NFL Play,National Football League,

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest Professional Football league in the United States. It is an unincorporated 501(c)(6) association controlled by its members. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (the league changed the name to American Professional Football League in 1921 and then settled on its current name in 1922). The league currently consists of thirty-two teams from American cities and regions. The league is divided evenly into two conferences — the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC), and each conference has four divisions that have 4 teams each.






The regular season is a seventeen-week schedule during which each team has one bye week and plays sixteen games. This schedule includes six games against a team's divisional rivals, as well as several inter-division and inter-conference games. The season currently starts on the Thursday night in the first full week of September (the Thursday after Labor Day) and runs weekly to late December or early January.

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 championship game, known as the Super Bowl. This game is held at a pre-selected site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team. Selected all-star players from both the AFC and NFC meet in the Pro Bowl, held in Honolulu, Hawaii; up to and including 2009, this game took place the weekend after the Super Bowl. In 2010, it will take place the week prior to the Super Bowl, in Miami, Florida.
While baseball is known as "America's national pastime", football is the most popular sport in the United States. According to the Harris Poll, Professional Football moved ahead of baseball as the fans' favorite in 1965, during the emergence of the NFL's challenger, the American Football League, as a major Professional Football league. Football has remained America's favorite sport ever since. In a Harris Poll conducted in 2008, the NFL was the favorite sport of as many people (30%) as the combined total of the next three professional sports--baseball (15%), auto racing (10%), and hockey (5%). Additionally, football's American TV viewership ratings now surpass those of other sports, although football season comprises far fewer games than the seasons of other sports. Furthermore, college football is actually the third-most popular sport in the US, with 12% of survey respondents listing it as their favorite. Therefore, fully 42% of Americans consider some level of football their favorite sport.
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The NFL has the highest per-game attendance of any domestic professional sports league in the world, drawing over 67,000 spectators per game for each of its two most recently completed seasons, 2006 and 2007. However, the NFL's overall attendance is only approximately 20% of Major League Baseball, due to the latter's longer schedule (162-game scheduled regular season).

Early era,

The National Football League began as the "Ohio League," a loose coalition of technically independent football teams from across the state of Ohio that had existed in some form since the 1890s. An unofficial "championship" was contested since 1903. "League" powerhouses included the Canton Bulldogs, Ironton Tanks and the Massillon Tigers. The New York Pro Football League, based in Upstate New York, was another league that proved important in early professional football, with teams such as the frequently-renamed Buffalo club and the Rochester Jeffersons. Other independent clusters of teams were playing at about the same time across Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Indiana; Pennsylvania also had teams but did not contribute any to the NFL at the time of its founding.

It was not until August 1920, at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio, that the league was formalized, originally as the American Professional Football Conference, initially consisting only of the Ohio League teams (though some of the teams declined participation). One month later, the league was renamed the American Professional Football Association, adding Buffalo and Rochester from the New York league and five other teams from nearby circuits. The eleven founding teams initially struck an agreement over player poaching and the declaration of an end-of-season champion. 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 increased to 22 teams (including more of the New York teams) in 1921, but throughout the 1920s the membership was unstable and the league was not a major national sport.

Two charter members, the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals) and the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears), are still in existence. The Green Bay Packers franchise (founded in 1919) is the oldest team not to change locations, but did not begin league play until 1921. The Indianapolis Colts franchise traces its history through several predecessors, including one of the league's founding teams (the Dayton Triangles), but is considered a separate franchise from those teams and was founded as the Baltimore Colts in 1953. Though the original NFL teams representing Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit no longer exist, replacement franchises have since been established for those cities.
Early championships were awarded to the team with the best won-lost record, initially rather haphazardly, as some teams played more or fewer games than others, or scheduled games against non-league, amateur or collegiate teams; this led to the title being decided on a tiebreaker in 1921, a disputed title in 1925, and the scheduling of an impromptu indoor playoff game in 1932. It was not until 1933 that an annual championship game was instituted. 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, and even Green Bay established a relationship with much larger Milwaukee for support. An annual draft of college players was first held in 1936. It was during this era, however, that the NFL became segregated: there were no Black players in Professional Football in the United States between 1933 and 1945, mainly due to the influence of self-admitted bigot George Preston Marshall, who entered the league in 1932 as the owner of the Boston Braves. Other NFL owners emulated Marshall's tactics to mollify southern fans, and even after the NFL's color barrier had been broken in the 1950s, Marshall's Washington Redskins remained all-white until forced to integrate by the Kennedy administration in 1962. Despite his anti-social tendencies, Marshall was selected as a charter member of the NFL-inspired Pro Football Hall of Fame.

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. Rule changes and innovations 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 first big-league sports franchise on the West Coast (not counting the various teams in ice hockey's PCHA, which was a rival to the NHL in the 1910s and 1920s). 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.

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Minority Players

At its inception in 1920, the NFL's precursor, the American Professional Football Association, had several African-American players (a total of thirteen between 1920 and 1933). However, by 1932 the National Football League had only two black players, and by 1934 there were none, effectively coinciding with the entry of one of the leading owners of the league, George Preston Marshall, who openly refused to have black athletes on his Boston Braves/Washington Redskins team, and reportedly pressured the rest of the league to follow suit until after World War II.

NFL 'integration' occurred only when the Cleveland Rams wanted to move to Los Angeles, and the venue, the Los Angeles Coliseum, required them to integrate their team. They then signed two black players. Other NFL teams eventually followed suit, but Marshall refused to integrate the Redskins until forced to by the Kennedy admnistration as a pre-condition for using RFK Stadium. In spite of this open bias, Marshall was elected to the NFL's Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. In 1946, the Cleveland Browns of a rival Professional Football league, the All-America Football Conference, signed two black players. By 1960, the NFL's new competitor, the American Football League, actively recruited players from small predominantly black colleges that had been largely ignored by the NFL, giving those schools' black players the opportunity to play Professional Football. Early AFL teams averaged more blacks than NFL teams did.

However, despite the NFL's previous segregationist policies, the clear competitive advantage of AFL teams with liberal signing policies affected the NFL's drafts. By 1969, a comparison of the two league's championship team photos showed the AFL's Chiefs with 23 black players out of 51 players pictured, while the NFL Vikings had 11 blacks, of 42 players in the photo. Chiefs players have been quoted as saying that one motivating factor in their defeat of the Vikings was their pride in their diverse squad. Recent surveys have shown that the current, post-merger NFL is approximately 57–61% non-white (this includes African Americans, Polynesians, non-white Hispanics, Asians, and people that are mixed race.)

The Merger

By the middle of the 1960s, competition for players, including separate college drafts, was driving up player salaries. In 1965, in the most high profile such contest and a major boost to 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, the two leagues announced their merger deal on June 8, 1966. The leagues would henceforth hold a Common Draft and an end-of-season World Championship Game between the two league champions (later known as the Super Bowl and reverting to simply an NFL championship game). Still another city received an NFL franchise thanks to the AFL, as New Orleans was awarded an NFL team after Louisiana's federal Congressmen pushed for the passage of Public Law 89-800, which permitted the merger and exempted the action from Anti-Trust restrictions. The monopoly that would be created needed to be legitimized by an act of Congress. In 1970, the leagues fully merged under the name National Football League and divided into two conferences of an equal number of teams. There was also a financial settlement, with the AFL teams paying a combined $18 million over 20 years. There was also strident objection by many American Football League fans over their league's loss of its separate identity, name, and distinctive logo.

Although the AFL's identity was subsumed by the NFL, the American Football League's innovations: the on-field game clock; names on player jerseys; recruiting at small and predominantly black colleges; gate and television revenue-sharing; establishment of southern franchises; and more wide-open offensive rules, all eventually adopted by the ultra-conservative NFL, permanently changed the face of Professional Football in America.

Modern era,

The second NFL logo, officially used between 1970 and April 2008.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 World Football League was the first post-merger challenge to the NFL's dominance, and in 1974, successfully lured some top NFL talent to its league and prompted a few rules changes in the NFL. However, financial problems led the league to fold halfway through its 1975 season. Two teams, the Birmingham Vulcans and Memphis Southmen, made unsuccessful efforts to move from the WFL to the NFL.

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, and mismanagement (most notably, a planned move of its niche spring football season to a head-to-head competition in the fall) led to the league's collapse. However, like the AFL before it, the success of the USFL led directly to new NFL teams in Baltimore, Carolina (though the USFL never had a franchise there) and Jacksonville, as well as the relocation of the St. Louis Cardinals to Arizona and the return of the Los Angeles Raiders to their original home city of Oakland. In addition, the USFL also used the two-point conversion, which was first introduced to American Professional Football by the American Football League in 1960, and later adopted by the NFL in 1994 (the two point-conversion had previously been used in American college football since 1958).

2001 saw the establishment of the XFL, an attempt by Vince McMahon and NBC, which had lost the NFL broadcast rights for that year, to compete with the league; the XFL folded after just one season. Unlike the WFL and USFL, the XFL had no impact on the NFL's rules or franchise locations (its attempts at innovations were often ridiculed), but a few NFL players used the XFL to relaunch their careers. Three other leagues plan on launching in 2009 and 2010; the one most directly challenging the NFL is the United Football League, which is playing a fall schedule, placing teams in New York City (the Jets and Giants play in New Jersey), Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other high profile cities without NFL teams, and is willing to lure NFL-caliber talent with comparable salaries. (The two other leagues, the All American Football League and New USFL, are spring leagues that are not aiming to directly compete with the NFL.)
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 Bowls, held at international sites outside the United States; these games continued until 2005. 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. In 2003, the NFL launched its own cable-television channel, NFL Network.

The league played a regular-season NFL game in Mexico City in 2005. On October 28, 2007, a regular season game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants was held outside of North America for the first time in Wembley Stadium, a 90,000-seat stadium in London. It was a financial success with nearly 40,000 tickets sold within 90 minutes of the start of sales,[9] and a game-day attendance of over 80,000. In 2008, the New Orleans Saints and San Diego Chargers played at Wembley, and in October 2009, the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers will meet. On October 26, 2008 the New Orleans Saints and San Diego Chargers also played in Wembley Stadium. Starting from the 2008-09 season, the Buffalo Bills play an annual home game in Toronto's Rogers Centre.

On August 31, 2007, a story in USA Today unveiled the first changes to the league's shield logo since 1970, which took effect with the 2008 season. The redesign reduced the number of stars in the logo from 25 (which were found not to have a meaning beyond being decorative) to eight (for each of the league's divisions), repositioned the football in the manner of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, and changed the NFL letters to a straight, serifed font. The redesign was created with television and digital media, along with clothing, in mind. The shield logo itself dates back to the 1940s.

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. An example of this was the Steagles, temporarily formed as a merger between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles.

Franchise moves became far more controversial in the late 20th century when a vastly more popular NFL was free from financial instability and allowed many franchises to abandon long-held strongholds for perceived financially greener pastures. This was done in spite of the promises to Congress by Pete Rozelle in 1966 that if the AFL-NFL merger were allowed, no city would lose its franchise. Those promises were made to ensure passage of PL 89-800, which granted Anti-trust immunity to the merged Professional Football leagues. 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, another Browns, Ravens, Texans, and 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; however, at the turn of the millennium, a reverse shift back to the central city became somewhat evident, as with the move by the Detroit Lions from the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan to Ford Field in downtown Detroit and, similarly, the Chicago Bears decision to remain in a rebuilt Soldier Field located in downtown Chicago.


Season structure
Since 2002, The NFL season features the following schedule:

a 4-game exhibition season (or preseason) running from early August to early September;
a 16-game, 17-week regular season running from September to December or early January; and
a 12-team playoff tournament beginning in January, culminating in the Super Bowl in early February.
Traditionally, American High school football games are played on Friday, American College football games are played on Saturday, and most NFL games are played on Sunday. Because the NFL season is longer than the college football season, the NFL schedules Saturday games and Saturday playoff games outside the college football season. The ABC Television network added Monday Night Football in 1970, and Thursday night NFL games were added in the 1980s.


Exhibition season
Main article: 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 games (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. Each team hosts two games of the four. The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game and American Bowl are held at neutral sites, so the four teams in those games play five exhibition games each.

The games are useful for new players who 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 to minimize the risk of injury.

Regular Season,

Following the preseason, each of the 32 teams embark on a 17 week, 16 game schedule, with the extra week consisting of a bye to allow teams a rest sometime in the middle of the season (and also to increase television coverage). The regular season currently begins the Thursday evening after Labor Day with a primetime "Kickoff Game" (NBC currently holds broadcast rights for that game). According to the current scheduling structure, the earliest the season could begin is September 4 (as it was in the 2008 season), while the latest would be September 10 (as it will be in the 2009 season, due to September 1 falling on a Tuesday). Each of the 32 teams' schedules are organized in the following way:

Each team plays the other three teams in its division twice: once at home, and once on the road (six games).
Each team plays the four teams from another division within its own conference once on a rotating three-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
Each team plays the four teams from a division in the other conference once on a rotating four-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
Each team plays once against the other teams in its conference that finished in the same place in their own divisions as themselves the previous season, not counting the division they were already scheduled to play: one at home, one on the road (two games).

Playoffs

The NFL Playoffs. Each of the 4 division winners is seeded 1–4 based on their W-L-T records. The two Wild Card teams (labeled Wild Card 1 and 2) are seeded 5th and 6th (with the better of the two having seed 5) regardless of their records compared to the 4 division winners.Main article: 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 four division champions from each conference (the team in each division with the best regular season won-lost-tied record), which are seeded 1 through 4 based on their regular season won-lost-tied record (tie-breaker rules may apply).
Two wild card qualifiers from each conference (those non-division champions with the conference's best record, i.e. the best won-lost-tied percentages, with a series of tie-breaking rules in place in the event that there are teams with the same number of wins and losses[14]), which are seeded 5 and 6.
In each conference, the #3 and #6 seeded teams, and the #4 and #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 #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 winning teams from the first round. In round two, the highest surviving seed (#1) always plays the lowest surviving seed in their conference. 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 in a game located at a neutral venue that is either indoors or in a warm-weather locale. The designated "home team" alternates year to year between the conferences. In Super Bowl XLII the AFC team (New England Patriots) were "home". In Super Bowl XLIII the NFC team, the Arizona Cardinals, were the home team.

Current NFL teams

The NFL consists of 32 clubs. Each club is allowed a maximum of 53 players on their roster, but they may only dress 45 to play each week during the regular season. Unlike Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, the league has no full-time teams in Canada largely because of the historical existence of the Canadian Football League, although the Buffalo Bills play one game per year (outside of the CFL season) in Toronto, Ontario. Most teams are in the Eastern United States; 16 teams are in the Eastern Time Zone and 10 others in the Central Time Zone. The six teams in the Mountain and Pacific time zones pose special scheduling challenges and cannot play at home prior to noon local time (meaning they usually play as the second half of a doubleheader), giving them an advantage in national exposure.

Most major metropolitan areas in the United States have an NFL franchise. Los Angeles, the second-largest metropolitan area in the country, has not hosted an NFL team since 1994.
Further information: list of TV markets and major sports teams
The Rams and the Raiders called Los Angeles home from 1946-1994 and 1982-1994 respectively. In 2005, some Saints games were played in San Antonio because of Hurricane Katrina. Also, there is talk of possibly bringing the NFL to Toronto, the largest city of Canada. The most frequently mentioned team for such a move is the aforementioned Buffalo Bills, who play 80 miles (130 km) south in Buffalo and do play some of their games in Toronto's Rogers Centre.

The Dallas Cowboys are the highest valued American football franchise in the world, valued at approximately $1.6 billion and one of the most valuable franchises in all of professional sports, currently second only to English soccer club Manchester United, which has an approximate value of US$1.8 billion at current exchange rates.

Since the 2002 season, the teams have been aligned as follows:


East Buffalo Bills Orchard Park, NY2 Ralph Wilson Stadium2 1959 1970 Dick Jauron Russ Brandon6 Ralph Wilson
Miami Dolphins Miami Gardens, FL Dolphin Stadium 1966 1970 Tony Sparano Jeff Ireland Stephen M. Ross
New England Patriots Foxborough, MA Gillette Stadium 1959 1970 Bill Belichick Bill Belichick Robert Kraft
New York Jets East Rutherford, NJ Giants Stadium3 1960 1970 Rex Ryan Mike Tannenbaum Woody Johnson
North Baltimore Ravens Baltimore, MD M&T Bank Stadium 19961 John Harbaugh Ozzie Newsome Steve Bisciotti
Cincinnati Bengals Cincinnati, OH Paul Brown Stadium 1968 1970 Marvin Lewis TBD Mike Brown
Cleveland Browns Cleveland, OH Cleveland Browns Stadium 1946 19501 Eric Mangini George Kokinis Randy Lerner
Pittsburgh Steelers Pittsburgh, PA Heinz Field 1933 Mike Tomlin Kevin Colbert Dan Rooney
South Houston Texans Houston, TX Reliant Stadium 2002 Gary Kubiak Rick Smith Bob McNair
Indianapolis Colts* Indianapolis, IN Lucas Oil Stadium 1953 Jim Caldwell Bill Polian Jim Irsay
Jacksonville Jaguars Jacksonville, FL Jacksonville Municipal Stadium 1995 Jack Del Rio Gene Smith Wayne Weaver
Tennessee Titans* Nashville, TN LP Field 1960 1970 Jeff Fisher Mike Reinfeldt Bud Adams
West Denver Broncos Denver, CO Invesco Field at Mile High 1960 1970 Josh McDaniels Brian Xanders Pat Bowlen
Kansas City Chiefs* Kansas City, MO Arrowhead Stadium4 1960 1970 Todd Haley Scott Pioli Clark Hunt
Oakland Raiders* Oakland, CA Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum 1960 1970 Tom Cable Al Davis Al Davis
San Diego Chargers* San Diego, CA Qualcomm Stadium 1960 1970 Norv Turner A. J. Smith Alex Spanos
National Football Conference
East Dallas Cowboys Arlington, TX Dallas Cowboys New Stadium 1960 Wade Phillips Jerry Jones Jerry Jones
New York Giants East Rutherford, NJ Giants Stadium3 1925 Tom Coughlin Jerry Reese John Mara and Steve Tisch
Philadelphia Eagles Philadelphia, PA Lincoln Financial Field 1933 Andy Reid Tom Heckert Jeffrey Lurie
Washington Redskins* Landover, MD FedExField 1932 Jim Zorn Vinny Cerrato Dan Snyder
North Chicago Bears* Chicago, IL Soldier Field 1919 1920 Lovie Smith Jerry Angelo Virginia McCaskey
Detroit Lions* Detroit, MI Ford Field 1929 1930 Jim Schwartz Martin Mayhew William Clay Ford, Sr.
Green Bay Packers Green Bay, WI Lambeau Field 1919 1921 Mike McCarthy Ted Thompson Green Bay Packers Inc.
Minnesota Vikings Minneapolis, MN Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome5 1961 Brad Childress Rick Spielman Zygi Wilf
South Atlanta Falcons Atlanta, GA Georgia Dome 1966 Mike Smith Thomas Dimitroff Arthur Blank
Carolina Panthers Charlotte, NC Bank of America Stadium 1995 John Fox Marty Hurney Jerry Richardson
New Orleans Saints New Orleans, LA Louisiana Superdome 1967 Sean Payton Mickey Loomis Tom Benson
Tampa Bay Buccaneers Tampa, FL Raymond James Stadium 1976 Raheem Morris Mark Dominik Malcolm Glazer
West Arizona Cardinals* Glendale, AZ University of Phoenix Stadium 1898 1920 Ken Whisenhunt Rod Graves Bill Bidwill
St. Louis Rams* St. Louis, MO Edward Jones Dome 1936 1937 Steve Spagnuolo Billy Devaney Chip Rosenbloom and Stan Kroenke
San Francisco 49ers San Francisco, CA Candlestick Park 1946 1950 Mike Singletary Scot McCloughan John and Denise DeBartolo York
Seattle Seahawks Seattle, WA Qwest Field 1976 Jim Mora Jr. Tim Ruskell Paul Allen