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The National Football League ('''NFL''') is the largest and most prestigious professional American Football League . It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the '''American Professional Football Association''' and adopted the name National Football League in 1922. The league currently consists of Thirty-two Teams from American cities and regions, divided into two conference each of four divisions. The Regular Season is a seventeen-week schedule during which each team plays sixteen games; its divisional rivals home and away (six games) and one game against each of ten opponents across the other divisions and opposite conference. The season currently starts on the Thursday night in the first full week of September and runs weekly to late December. At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference play in the NFL Playoffs , a twelve-team Single-elimination Tournament that culminates with the NFL championship, the Super Bowl . This game is held at a pre-selected site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team. Two weeks later, selected all-star players from both the AFC and NFC meet in the Pro Bowl , currently held in Honolulu , Hawaii . The NFL is one of the most popular sports leagues in the United States , and has the Highest Per-game Attendance of any domestic professional sports league in the world, drawing over 67,000 spectators per game for its most recently completed season in 2006 .1 HISTORY Early era The American Professional Football Association was founded in 1920 at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio . The eleven founding teams initially struck an agreement over player poaching and the declaration of an end-of-season champion, and became the first American Football league in the United States in which the players were paid. Legendary athlete Jim Thorpe of the Canton Bulldogs was elected president. Only four of the founding teams finished the 1920 schedule and the undefeated Akron Pros claimed the first championship. Membership of the league increaed to 22 teams in 1921, but throughout the 1920s the membership was unstable and the league was not a major national sport. By 1934 all of the small-town teams, with the exception of the Green Bay Packers , had moved to or been replaced by teams in big cities. An annual Championship Game was instituted in 1933, and the annual draft of college players was first held in 1936. It was during this era, however, that the influence of Boston Braves owner George Preston Marshall ensured that NFL owners generally did not employ black players, as was Marshall's policy at the Braves (which later became the Washington Redskins ) until forced to integrate by the Kennedy administration in 1962.2 ''See also Black Players In American Professional Football '' College football was the bigger attraction, but by the end of World War II , pro football began to rival the college game for fans' attention. Rules changes and innvoations such as the T Formation led to a faster-paced, higher-scoring game. The league also expanded out of its eastern and midwestern cradle; in 1945, the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles , becoming the second big-league sports franchise on the West Coast (second to the Seattle Metropolitans in the PCHA ). In 1950, the NFL accepted three teams from the defunct All-America Football Conference , expanding to thirteen clubs. In the 1950s, with the league broadcast on national television, pro football finally earned its place as a major sport. The AFL See Also: American Football League In 1960, after being refused entry to the NFl as an owner, Lamar Hunt led seven other men (including another snubbed by the NFL, Bud Adams ) to establish the rival American Football League . Although other rival leagues had come and gone in the early years of professional football, the new AFL was able to capitalise on the ever-rising popularity of the sport. Hunt's initial goal was to bring professional football to Texas, which was home to two of the new teams. The AFL secured a televsion contract with ABC and filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL in 1960, but this was dismissed in 1962. The AFL led the way in sharing of television and gate revenues across its franchises, thus securing itself financially. A number of innovations distinguished the AFL and helped it maintain its legitimate rivalry to the NFL. A stadium in New Orleans , over discrimination issues, was a seminal civil-rights action and is commemorated at the Pro Football Hall Of Fame . The AFL also forced the NFL to expand: The Dallas Cowboys were created to counter Hunt's AFL Dallas Texans franchise. The Texans moved the franchise to Kansas City as the Chiefs in 1963; the Minnesota Vikings were the NFL franchise given to Max Winter for abandoning the AFL; and the Atlanta Falcons franchise went to Rankin Smith to dissuade him from purchasing the AFL's Miami Dolphins . The Merger See Also: AFL-NFL Merger The rivalry between two successful professional leagues became damaging for the sport in the mid-1960s as the two leagues escalated player playments. With both leagues conducting college drafts for the same players, the bidding war was out of control. In 1965, in the most high profile such contest and a major fillip for the AFL, University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath signed with the New York Jets in preference to the NFL's St Louis Cardinals for a then-record $427,000. In 1966, the AFL Commissioner Al Davis embarked on a campaign to sign players away from the NFL, especially quarterbacks, but behind the scenes a number of team owners began action to end the detrimental rivalry. In an agreement brokered by AFL founder Lamar Hunt, and Dallas Cowboys General Manager Tex Schramm , on 8 June 1966 the two leagues announced their merger deal. The leagues would henceforth hold a combined draft, and an end-of-season title game (later known as the Superbowl ) would be played between the two league champions. In 1970, the leagues would become fully merged under the name National Football League, divided into two conferences of an equal number of teams each. There was also a financial settlement, with the AFL paying $18 million over 20 years, and the monopoly which would be created had to be legitimised by a special Federal law (which was eventually enacted by Congress ). Modern era In the 1970s and 1980s , the NFL solidified its dominance as America's top spectator sport and its important role in American culture. The Super Bowl became an unofficial national holiday and the top-rated TV program most years. '' Monday Night Football '', which first aired in 1970 brought in high ratings by mixing sports and entertainment. Rule changes in the late 1970s ensured a fast-paced game with lots of passing to attract the casual fan. The founding of the United States Football League in the early 1980s was the biggest challenge to the NFL in the post-merger era. The USFL was a well-financed competitor with big-name players and a national television contract. However, the USFL failed to make money and folded after three years. The USFL filed a successful anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, but the remedies were minimal. In recent years, the NFL has expanded into new markets and ventures. In 1986, the league began holding a series of pre-season exhibition games, called American Bowl s, held at international sites outside the United States. Then in 1991, the league formed the World League of American Football, later known as NFL Europe and still later as NFL Europa , a developmental league that had teams in Germany and the Netherlands when the NFL shut it down in June 2007. The league played a regular-season NFL game in Mexico City in 2005 and intends to play more such games in other countries. In 2003, the NFL launched its own cable-television channel, NFL Network . The NFL proper has announced that this season, a regular season game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants will be held outside of North America. This game will be held in Wembley Stadium , the new 90,000-seat stadium in London. It is expected to be a great success with nearly 40,000 tickets already sold3. This game is to be played on October 28 , 2007. It is also expected to be one of the most watched regular season games in history, due to it being the first regular season game away from North America. On August 31, a story in USA Today unveiled the first changes to the league's shield logo since 1980, which will take effect with the 2008 season 4. The redesign reduces the number of stars in the logo from 25 (which were found not to have a meaning beyond decorative) to eight (for each of the league's divisions), the logo's football repositioned in the manner of the Vince Lombardi Trophy , and the ''NFL'' letters in a straight serifed font (which resembles the current typeface used in other NFL logos). The redesign was created with television and digital media, along with clothing in mind. Franchise relocations and mergers In the early years, the league was not stable and teams moved frequently. Franchise mergers were popular during World War II in response to the scarcity of players. Franchise moves became far more controversial in the late 20th century when a vastly more popular NFL, free from financial instability, allowed many franchises to abandon long-held strongholds for perceived financially greener pastures. While owners invariably cited financial difficulties as the primary factor in such moves, many fans bitterly disputed these contentions, especially in Cleveland (the Rams and the Browns), Baltimore (the Colts), Houston (the Oilers) and St. Louis (the Cardinals), each of which eventually received teams some years after their original franchises left (the Browns, Ravens, Texans and the Rams respectively). However, Los Angeles, the second-largest media market in the United States, has not had an NFL team since 1994 after both the Raiders and the Rams relocated elsewhere. Additionally, with the increasing suburbanization of the U.S., the building of new stadiums and other team facilities in the suburbs instead of the central city became popular from the 1970s on, though at the turn of the millennium a reverse shift back to the central city became somewhat evident. SEASON STRUCTURE As of 2006, The NFL season features:
Exhibition season See Also: National Football League exhibition season Following mini-camps in the spring and officially recognized Training Camp in July-August, NFL teams typically play four Exhibition Game s (referred to by the NFL as "pre-season games"; the league discourages the use of the term "exhibition game") from early August through early September. Two "featured" pre-season games, the Pro Football Hall Of Fame Game and American Bowl , do not count toward the normal allotment of four games, so the four teams playing in those games each end up playing five exhibition games. The games are useful for new players that are not used to playing in front of very large crowds. Management often uses the games to evaluate newly signed players. Veteran starters will generally play only for about a quarter of each game so they can avoid injury. Playoffs See Also: NFL playoffs The season concludes with a 12-team tournament used to determine the teams to play in the Super Bowl . The Tournament Brackets are made up of six teams from each of the league's two conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC), following the end of the 16-game regular season:
The 3 and the 6 seeded teams, and the 4 and the 5 seeds, face each other during the first round of the playoffs, dubbed the Wild Card Playoffs (the league in recent years has also used the term '''Wild Card Weekend'''). The 1 and the 2 seeds from each conference receive a '' Bye '' in the first round, which entitles these teams to automatically advance to the second round, the '''Divisional Playoff''' games, to face the Wild Card survivors. In any given playoff round, the highest surviving seed always plays the lowest surviving seed. And in any given playoff game, whoever has the higher seed gets the home field advantage (i.e. the game is held at the higher seed's home field). The two surviving teams from the Divisional Playoff games meet in Conference Championship games, with the winners of those contests going on to face one another in the Super Bowl . MEDIA Television The television rights to the NFL are the most lucrative and expensive rights not only of any American sport, but of any American entertainment property. With the fragmentation of audiences due to the increased specialization of broadcast and cable TV networks, sports remain one of the few entertainment properties that not only can guarantee a large and diversified audience, but an audience that will watch in real time. Annually, the Super Bowl often ranks among the most watched shows of the year. Four of Nielsen Media Research 's top ten programs are Super Bowls.5 Networks have purchased a share of the broadcasting rights to the NFL as a means of raising the entire network's profile.6 Under the current television contracts, which began during the 2006 season, regular season games are broadcast on five networks: (shown on NBC), Monday Night Games (shown on ESPN), the Thursday night NFL Kickoff Game, the annual Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day Games , and, as of 2006, select Thursday and Saturday games on the NFL network, a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Football League.78 Additionally, satellite broadcast company DirecTV offers NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription based package, that allows most Sunday daytime regional games to be watched.910 This package is exclusive to DirecTV in the USA. In Canada, NFL Sunday Ticket is available on a per-provider distribution deal on both cable and satellite. Radio Each NFL team has its own radio network and employs its announcers. Nationally, the NFL is heard on the Westwood One Radio Network, Sports USA Radio Network and in Spanish on Univision Radio and the United Stations Radio Network . Westwood One carries Sunday and Monday Night Football, all Thursday games, two Sunday afternoon contests and all post-season games, including the Pro Bowl. Sports USA Radio broadcasts two Sunday afternoon games every Sunday during the regular season.11 |
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