"NFL"
nfl jerseys redirects here. For other uses, see NFL (disambiguation). For other leagues of the same name, see National Football League (disambiguation).
Fox NBC ESPNNFL NetworkThe National Football League (NFL) is the highest level of professional American football. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing its name to the National Football League in 1922. The league currently consists of thirty-two teams from the United States. 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 four teams each. The NFL is organized as an unincorporated association of its 32 teams.[1][2] The NFL is by far the most attended domestic sports league in the world by average attendance per game, with 67,509 fans per game in the latest regular season (2009).[3]The regular season is a seventeen-week schedule during which each team plays sixteen games and has one bye week. 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
John Elway Jersey 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.
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; anda 12-team Single-elimination playoff beginning in January, culminating in the Super Bowl in early February.Traditionally,
Joe Montana Jersey 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.In 1920 representatives of several professional American football leagues and independent teams founded the American Professional Football Conference, soon renamed the National Football League. The first official championship game was held in 1933.
By 1958, when that season's NFL championship game became known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played", the NFL was on its way to becoming one of the most popular sports leagues in the United States. The merger with the American Football League, agreed to in 1966 and
Dan Marino Jersey completed in 1970, greatly expanded the league and created the Super Bowl, which has become the most-watched annual sporting event in the United States.Following mini-camps in the spring and officially recognized training camp in July–August, NFL teams typically play four exhibition games from early August through early September. Each team hosts two games of the four. The exhibition season begins with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, so those two teams play five exhibition games each. Historically, the American Bowl(s) were played prior to the
Anquan Boldin NFL scheduling regular season games abroad and those teams faced this similar predicament.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.
Several lawsuits have been brought by fans, against the
Kurt Warner Jersey policy of including exhibition games in season-ticket packages at regular season prices, but none have so far been very successful.Following the preseason, each of the thirty-two teams embark on a seventeen-week, sixteen-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 was in the 2009 season, due to September 1 falling on a Tuesday). Each of the thirty-two teams' schedules are organized in the following way:Each team plays the other three teams in their 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
Larry Fitzgerald Jersey 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).
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