Iowa Barnstormers

New York Dragons are an Arena Football League team. They are based in suburban Uniondale, New York at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, also home to the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League. The team relocated to Long Island for the 2001 season. They had been based in Des Moines, Iowa from 1995 to 2000, as the Iowa Barnstormers. The team had been successful in Iowa, but the league wanted a larger market, and the New York market is considered to be critical for all sports leagues attempting to be "major", so the league encouraged the move despite two failed past attempts in New York, the New York Knights (1988) and the New York CityHawks (1997-1998), both of which played at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The Arena organization did award an AF2 franchise to Iowa for the 2001 season also called the Barnstormers, but that team folded after the 2001 season. The Barnstormers were noted for their unique uniforms, which in keeping with the aviation theme included the depiction of goggles on the helmets, wings on the shoulders of the jerseys, and propellers on the pants legs. The primary figure in the original Iowa organization was Jim Foster, the originator of Arena Football.

Aside from the league's desire to re-enter the New York market, another major reason cited for the team's relocation was the inadequacy of their Des Moines venue, the Iowa Veterans Memorial Auditorium, also known as "The Barn". All seating in this venue was located directly along the sidelines as is typical of high school sports venues. The Barnstormers organization constantly lobbied for the construction of a better facility during their time in Des Moines, to no avail. However, the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum where they relocated is generally regarded as one of the most marginal venues currently in use in major American professional sports and is often proposed for replacement, so the improvement of the situation with regards to a venue may have been marginal at best, at least for the time being.

The New York Dragons currently compete in the Eastern Division of the National Conference.