National Football League (NFL)
The 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)
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 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; and
a 12-team Single-elimination playoff 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.
A sample scheduling grid, with a single team's (the Browns) schedule highlighted. Under this hypothetical schedule, the Browns would play the teams in blue twice and the teams in yellow once, for a total of sixteen games.
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 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 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).
The NFL Playoffs. Each of the four 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 fifth and sixth (with the better of the two having seed 5) regardless of their records compared to the four division winners.
The season concludes with a twelve-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 one through four 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[4]), which are seeded five and six.
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 #1 seeded team 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 XLIV, the AFC Champion was the "home" team.
The Pro Bowl, the league's all-star game, has been traditionally held on the weekend after the Super Bowl. The game was played at various venues before being held at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii for 30 consecutive seasons from 1980 to 2009.
However, the 2010 Pro Bowl was played at Sun Life Stadium, the home stadium of the Miami Dolphins and host site of Super Bowl XLIV, on January 31, the first time ever that the Pro Bowl was played before the championship game. The 2011 and 2012 games will return to Honolulu.
Though the NFL only plays in the late summer, fall, and early winter, the extended offseason often is an event in itself, with the draft, free agency signings, and the announcement of schedules keeping the NFL in the spotlight even during the spring, when virtually no on-field activity is taking place. A typical calendar of league events is as follows, with the dates listed being those for the 2010 NFL season:
Ø February 22 – Pro Football Hall of Fame Game opponents announced.
Ø February 24–March 2—NFL Scouting Combine: Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, Ind.
Ø February 25—Deadline for Clubs to designate Franchise and Transition players.
Ø March 5—Veteran Free Agency signing period begins. Trading period begins.
Ø March 21–24—NFL Annual Meeting: Dana Point, Calif. Usually accompanied by announcement of scheduling and opponents for first game and opening-weekend night games.
Ø Early April: Teams begin voluntary workouts.
Ø April 20: 2010 schedule announced.
Ø April 22–24 – NFL Draft: New York City.
Ø May 24–26—NFL Spring Meeting: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Ø June 27 – June 30—NFL Rookie Symposium, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
Ø Mid-July (varies by team)-- Training camps open.
Ø August 7 – Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Canton, Ohio, including Hall of Fame Game.
Ø August 12–16—First full Preseason weekend.
Ø August 31—Roster cutdown from 80 to maximum of 75 players.
Ø September 4—Roster cutdown from 75 to maximum of 53 players.
Ø September 9–13 – Kickoff 2010 Weekend (Week 1 of regular season)
Ø October 31 – International Series game (Wembley Stadium, London).
Ø November – Pro Bowl balloting, flexible scheduling for Sunday Night Football and the NFL Network's night game package all begin.
Ø November 25 – Thanksgiving games.
Ø January 2, 2011—End of regular season.
Ø January 8, 2011 – Playoffs begin.
Ø January 23 – AFC Championship Game and NFC Championship Game.
Ø January 30 – Pro Bowl.
Ø February 6 – Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Award, or Super Bowl MVP, is an award presented annually to the most valuable player of the Super Bowl, the National Football League's (NFL) championship game. The winner is chosen by a fan vote during the game and by a panel of 16 American football writers and broadcasters who vote after the game. The media panel's ballots count for 80 percent of the vote tally, while the viewers' ballots make up the other 20 percent.[1] The game's viewing audience can vote on the Internet or by using cellular phones;[1] Super Bowl XXXV, held in 2001, was the first Super Bowl where fan voting was allowed.
Since the first Super Bowl was held in 1967, the MVP award has been given to 40 players. From 1967 to 1989, the Super Bowl MVP was presented by Sport magazine.[3] Bart Starr was the MVP of the first two Super Bowls. Since 1990, the award has been presented by the NFL.[3] At Super Bowl XXV, the league first awarded the Pete Rozelle Trophy, named after the former NFL commissioner, to the Super Bowl MVP.[4] Ottis Anderson was the first to win the trophy.[5] The most recent Super Bowl MVP was Drew Brees, who was named the most valuable player of Super Bowl XLIV, held on February 7, 2010.
Joe Montana is the only player to have won three Super Bowl MVP awards; three others—Starr, Terry Bradshaw, and Tom Brady—have won the honor twice. The MVP has come from the winning team every year except 1971, when Dallas Cowboys linebacker Chuck Howley won the award despite the Cowboys' loss in Super Bowl V to the Baltimore Colts.[6] Harvey Martin and Randy White were named co-MVPs of Super Bowl XII, the only time co-MVPs have been chosen. Including the Super Bowl XII co-MVPs, seven Cowboys players have won Super Bowl MVP awards, the most of any NFL team. Quarterbacks have earned the honor 23 times in 44 games. Mark Rypien and Hines Ward are the only players born outside the United States to earn the Super Bowl MVP; they were born in Canada and South Korea, respectively.[8] Roger Staubach, Jim Plunkett, Marcus Allen, and Desmond Howard are the only four players to have won the Super Bowl MVP and college football's Heisman Trophy.
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Commentary: More schools turning to football
The National Football Foundation last week emailed a news release to reporters discussing the creation of new college football teams around the country.By the NFF’s count, eight teams will play for the first time this season, and 17 more will open between 2012 and 2014. But, only a fraction are at the highest level of the NCAA, as six (Texas-San Antonio, Mercer, Charlotte, Stetson, Kennesaw ...
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