Encyclopedia
The
National Football League is the largest professional
American football league, consisting of thirty-two teams from
American cities and regions. The league's teams are divided into two conferences: the
American Football Conference and the
National Football Conference . Each conference is then further divided into four divisions consisting of four teams each, labeled East, West, North, and South.
During the league's
regular season, each team plays sixteen games over a seventeen-week period consisting of one bye generally from September to 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 NFL championship, the
Super Bowl. This game is held at a pre-selected site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team. One week later, selected all-star players from both the AFC and NFC meet in the
Pro Bowl, currently held in
Hawaii.
Formed in 1920 as the
American Professional Football Association , the NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues of
North America. It also has by far the
highest per-game attendance of any domestic professional sports league in the world; its 2005 attendance of 67,593 per game was over 25,000 higher than the 2005-06 per-game attendance of the league in second place, the Bundesliga in
German football .
The NFL's greatest spurt in popularity came in the 1960s and 1970s after the
1958 NFL Championship Game ; and the emergence of the rival
American Football League , and the NFL's eventual merger with it in 1970. Prior to the 1960s, the most popular version of American football was played
collegiately, with many players opting to play in the Canadian Football League after graduation because they were offered larger sums of money and benefits during that era.
Teams
There are 32 NFL clubs. Unlike
MLB, the
NBA and the
NHL, the league has no teams in
Canada largely because of the presence of
Canadian football, a similar but different
code of football than the American version.
Most major cities in the United States have one NFL franchise, with the exception of the second largest city,
Los Angeles, which does not have one either in the city or its metro area. The NFL is able to utilize the possible relocation of a franchise to Los Angeles as a threat, for example when trying to persuade local governments to contribute to the cost of new stadiums for its other franchises. The Washington Redskins are the most lucrative NFL franchise and is the most lucrative sports team of all U.S. professional sports, valued at approximately $1.3 billion
| American Football Conference |
| Division | Team | Stadium | City/Area |
|---|
| East | Buffalo Bills | Ralph Wilson Stadium | Orchard Park, New York |
|---|
| Miami Dolphins | Dolphin Stadium | Miami Gardens, Florida |
| New England Patriots | Gillette Stadium | Foxborough, Massachusetts |
| New York Jets | Giants Stadium | East Rutherford, New Jersey |
| North | Baltimore Ravens | M&T Bank Stadium | Baltimore, Maryland |
|---|
| Cincinnati Bengals | Paul Brown Stadium | Cincinnati, Ohio |
| Cleveland Browns | Cleveland Browns Stadium | Cleveland, Ohio |
| Pittsburgh Steelers | Heinz Field | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| South | Houston Texans | Reliant Stadium | Houston, Texas |
|---|
| Indianapolis Colts | RCA Dome | Indianapolis, Indiana |
| Jacksonville Jaguars | ALLTEL Stadium | Jacksonville, Florida |
| Tennessee Titans | LP Field | Nashville, Tennessee |
|
| West | Denver Broncos | INVESCO Field at Mile High | Denver, Colorado |
|---|
| Kansas City Chiefs | Arrowhead Stadium | Kansas City, Missouri |
| Oakland Raiders | McAfee Coliseum | Oakland, California |
| San Diego Chargers | Qualcomm Stadium | San Diego, California |
| National Football Conference |
| Division | Team | Stadium | City/Area |
|---|
| East | Dallas Cowboys | Texas Stadium | Irving, Texas |
|---|
| New York Giants | Giants Stadium | East Rutherford, New Jersey |
| Philadelphia Eagles | Lincoln Financial Field | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Washington Redskins | FedExField | Landover, Maryland |
| North | Chicago Bears | Soldier Field | Chicago, Illinois |
|---|
| Detroit Lions | Ford Field | Detroit, Michigan |
| Green Bay Packers | Lambeau Field | Green Bay, Wisconsin |
| Minnesota Vikings | Metrodome | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| South | Atlanta Falcons | Georgia Dome | Atlanta, Georgia |
|---|
| Carolina Panthers | Bank of America Stadium | Charlotte, North Carolina |
| New Orleans Saints | Louisiana Superdome | New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Raymond James Stadium | Tampa, Florida |
|
| West | Arizona Cardinals | University of Phoenix Stadium | Glendale, Arizona |
|---|
| St. Louis Rams | Edward Jones Dome | St. Louis, Missouri |
| San Francisco 49ers | Monster Park | San Francisco, California |
| Seattle Seahawks | Qwest Field | Seattle, Washington |
Season structure
Exhibition season
Summers see most NFL teams playing four exhibition games from early August through early September. Two "featured" exhibition games, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game and American Bowl, do not count toward the normal allottment of four games, so the four teams playing in those games each end up playing five exhibition games.
Currently, every NFL team requires their season ticket holders to purchase tickets at full price for two pre-season games as a requirement to purchase regular season tickets. The games are generally ignored by even the most feverish football fans, as during these games teams will generally play their stars and starters for about a quarter of each game.
Complaints regarding this policy have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but have failed to change the policy. A judgment in 1974 stated: "No fewer than five lawsuits have been instituted from Dallas to New England, each claiming that the respective National Football League team had violated the Sherman Act by requiring an individual who wishes to purchase a season ticket for all regular season games to buy, in addition, tickets for one or more exhibition or preseason games."
Still, pro football is popular enough that many fans are still willing to pay full price for exhibition games so that they may guarantee themselves a seat during the season. This is evidenced by the fact that many teams are sold out on a season ticket basis and have large waiting lists where people are willing to pay a one-time or annual fee for the privilege of remaining on the waiting list.
Although several exhibition games are broadcast nationally, most are broadcast by local television stations. Exhibition games are almost exclusively played at night due to hot summer weather, and are frequently scheduled based on local convenience .
Regular season
The NFL season begins the weekend after Labor Day. Each team plays 16 games during a 17-week period. Traditionally, every game is played on Sunday afternoon with the exception of one game each week being played on Sunday night, and another game being played on Monday night, known as
Monday Night Football is a live television [i] broadcast of the National Football League [i]. ...
. For the last few weeks of the regular season , the league typically schedules two or three nationally-televised games on Saturday afternoons or evenings.
In addition, the Dallas Cowboys and the
Detroit Lions each traditionally host a game on
Thanksgiving Day. Starting in 2006, a third game is scheduled during that same day in primetime.
Since the 2002 season, the league has scheduled a nationally televised regular season game on the Thursday night prior to the first Sunday of NFL games to kick off the season. The first one, featuring the
San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants, was held on September 5 2002 largely to celebrate
New York City's resilience in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks . Since 2004, the NFL has indicated that the opening game will normally be hosted by the defending Super Bowl champions as the official start of their title defense.
During the 1994 and 2005 seasons when
Christmas fell on a Sunday, the NFL flipped their normal schedule for that weekend, having the normal slate of Sunday games on Saturday .
Currently, each team's regular season schedule is set using a pre-determined formula:
- Each team plays the other three teams in their division twice: once at home, and once on the road .
- Each team plays once the four teams from another division within its conference on a rotating three-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road .
- Each team plays once the four teams from a division in the other conference on a rotating four-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road .
- Each team plays two games versus two teams within its conference based on the prior year's standings. These games match a first-place team against the first-place teams in the two same-conference divisions the team is not scheduled to play that season. The second-place, third-place, and fourth-place teams in a conference are matched in the same way each year: one at home, and one on the road.
Since debuting in 2002, this formula has been regarded as very successful, rekindling old rivalries and starting new ones, as all teams will play in every other team's stadium at least once every eight years.
For the 2006 season, the assignments are the following:
For the 2007 season, the assignments will be:
Flexible-scheduling
Starting with the
2006 season, the NFL will use a "flexible-scheduling" system for the last seven weeks of the regular season. The system is designed so that the league has the flexibility in selecting games to air on Sunday night that will feature the current hottest, streaking teams.
Under this system, Sunday games to be played during the affected weeks will tentatively have the start time of 1:00 p.m.
ET/10:00 a.m.
PT, 4:00 p.m. ET/1:00 p.m. PT, or 4:15 p.m. ET/1:15 p.m. PT. On the Tuesday 12 days before the games, the league will move one game to the primetime slot, and possibly move one or more 1:00 p.m. ET slotted games to the 4:00 p.m. ET slots. During the last week of the season, the league could re-schedule games as late as six days before the contests so that all of the television networks will be able to broadcast a game that has playoff implications. Both FOX and CBS will be allowed to broadcast a doubleheader that week.
Sixteen-game schedule
| Number of regular season games |
|---|
| 1935-1936 | 12 games |
| 1937-1942 | 11 games |
| 1943-1945 | 10 games |
| 1946 | 11 games |
| 1947-1960 | 12 games |
| 1961-1977 | 14 games |
| 1978-present | 16 games |
In its early years after 1920, the NFL did not have a set schedule, and teams played as few as eight and as many as sixteen games, some against college or other amateur squads. From 1926 through 1946, they played from eleven to fifteen games per season, depending on the number of teams in the league. From 1947 through 1960, each NFL team played 12 games per season. In 1960, the
American Football League began play and introduced a balanced schedule of 14 games per team over a fifteen week season, in which each of the eight teams played each of the other teams twice, with one bye week. Competition from the new league caused the NFL to expand and follow suit with a fourteen-game schedule in 1961. From 1961 through 1977, the NFL schedule consisted of fourteen regular season games played over fourteen weeks. Opening weekend typically was the weekend after Labor Day, or even two weekends after Labor Day. Teams played six, or even seven exhibition games. In 1978, the league changed the schedule to include sixteen regular season games and four exhibition games. From 1978-1989, the sixteen games were played over sixteen weeks.
In 1990, the NFL introduced a bye-week to the schedule. Each team would play sixteen regular season games over seventeen weeks. One week during the season, on a rotating basis, each team would have the weekend off. As a result, opening weekend was moved up to Labor Day weekend. In 1993, the league adjusted the schedule to include two bye weeks per team, and the sixteen games were played over eighteen weeks. In 1994, the schedule was changed back to seventeen weeks.
In 2001, the NFL decided to move opening week to the weekend after Labor Day.
Television ratings seemed to be sagging due to the
holiday, and the stadium crowds were apparently lacking due to vacationing fans and higher average temperatures of early September. In addition, it would leave the three-day holiday weekend alone to the opening weekend of
college football, preventing conflicts, and maximizing exposure. In 2002, the NFL began scheduling a Thursday night special opening game, which would be nationally televised. Festivities and a pre-game
concert would kick off the season.
- In 1999, the NFL moved the first week of the season one week later due to the conflict with January 1, 2000. The Year 2000 problem sparked travel concerns for the final week of the season, and playoffs. By moving the season a week later, the NFL hoped to prevent teams traveling complications.
- For most years, there has been an open weekend between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl. In the 1990 season, there was no bye, as the league was still adjusting the schedule from adding the bye week during the season. In the 1993 season, there was no bye week since the regular season consisted of eighteen weekends. In the 1999 season, the bye week was removed to accommodate the schedule being moved ahead one week. In the 2001 season, the bye week disappeared when the league moved opening weekend a week later. As a result, Super Bowl XXXVI had to be delayed after the league postponed the second week's games following the September 11 attacks. By the 2003 season, the bye week was restored. In the 1982 strike-shortened season, a postseason tournament replaced the traditional playoff format. The Super Bowl bye week was removed to accommodate the longer, expanded playoffs.
Playoffs
At the conclusion of each 16-game regular season, six teams from each conference qualify for the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament, which culminates in the
Super Bowl:
- The four division champions from each conference , which are seeded one through four based on their regular season won-lost-tied record.
- Two wild card qualifiers , which are seeded five and six.
The third- and the sixth-seeded teams, and the fourth and the fifth seeds face each other, respectively, during the first round of the playoffs, dubbed the
Wild Card Playoffs. The first and the second 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 .
The two surviving teams from the Divisional Playoff games meet in
the NFC Championship and
the AFC Championship games, with the winners of those contests going on to face each other in the
Super Bowl.
The terms "Wild Card Playoffs" and "Divisional Playoffs" originated from the playoff format that was used before 1990. During that time, three division winners and two wild card teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs. Only the wild card teams played during the first round, while all of the division winners received a
bye, automatically advancing to the second round.
One inequity pointed out in the current system is that a divisional winner could host a playoff game against a wild card team that earned a better regular season record. For example, the
Jacksonville Jaguars finished the
2005 regular season with a 12-4 record, but only qualified as a wild card team and therefore had to face the
New England Patriots, the AFC East division champions with a 10-6 record, at the Patriots' home field, Gillette Stadium.
Tiebreaking rules
The league uses a set of rules to break ties in the final season standings, i.e. teams that have the same regular season won-lost-tied record. As mentioned above, each team's order of finish in their respective divisions determine the opponents in two of their games during the following season. The tiebreaking rules are also used to help determine playoff seedings.
The process basically involves comparing a set of each team's season statistics, one record at a time, until one club has a higher value than the others. The first criterion that is always compared first is head-to-head, how the tied teams fared when they played each other during the regular season. Other data that is then compared include their record against teams in their division, their record against teams in their conference, their record against common opponents, net points scored, and net touchdowns scored. If the teams remain tied after comparing all of these statistics, then the tie is broken using a coin toss. To date, a coin toss has never been used by the league to break a tie using these procedures.
The tiebreaking rules have changed over the years, with the most recent changes being made in 2002; record vs. common opponents and most of the other criteria involving wins and losses were moved up higher in the tiebreaking list, while those involving compiled stats such as points for and against were moved to the bottom.
A completely different set of tiebreaking rules are used to determine the order in which teams pick in the NFL draft .
League championships
The NFL's method for determining its champions has changed over the years. For the history of the process see National Football League championships.
The draft
Every year during the offseason, each NFL franchise seeks to fill its position needs by adding new players through a process known literally as "the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting", which is more commonly known as the NFL Draft. The NFL Draft is a highly organized and formal process that takes place over two days in a weekend in late April, in which all NFL teams participate.
The team with the worst record in the previous year gets first pick of each round in the draft , while the winner of the Super Bowl has the last pick in every round. The idea is that weak teams can thereby become strengthened over time, in the specialties where they need strengthening. If two or more teams have the same win/loss record, then their opponents' win/loss record is used as the tiebreaker; the team with the lowest opponents' winning percentage gets the higher pick. Draft picks continue, in the order from the weakest team to the strongest team, and once all teams have picked one player, they all pick again starting with the weakest team.
The overwhelming majority of players selected in the draft are
NCAA football players, although a few athletes have been drafted by teams through the years who had not played college football, or who had excelled in other sports such as track, wrestling, basketball, baseball or soccer. In order for a college athlete to be eligible to be drafted, three years must have elapsed since his high school graduation.
Draft picks are frequently traded in advance for players and other draft picks. For example, before the draft occurs, Team A might trade its first-round draft pick plus a certain player to Team B in exchange for another particular player who already plays for Team B.
Typically players who are drafted do not immediately become starters, although there are exceptions.
Free agency
Free agency in the NFL began with a limited free agency system known as "Plan B Free Agency", and was in effect for four seasons between 1989 and 1992. Beginning with the 1993 season, "Plan A Free Agency" went into effect, which is the system which remains in the NFL today.
- Restricted Free Agent: a player who is eligible for free agency, although his current team has the chance to retain rights to this player by matching the highest offer any other NFL franchise might make to that player
- Unrestricted Free Agent: a player who is eligible for free agency, where his current team has no guaranteed right to match outside offers to that player
- Franchise Tag: a designation given to a player by a franchise that guarantees that player a contract the average of the five highest-paid players of that same position in the entire league in return for retaining rights to that player for one year. An NFL franchise may only designate one player a year as having the franchise tag, and may designate the same player for consecutive years. This has caused some tension between some NFL franchise designees and their respective teams due to the fact that a player designated as a franchise player precludes that player from pursuing large signing bonuses that are common in unrestricted free agency.
Salaries and the salary cap
The minimum salary for an NFL player is $260,000 in his first year, and rises after that based on the number of years in service.
Exhibition game minimum is $10,000. These numbers are set by contract between the NFL and the players' union, the
National Football League Players' Association. These numbers are of course exceeded dramatically by the best players in each position.
| Years Experience | Minimum Salary |
|---|
| 0 | $260,000 |
| 1 | $305,000 |
| 2 | $380,000 |
| 3 | $455,000 |
| 4-6 | $540,000 |
| 7-9 | $665,000 |
| 10+ | $765,000 |
Escalating player salaries throughout the 1980s and the advent of free agency in 1992 led to the NFL's adoption of a salary cap in 1994, a maximum amount of money each team can pay its players in aggregate. The cap is determined via a complicated formula based on the revenue that all NFL teams receive during the previous year. For the 2004 season, the NFL's salary cap was $80.582 million, an increase of $5.5 million from 2003. The cap for the 2005 season was set at $85.5 million, and at $102 million for 2006 instead of the previously estimated $94.5 million.
Proponents of the salary cap note that it prevents a well-financed team in a major city from simply spending giant amounts of money to secure the very best players in every position and thus dominating the entire sport. This has been seen as a problem in American
baseball, long dominated since the advent of free agency by large market teams. They point to the relative parity of competition that exists in the NFL
as of 2005 compared to
Major League Baseball as evidence that the NFL salary cap preserves competitive balance. They claim fans end up paying higher ticket prices to help pay for escalating player salaries. These concerns, among others, led in part to modified salary cap adoption in the
National Basketball Association in 1984 and the
National Hockey League in 2005.
Critics of the salary cap note that the driving reason for the cap was to maximize the profitability of the NFL teams, and limit the power of NFL players to command the high salaries they are said to deserve in exchange for bringing in large numbers of paying fans to the stadiums. Furthermore, they attribute NFL competitive parity instead to the league's extensive revenue sharing policies.
-
A new CBA was reached between the NFL and the NFLPA on March 8, 2006, which extends the current agreement through 2013. The cap for 2006 was expected to be set at $94.5 million, but due to the new deal it instead was set at $102 million.?
Racial policies
Although the current NFL is well-represented at virtually every position by
African-American athletes, that was not always the case. The league had a few African American players until 1933, one year after entry to the league of George Preston Marshall. Marshall's policies not only excluded blacks from his Washington Redskins team but may have influenced the entire league to drop African American until 1946, when pressure from the competing
All-America Football Conference induced the NFL to be more liberal in its signing of African Americans. Another theory holds that the NFL, like most of the United States during the
Great Depression, simply fired African American workers before white workers, but this could hardly account for the league's apparent "all-white" policy during this period. Still, Marshall refused to sign African American players until threatened with
civil rights legal action by the
Kennedy administration in 1962, in which it was explained to him that his lease on the then-new
D.C. Stadium, which was at the time controlled by the
United States Department of the Interior, would be voided if he continued to refuse to sign any African American players. This action, and pressure by another competing league, the more racially-liberal
American Football League, slowly managed to reverse the NFL's racial quotas. The AFL's
Denver Broncos were the first modern-era team to have a African American starting quarterback, Marlin Briscoe, who started the fourth game of the 1968 season, and broke pro football rookie records for passing yardage and touchdowns. The next year 1969, another
American Football League team, the
Buffalo Bills were the first professional football team of the modern era to begin the season with an African American, James Harris as their starting quarterback. The Chicago Bears had an African American quarterback in 1953, Willie Thrower, who played in only one game and did not start in any games. After that, no old-line NFL team had an African American starting quarterback until the Steelers' Joe Gilliam in 1972.
Even after that, for many NFL teams the door would remain closed to African American
quarterbacks through the 1970s. 1978 Rose Bowl MVP Warren Moon played for six seasons in the CFL before his abilities finally landed him the starting role with the
Houston Oilers. It took until 1988 before an African American quarterback started for a Super Bowl team, when Doug Williams won it for the Redskins. To this day, the NFL's head-coach hiring policies are questioned, and it has had to institute measures to attempt to have African American head coach candidates be treated more equitably.
White skill players have become increasingly rare in the modern NFL, as most positions are filled by African Americans. White running backs, defensive backs, and receivers have become less and less common over the last 25 years. In 2005, a slim majority of offensive linemen are white, while no whites are listed as Tailbacks or Cornerbacks on NFL rosters. Most quarterbacks, punters, and kickers are white, while almost all running backs, wide receivers, defensive backs, defensive linemen, safeties, punt returners, and kickoff returners are African American. Increasingly, positions such as tight end, fullback, and linebacker are being filled by African Americans. In the early 1980s, African Americans and whites each made up roughly half of the players. Since then, the percentage of African American players has increased steadily to its present 2005 level of 69%. Whites make up the plurality of the remaining players, followed by Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, and Asians.
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.
Since the 1960's, NFL broadcasts have ranked consistently as among the most-watched programs on American television. Networks have purchased a share of the broadcasting rights to the NFL as a means of raising the entire network's profile.
Early on it was decided by NFL owners to sell the rights to all league games collectively, as opposed to each team selling their rights individually. Because television revenue is shared equally between the teams, the NFL can be viewed as a
cooperative organization owned by its members .
Currently, three broadcast networks and two cable channels televise NFL games: NBC and
ESPN own the rights to broadcast games on Sunday and Monday nights, respectively. The
NFL Network holds the rights to televise selected contests on Thursday night and Saturday during the second half of the season. For the rest of the games,
FOX broadcasts all NFC teams while
CBS all AFC teams. For interconference games, FOX televises them if the visiting team is from the NFC and CBS carries them when the visitors are from the AFC.
Radio
Each NFL team has its own radio network and employs its announcers. Nationally, the NFL is heard on the
Westwood One Radio Network and on Sports USA Radio. 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.
The NFL also has a contract with Sirius Satellite Radio, which provides news, analysis, commentary and game coverage for all games.
History
Like the American college football game from which it sprung, NFL football is a descendant of
rugby football, which was imported to the United States from Canada in 1874, and then transformed into American college football after McGill University in Montreal invited Harvard University to Quebec to play a new Canadian version of "rugby football". Professional football in the United States dates at least to 1892, when an athletic club in
Pittsburgh paid William "Pudge" Heffelfinger $500 to take part in a game. Over the next few decades, while most attention was paid to football at elite colleges on the East Coast, the professional game spread widely in the Midwest, particularly in Ohio where in 1903 the
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