility of putting a team in Grand Forks.

Indoor football first came to Bismarck in 2000, when the Blaze joined the Indoor Football League.

With stars like Danny Ragsdale, QuentinCradle and Chris Schwab, the Blaze was a big success, going 13-4 and advancing all the way to the Gold Cup championship game, where it lost to Peoria. The team was a hit at the gate, too, averaging 4,764 fans per game.

But after the season the IFL was bought out by af2. An ownership group announced the Bismarck Bandits would be joining af2, but attempts to start up a "mountain region" failed when towns like Billings, Casper, Rapid City and Sioux Falls balked at af2's high costs.

Instead many of those cities headed to the less pricey National Indoor Football League.Bismarck followed suit, beginning play in 2002 as the Roughriders.

Ragsdale returned and, while putting up enormous numbers, led the Roughriders to a 12-4 mark. Yet average attendance dipped to 4,207.

Things went downhill fast for the team in 2003. Ragsdale left in acrimonious fashion before the first game and new coach Chris Clement left the team at the same time.

Bismarck native Luke Shafer took the reins and, with St. Mary's grad Schwab at quarterback, the team rallied from a poor start to make the playoffs and finish 9-6.

But the Roughriders were losing money and had a string of debts. Money was owed to businesses, coaches, players and even fans thanks to a disastrous ticket rebate program.

A group called the Tennessee Indoor Professional Sports announced that it had bought the club right before the 2003 playoffs, but wrangling over how to resolve the teams debt eventually led to the Roughriders being folded.

The rebate fiasco resulted in the team being sued by the state for consumer fraud, a lawsuit that was eventually settled, and a group of players filed a wage claim with the state Department of Labor.

Petersen said the UIFis not afraid that the Roughriders' troubles may have poisoned the well for indoor football in Bismarck.

"With some of the legal issues squared away, the new league wanted to start fresh," Petersen said.