[9][10] On February 21, 2015, the new owners of the New Mexico Stars announced that the team would not enter the league as planned after head coach Dominic Bramante resigned two weeks before the scheduled start of training camp.

[11] On March 3, the Albuquerque-based Duke City Gladiators announced they were joining the CIF for the 2015 season and would play an abbreviated 11-game schedule as a partial replacement for the New Mexico Stars.

At the end of the regular season, the four teams (ordered by seeding) that made the postseason were the Sioux City Bandits, Texas Revolution, Wichita Force, and Amarillo Venom.

The Mesquite Marshals, Salina Liberty, and Bloomington Edge announced their entrance into the league, bringing the total number of teams to 12.

Many league changes were announced, including Darlene Jones resigning as commissioner, citing personal health-related reasons.

Later, the San Angelo Bandits folded but were immediately replaced by an expansion team called the CenTex Cavalry out of Belton, Texas.

[24] At the end of the season, the Duke City Gladiators won their second consecutive championship and then withdrew from the league, eventually joining the IFL.

In August 2020, the CIF announced a schedule, keeping a four-team playoff format but with a 10-game regular season starting March 12, 2021,[28] and that all games in 2021 would be streamed live on YouTube, officially ending the league's four-year relationship with Pluto TV.

On April 5, director of operations Todd Walkenhorst was named the new league commissioner, replacing founder Bertz who had been in the position since 2017.

[32] The league announced expansion teams in the Billings Outlaws,[33][34] Rapid City Marshals,[35] and the Topeka Tropics.

[39] Amarillo and West Texas officially left the league and turned their Lone Star Series from the previous season into the Arena Football Association (AFA) in November 2021.

[42] The same eight teams returned for the 2023 season, with the Omaha Beef winning the championship after beating Salina Liberty 50–30 in the Champions Bowl.

[45] On August 28, 2023, the league added the ICT Regulators based out of Park City, Kansas, in the Wichita area.

[49] Several of the former CIF teams who joined the AFL indicated that commissioner Lee Hutton had made promises to cover increased travel and salary expenses for playing in the new league, but failed to deliver on them.

The Iowa Rampage, a team that had originally planned to join CIF before it merged into the AFL for the 2024 season, folded after one game when the promised compensation never arrived;[50] the Rapid City Marshals, Salina Liberty and Billings Outlaws confirmed that the Rampage's complaints were legitimate but were committed to playing out the season, with the Outlaws hinting at seeking to oust Hutton from the commissioner's post.