Does the NFL have a minor league?
Minor league
Several minor or developmental leagues, independent of the NFL, have come and gone, such as the recent United Football League and the Fall Experimental Football League, but none have lasted more than a few seasons.
On November 27, 2016, it was reported by CBS Sports that the NFL will present formal proposals for a developmental league or in-season academy (with Troy Vincent prepared to make recommendations) in 2017. Vincent stated "We are ready to socialize our findings to the respective committees at the Pro Bowl, Senior Bowl, and combine" he also stated "We have some viable potential options that are ready to share with the Competition Committee, the Coaches Subcommittee and with some of our active and former players", "Our goal is to create a platform that addresses the entire football community--coaches, officials, front office personnel and players--is essential to the long-term sustainability of our game."
American Football League
The AFL and NFL operated as separate leagues until 1970, with separate regular season and playoff schedules except for the championship game. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle also became chief executive of the AFL from July 26, 1966, through the completion of the merger. During this time the AFL expanded, adding the Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals. After losses by Kansas City and Oakland in the first two AFL-NFL World Championship Game to the Green Bay Packers (1967/1968), the New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowls III and IV (1969/1970) respectively, cementing the league's claim to being an equal to the NFL.
1925 NFL Championship controversy
The controversy involving territorial rights also led to the founding of the first American Football League after New York Giants owner Tim Mara objected to the leasing of Yankee Stadium and the application of an NFL franchise by C. C. Pyle. When the NFL rejected Pyle's overture, he formed a competing league to showcase the talents of Red Grange and University of Washington All-American George "Wildcat" Wilson. The rival league folded after the 1926 season, and Mara relented, allowing Pyle to operate his team in the NFL and in Yankee Stadium.
Athletics in upstate New York
The New York Pro Football League was an informal circuit of teams based in various cities across upstate New York; they would compete primarily in local circuits before participating in what is believed to be the first playoff tournament in professional football, which culminated in a Thanksgiving championship at Buffalo Baseball Park. The NYPFL was one of several regional leagues that foreshadowed the formation of the National Football League; several NYPFL teams joined the NFL over the course of the 1920s. As of 2012, the only professional football team in the territory is the Buffalo Bills of the NFL. Although the region has hosted indoor football teams in the past, no teams currently play in the region.
Association of Professional Football Leagues
Prior to the 1941 season, the NFL proposed a nationwide “Commissioner of Football” that would govern all major and minor professional football leagues in the United States, similar in scope to the authority wielded by the Commissioner of Baseball, and hired Elmer Layden in that capacity. Then-president Carl Storck was to remain president of the NFL itself, but because he believed the requirements of the position were too vague (and because of declining health), he resigned, and Layden took up both duties, which have been united ever since.
Professional sports in the Western United States
NFL
Buffalo Bills (AAFC)
Breuil, having lost $700,000 on the team, was instead content to accept a one-fourth share of the Browns; the team did, however, have another potential owner in Pat McGroder, then a successful liquor store owner and an advocate for the NFL's return to Buffalo. The NFL was not inclined to add a fourth team. The American Football League, a minor league formerly known as the "American Association," offered the Bills a spot in their league, but no Buffalo parties were interested in a minor league team. Coming with Breuil to Cleveland were three Bills players; the rest were dispersed in the 1950 AAFC Dispersal Draft among the NFL teams, with the Colts and Green Bay Packers picking up the majority of the Bills' roster. As it turned out, admitting the Colts over the Bills proved to be a mistake; the Colts folded after only one season.
Minor league
Other sports organizations considered to be minor leagues are golf's Web.com Tour and Symetra Tour, respectively affiliated with the PGA Tour and LPGA; NASCAR's Xfinity Series, Camping World Truck Series and Whelen All-American Series; and various other affiliated satellite tours of other individual sports, including the Challengers Tour of Professional Tennis.
Minor League Baseball
Minor League Baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the Americas that compete at levels below Major League Baseball (MLB) and provide opportunities for player development and a way to prepare for the major leagues. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses. Most are members of the umbrella organization known as Minor League Baseball (MiLB), which operates under the Commissioner of Baseball within the scope of organized baseball. Several leagues, known as independent baseball leagues, do not have any official links to Major League Baseball.
World Football League
With the relative financial stability of the Birmingham and Memphis clubs, both attempted to join the NFL but were refused. In 1979, the Memphis club owners filed an anti-trust suit against the NFL. Their case was ultimately dismissed on May 30, 1984, by which time the owners had already established the Tampa Bay Bandits in the next professional league, the United States Football League (which incidentally filed their own, more famous antitrust suit against the NFL in 1986). Although the NFL expanded by two teams in 1976, that expansion had been planned before the WFL's first season, and neither city (Tampa and Seattle) had hosted a WFL franchise.
Traveling team
Below is a list of the traveling teams that were members of the National Football League, the first American Football League, or the second American Football League. No other major professional league of American football had such road teams, the last of which was the 1952 Dallas Texans of the National Football League. To qualify for the list, the team must have played a complete season of at least four games on the road. Teams that had the traveling team status imposed upon them in midseason are noted.There have been no NFL traveling teams since 1952, owing to the increased stability of the league. Even in cases when an NFL team's home stadium has been rendered unusable due to damages or renovations, the teams have arranged and designated temporary home stadiums in each case and no NFL team has had to play more than two designated home games (out of eight in a season) outside their home stadium.
Cowboys–Steelers rivalry
After the failure of the Texans, the NFL had no plans to return to the state in the foreseeable future. However, in 1959, Lamar Hunt, the son of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, approached the NFL about putting another expansion team in Dallas. The NFL said no, stating that the league was not expanding at the time. He then approached the Chicago Cardinals about buying the team from owner Violet Bidwill Wolfner, who ultimately decided to keep the team and whose son Bill Bidwill remains the owner (the Cardinals did move to St. Louis, Missouri for the 1960 NFL season; the team currently is based in Phoenix, Arizona; the Cowboys and Cardinals were divisional rivals from 1961–66, and again from 1970–2001). Due to these rebuffs, Hunt formed the American Football League with his own Dallas team, the AFL's incarnation of the Dallas Texans.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
The NFL is the only major league to have no team based in a Canadian city; the closest teams to Canada are the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions, both representing cities located on the U.S.–Canada border. The Lions play in downtown Detroit, from Windsor, Ontario. The Bills' stadium is located south of the Canada–U.S. border. From 2008–13, the Bills played 8 games in Toronto as part of the Bills Toronto Series which included one regular season game per year.
List of NFL franchise owners
Benson, Bidwill, McCaskey, Brown, Ford, Irsay, Hunt, Mara, Davis, Rooney, Glazer, Smith, Spanos, York, and Adams-Strunk represent ownership that has been longer than year listed, as teams have been owned by their families longer than listed.The NFL forbids religious groups, governments, and non-profit organizations owning a team. The NFL requires a controlling owner to hold at minimum a 30% stake in the team and forbids ownership groups of over 24 people, or any publicly traded corporations from purchasing NFL teams; one team, the Green Bay Packers, is exempt from this under a grandfather clause and is owned by shareholders. The Houston Texans are also grandfathered in for their home county–the Harris County, Texas government–which owns 5% of the team, as the rule forbidding governments from owning a team became effective in 2007. The NFL's constitution also forbids its owners from owning any other professional football teams, except for Arena Football League teams located in the NFL team's home market. In addition, the controlling owners of NFL teams were previously only permitted to own major league baseball, basketball and hockey teams if they are in the NFL team's home market, or are not located in other NFL cities. (Stan Kroenke, who owned hockey and basketball teams in Denver, was nonetheless unanimously allowed to buy the then-St. Louis Rams in 2010 and hold on to his Denver assets until 2015, and even then the Denver assets were transferred to his wife Ann.) Soccer has been exempt from these restrictions since 1982, when the league lost a lawsuit challenging them filed by the original NASL stemming from the investments of Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt and Elizabeth Robbie, the wife of Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie in NASL teams; as a result, NFL owners have owned teams in MLS in other NFL markets. In October 2018, the NFL owners voted to relax the cross-ownership rule, allowing controlling NFL owners to own other professional teams within NFL markets.
List of American and Canadian cities by defunct football franchises
The NFL founded a developmental league known as the World League of American Football with teams based in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The WLAF ran for two years, from 1991 to 1992. The league went on a two-year hiatus before reorganizing as NFL Europe in 1995, with teams only in European cities. The name of the league was changed to NFL Europa in 2006. After the 2007 season, the NFL announced that it was closing down the league to focus its international marketing efforts in other ways, such as playing NFL regular season games in cities outside of the U.S.
National Football League (1902)
The first National Football League (NFL) was the first attempt at forming a national professional American football league in 1902. This league has no ties with the modern National Football League. In fact the league was only composed of teams from Pennsylvania, which meant it was actually regional, despite having locations in the two largest cities in Pennsylvania. Two of the teams were based in Philadelphia, while the third was based in Pittsburgh. This NFL was a curious mixture of football players and baseball players who adapted to playing football. Future Baseball Hall of Famer Rube Waddell was with the Philadelphia Athletics, and pitcher Christy Mathewson a fullback for Pittsburgh. Two of the three teams were owned by the Philadelphia Phillies and Philadelphia Athletics, with the third team suspected of being owned by the Pittsburgh Pirates. The league folded after the 1902 season.
American football in the United States
The governing body for American football in the United States is USA Football.
The 32-team National Football League (NFL) is currently the only major or borderline-major professional American football league in the United States. There have been numerous attempts over the past several decades to create a second major or high-level professional league, most of which failed within a few years or, in the cases of the All-America Football Conference and 1960s American Football League, merged with the NFL.
American football
The rival American Football League arose in 1960 and challenged the NFL's dominance. The AFL began in relative obscurity but eventually thrived, with an initial television contract with the ABC network. The AFL's existence forced the conservative NFL to expand to Dallas and Minnesota in an attempt to destroy the new league. Meanwhile, the AFL introduced many new features to Professional Football in the United States: official time on the scoreboard clock, rather than on a watch in the referee's pocket, as the NFL did; optional two-point conversions by pass or run after touchdowns; names on the jerseys of players; and several others, including expansion of the role of minority players, actively recruited by the league in contrast to the NFL. The AFL also signed several star college players that had also been drafted by NFL teams. Competition for players heated up in 1965, when the AFL New York Jets signed rookie Joe Namath to a then-record US$437,000 contract. A five-year, $40 million NBC television contract followed, which helped to sustain the young league. The bidding war for players ended in 1966, when NFL owners approached the AFL regarding a merger, and the two leagues agreed on one that would take full effect in 1970. This agreement provided for a common draft that would take place each year, and it instituted an annual World Championship game to be played between the champions of each league. That game began play at the end of the 1966 season. Once the merger was completed, it was no longer a championship game between two leagues, and reverted to the NFL championship game, which came to be known as the Super Bowl.
Modern history of American football
The NFL continued to grow, eventually adopting some innovations of the AFL, including the two-point conversion in 1994. It has expanded several times to its current 32-team membership, and the Super Bowl has become a cultural phenomena across the United States. One of the most popular televised events annually in the United States, it has become a major source of advertising revenue for the television networks that have carried it and it serves as a means for advertisers to debut elaborate and expensive commercials for their products. The NFL has grown to become the most popular spectator sports league in the United States.
One of the things that have marked the modern NFL as different from other major professional sports leagues is the apparent parity between its 32 teams. While from time to time, dominant teams have arisen, the league has been cited as one of the few where every team has a realistic chance of winning the championship from year to year. The league's complex labor agreement with its players' union, which mandates a hard salary cap and revenue sharing between its clubs, prevents the richest teams from stockpiling the best players and gives even teams in smaller cities such as Green Bay and New Orleans the opportunity to compete for the Super Bowl. One of the chief architects of this labor agreement was former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who presided over the league from 1989 to 2006. In addition to providing parity between the clubs, the current labor contract, established in 1993 and renewed in 1998 and 2006, has kept player salaries low—the lowest among the four major league sports in the United States— and has helped make the NFL the only major American professional sports league since 1993 not to suffer any player strike or work stoppage. In 1994, Paul Tagliabue approved the creation of the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) Committee with the stated goal of studying the effects of concussions and sub-concussive injury in NFL players. Tagliabue appointed rheumatologist Dr. Elliot Pellman to chair the committee. Pellman's appointment was met with harsh criticism, because he is not a neurologist or neuropsychologist and often admitted ignorance about head injuries.
Minor League Baseball
In 1903, the conflict between the AL and NL ended in the National Agreement of 1903. The NAPBL became involved in the later stages of the negotiations to develop rules for the acquisition of players from their leagues by the NL and the AL. The 1903 agreement ensured that teams would be compensated for the players that they had taken the time and effort to scout and develop, and no NA team was required to sell their players, although most did because the cash was an important source of revenue for most teams. The NA leagues were still fiercely independent, and the term "minor" was seldom used in reference to them, save by the major-market sports writers. Sports news, like most news generally, often did not travel far in the days before radio and television, so, while the leagues often bristled at the major market writers descriptions, they viewed themselves as independent sports businesses. Many baseball writers of that time regarded the greatest players of the minor leagues, such as Buzz Arlett, Jigger Statz, Ike Boone, Buddy Ryan, Earl Rapp and Frank Shellenback, as comparable to major league players. Leagues in the NA would not be truly called minor until Branch Rickey developed the first modern farm system in the 1930s. The Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis fought Rickey's scheme, but, ultimately, the Great Depression drove teams to establish systems like Rickey's to ensure a steady supply of players, as many NA and independent teams could not afford to keep their doors open without the patronage of Major League Baseball. The leagues of the NA became subordinate to the major leagues, creating the first minor leagues in the current sense of the term. Other than the Pacific Coast League (PCL), which under its president Pants Rowland tried to become a third major league in the Western states, the other leagues maintained autonomy in name only, being totally economically dependent upon the AL and NL.
American football on Thanksgiving
Professional football teams and leagues have played on Thanksgiving from the start, with pro leagues and teams having played on Thanksgiving since the 1890s. It carried over when Buffalo and Rochester, two members of the New York Pro Football League which had held its championship on Thanksgiving 1919, and the Ohio League, which traditionally held its marquee matchups on Thanksgiving, combined into the NFL upon its founding in 1920, and as such, the NFL has played on Thanksgiving ever since. The Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys have played home games on Thanksgiving since 1934 and 1966, respectively, in a traditional series of NFL games. Beginning in 2006, the NFL added a third game on Thanksgiving night with a rotating host team.
Professional American football championship games
The APFA had no championship games before it changed its name to the NFL in 1922. Boston/Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall is credited with significant innovations by the NFL: in 1933, Marshall convinced the NFL to play a championship game between the two division winners following the success of the 1932 playoff game. Thus, 1933 was the year of the first national professional football championship game in the United States. See National Football League championships.
Sports in the United States
Minor league basketball, both official and unofficial, has an extensive presence, given the sport's relative lack of expense to operate a professional team. The NBA has an official minor league, known since 2017 as the NBA G League under a naming rights agreement with Gatorade. The most prominent independent league is BIG3, a three-on-three league featuring former NBA stars that launched in 2017. Several other pro basketball leagues exist but are notorious for their instability and low budget operations.
Modern history of American football
During the 1950s, additional teams entered the league. In 1950, the AAFC folded, and three teams from that league were absorbed into the NFL: the Cleveland Browns (who had won the AAFC Championship every year of the league's existence), the San Francisco 49ers, and the Baltimore Colts (not the same as the modern franchise, this version folded after one year). The remaining players were chosen by the now 13 NFL teams in a dispersal draft. Also in 1950, the Los Angeles Rams became the first team to televise its entire schedule, marking the beginning of an important relationship between television and professional football. In 1952, the Dallas Texans went defunct, becoming the last NFL franchise to do so. The following year a new Baltimore Colts franchise formed to take over the assets of the Texans. The players' union, known as the NFL Players Association, formed in 1956.
Association of Professional Football Leagues
The compact permitted the NFL to establish working relationships with teams in all three minor league circuits (while the AA had such an arrangement with the NFL prior to 1945, the Dixie League did not; the PCPFL generally did not embrace the concept).
American Football League
After Winter and Boyer agreed to start a team in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the new league had its first four teams. Hunt then approached Willard Rhodes, who hoped to bring pro football to Seattle. However, not wanting to undermine its own brand, the University of Washington was unwilling to let the fledgling league use Husky Stadium, and Rhodes' effort came to nothing. Hunt also sought franchises in Los Angeles, Buffalo and New York City. During the summer of 1959, he sought the blessings of the NFL for his nascent league, as he did not seek a potentially costly rivalry. Within weeks of the July 1959 announcement of the league's formation, Hunt received commitments from Barron Hilton and Harry Wismer to bring teams to Los Angeles and New York, respectively. His initial efforts for Buffalo, however, were rebuffed, when Hunt's first choice of owner, Pat McGroder, declined to take part; McGroder had hoped that the threat of the AFL would be enough to prompt the NFL to expand to Buffalo.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
In the early years of the NFL and to a lesser extent the NHL, it was not uncommon for teams to share nicknames with their MLB counterparts. For example, until 1957 New York City played host to baseball and football Giants. MLB's Pittsburgh Pirates shared its nickname with an NFL team (which ultimately became the Pittsburgh Steelers) as well as a now-defunct early NHL team, while the Canadian football team Hamilton Tigers shared a team name with an NHL team. The most recent example of two major teams sharing a franchise name was between 1960 and 1987; when the NFL's Chicago Cardinals relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, it was allowed to keep the Cardinals name despite the established existence of a baseball team of the same name.
Clint Murchison Jr.
In 1960, the National Football League approved a franchise for Dallas, and Murchison, along with Bedford Wynne, was the franchisee or license holder. A motivating factor in the NFL's decision to award a license for Dallas was the establishment of the American Football League (AFL) by Lamar Hunt, another Dallas area businessman. Hunt, in helping create the AFL, established a professional football presence in Dallas, and the NFL realized the urgency with which they needed to address a potential market gain by the upstart league and a loss for the established organization.
Southeastern United States
Although American football is prevalent across the United States, it is especially pervasive in the Southeast. With a total of nine (9) franchises — the Atlanta Falcons, the Baltimore Ravens, the Carolina Panthers, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Miami Dolphins, the New Orleans Saints, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Tennessee Titans, and the Washington Redskins — across the region, the National Football League (NFL) maintains a stronger commercial presence than any other major North American professional sports league.
American football
The National Football League (NFL) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) are the most popular football leagues in the United States. The National Football League was founded in 1920 and has since become the largest and most popular sport in the United States. The NFL has the highest average attendance of any sporting league in the world, with an average attendance of 66,960 during the 2011 NFL Season. The NFL championship game is called the Super Bowl, and is among the biggest events in club sports worldwide. It is played between the champions of the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC), and its winner is awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Mini-camp
A mini-camp, also spelled minicamp, is a short camp held by National Football League (NFL) and Canadian Football League (CFL) teams usually in spring of each year. The camp usually only lasts 3 days, but the length varies by a day or two depending on the head coach's preference. Mini-camps are geared toward getting the newly drafted rookies acclimated to the NFL playing schemes. It also gives coaches and team administrators the chance to see their new players in action learning plays from their new team's playbook. Several veteran players of each team will also attend mini-camp to refresh their skills and get acquainted with the new players coming in. Attendance requirements for mini-camp are entirely up to each individual head coach. Some head coaches push for all of the players to be there, while others ask for just the rookies and younger players to attend. The drills and plays run at camp are conducted in shorts and T-shirts or jerseys. They are not "full contact" drills.
Legends Football League
The Legends Football League (LFL) is a women's 7-on-7 tackle American football league, with games played in the spring and summer at NBA, NFL, NHL and MLS arenas and stadiums. The league was founded in 2009 as the Lingerie Football League and was rebranded as the Legends Football League in 2013. The league's administrative offices are located in Los Angeles.
Minor league
In 2013 Major League Soccer announced a partnership with the USL which began formal affiliation between some USL teams and MLS teams. The partnership has continued to deepen; several MLS teams now field their own reserve teams in the USL, and MLS now requires all of its teams to either field a reserve team in the USL or officially affiliate with a separately owned USL team. No formal relationship exists between NASL and the other leagues; NASL's commissioner has said he believes it will "stay that way for some time".
Professional football (gridiron)
By the start of the 1960s, the NFL was complacent in its dominance of the market for Professional Football fans, and had little incentive to expand that market. The AAFC was history, and the NFL had chosen not to capitalize on the boost it had received from the 1958 Colts-Giants sudden-death game. It was content with a 12-team league playing a 12-game schedule and featured "ball-control" football. When Texas oilmen Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams tried to purchase existing NFL franchises to move to Texas, or to establish new NFL franchises there, they were told that the conservative NFL was not interested. The result was that Hunt and Adams joined with six other businessmen to form the fourth American Football League (1960–1969). The league started out by signing half of the NFL's 1960 first-round draft choices including the Houston Oilers' Billy Cannon, and never slowed down. With future Hall of Fame Coaches Hank Stram (Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs) and Sid Gillman (LA/San Diego Chargers) as well as others like the Buffalo Bills' Lou Saban, the league offered a more risk-oriented on-field approach that appealed to fans. The AFL also actively recruited from predominantly black colleges and other small colleges, a source the NFL virtually ignored. This led to a higher percentage of minority players, as well as several firsts, such as the first black number one draft choice (Buck Buchanan, Chiefs); the first black middle linebacker, Willie Lanier, Chiefs; and the first modern black starting quarterback (Marlin Briscoe, Broncos).
Professional sports leagues in the United States
A number of leagues have been "de facto" minor leagues without explicitly identifying as minor leagues themselves. The United Football League, which played from 2009 to 2012, had ambiguous goals in regard to its attempt to challenge the NFL as a major league and eventually settled into a position in pro football's second tier, below the NFL but above most other leagues. Two upcoming leagues, the Alliance of American Football in 2019 and the XFL in 2020 (the latter of which shares the name and some ownership with a previous XFL that played one season in 2001), are likewise in a similar level of uncertainty; the AAF so far has signed far fewer NFL players "per capita" than the UFL did, while the XFL has not signed any players yet.
History of the Kansas City Chiefs
The NFL convinced Hunt to contact Cardinals owner Violet Bidwill Wolfner, and her husband Walter Wolfner eventually agreed to sell Hunt 20 percent of the Cardinals franchise. Hunt declined the opportunity. He then conceived the concept of forming a second league. "Why wouldn't a second league work", Hunt recalled. "There was an American and National League in baseball, why not football?" Hunt contacted several other individuals who had expressed interest in the Cardinals franchise—Bud Adams, Bob Howsam, Max Winter and Bill Boyer—and gauged their interest in forming a second league.
Giants–Jets rivalry
The New York Jets previously maintained a very tense rivalry with their in-town counterparts, the New York Giants, a rivalry that has since diminished due to the infrequency with which the teams meet in the regular season. Its origins can be traced back to the formation of the American Football League in 1960, as a rival to the more established NFL. The upstart league decided to directly compete with the NFL's Giants, and granted a charter franchise to Harry Wismer, who proclaimed that New York was ready for another professional football team. Like the AFL and the NFL, their respective teams in New York fought for publicity, attention and fans. Since the two teams play each other so infrequently in the regular season, some, including players on both teams, have questioned whether the Giants and Jets have a real rivalry.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
Major leagues tend to place franchises only in the largest, most populated metropolitan areas. Most major league teams are in metro areas having populations over two million. All but seven continental U.S. metropolitan areas over one million people host at least one major sports franchise. All five U.S.-based major leagues each currently have at least two teams in both the New York/North Jersey area and the Los Angeles/Anaheim market. MLB, which historically (as a result of its history as two rival leagues) had a team in each component league in Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis up until the mid-20th century, still has AL and NL teams in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area; the NFL, at least until 2018, also has two teams in the Bay Area.
List of NFC champions
The National Football Conference (NFC) is one of two conferences within the National Football League (NFL), the American Football Conference (AFC) being the other. Prior to 1970, there were two separate professional football leagues, the National Football League and the American Football League (AFL). In 1970, the AFL merged with the NFL. As part of the merger, the former AFL teams, plus three former NFL teams (the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers), were placed into the AFC. The remaining former NFL teams were placed in the NFC. As of the 2018 season only the Detroit Lions have not won an NFC championship.
XFL
The XFL was a professional American football league that played its only season in 2001. As originally conceived, the XFL was operated as a joint venture between the World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE) and NBC. The XFL was conceived as an outdoor football league that would take place immediately after the National Football League season ended to take advantage of lingering public desire to watch football after the NFL and college football seasons had concluded. It was promoted as having fewer rules and encouraging rougher play than other major leagues. The league had eight teams in two divisions, including major markets and those not directly served by the NFL, such as Birmingham, Las Vegas, Memphis, and Orlando. The XFL operated as a single entity with all teams centrally owned by the league (in contrast to most major professional leagues, which use a franchise model with individual owners).
United Football League (2009–2012)
The UFL occupied the second tier of professional football in the United States, behind the National Football League. The UFL primarily consisted of players who had at one time or another played for an NFL team. Although the league had no connection with the NFL, and had never intended to foster any such connection, some speculated that it could have become a minor or "developmental" league for the NFL, including the UFL's own commissioner.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
The NFL has one major exception. The Green Bay Packers survive in major league sports' smallest metropolitan area (300,000 population) thanks to a unique community ownership, proximity to the neighboring Milwaukee market (giving a combined metro area of over two million), a league business model that relies more heavily on equally-distributed television revenue that puts small-market teams at less of a disadvantage, and the loyalty of their Cheesehead fan base. The only Packers home games that have failed to sell out since 1960 were games during the 1987 players' strike that were played with replacement players. Green Bay is one of two NFL teams, the other being the Jacksonville Jaguars, that are the only major league franchises in their metropolitan area.
Minor league
Similarly, the Canadian Football League, though it has developed ties with the NFL in recent years and has moved away from competing with the NFL for talent, plays a visibly different game than the American game, and the two sports favor different types of skills; the CFL arguably holds major league status in its home territory of Canada.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
The National Football League was founded in 1920 as a combination of various teams from regional leagues such as the Ohio League, the New York Pro Football League, and the Chicago circuit. The NFL partially absorbed the All-America Football Conference in 1949 and merged with the American Football League in 1970. It has 32 teams, all located in the United States.
Sports in Philadelphia
The greater Philadelphia area has had four other football teams that played in the NFL or in leagues that attempted to compete with the NFL. The Pottsville Maroons, a member of the National Football League, played in nearby Pottsville, Pennsylvania during the 1920s. In 1925, the Maroons were briefly suspended from the NFL for playing an unauthorized exhibition game at Philadelphia's Shibe Park. The team moved to Boston in 1929, but folded at the end of the season. The Philadelphia Quakers played one season in Philadelphia as part of the American Football League, a fledgling league intent on challenging the NFL as the premier football league in the country. The team took its name from the Union Quakers of Philadelphia, a local club which had been denied entry into the American Professional Football Association (as the NFL was known before 1922). The AFL Quakers won the league championship in 1926, giving Philadelphia two football championships in one year, as the Frankford Yellow Jackets won the 1926 NFL title. However, both the AFL and the Quakers folded after just one season of existence. The Philadelphia Bell was a franchise of the World Football League, which operated from 1974 to 1975 and attempted to challenge the NFL's dominance. The league was founded by Gary Davidson, who had also led the founding of World Hockey Association and the American Basketball Association, but the WFL folded after only two years and no teams were absorbed into the NFL. The Bell played its home games in JFK Stadium, and they employed the first African-American head coach in modern professional football history (retired Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood). The Philadelphia Stars were a football team in the USFL, a league that attempted to compete with the NFL for three seasons in the 1980s. The Stars won the league championship in their second season in Philadelphia in 1983−84, but the franchise moved to Baltimore for the league's final season. The team was coached by Jim Mora, who went on to a successful coaching career in the NFL, and among its players were future NFL Pro Bowlers Sam Mills and Sean Landeta (who later played for the Philadelphia Eagles). Unlike the NFL, the league played in the spring and summer, but it folded after a failed antitrust lawsuit and an aborted attempt to directly compete with the NFL in the fall.
List of American and Canadian cities by defunct football franchises
The Stars Football League is a primarily Florida-based regional professional minor league that began play in 2011. Its two seasons to date, both only six weeks long, have been marked by extremely sparse attendance and little public visibility, but it has managed to send at least two players to NFL rosters.
List of American and Canadian cities by defunct football franchises
The National Football League held a monopoly on professional football in the United States for most of the 1950s, a rare occurrence for a league that had at least one competing league in every year since 1934. By 1960, a group of potential professional football owners that would become known as the Foolish Club had become frustrated with their efforts to buy into the NFL (some were NFL franchise minority owners such as Harry Wismer and Ralph Wilson; others, such as Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams, had tried but failed to buy NFL teams) and formed a new league, the American Football League. It was the eighth professional football league to use the name and the fourth to be universally considered a major-league competitor to the NFL. The AFL would prove to be the NFL's most formidable challenger to date.
Relocation of professional sports teams
A city wishing to get a team in a major professional sports league can wait for the league to expand and award new franchises. However, such expansions are infrequent, and generally limited to a narrow window in time. Many current owners believe 32 is the optimal size for a major league due to playoff structure and ease of scheduling. As of 2018, each of the major leagues has between 30 and 32 franchises. The National Hockey League (NHL) has expanded to 32 teams, with the Vegas Golden Knights having become the league's 31st team in 2017 and a Seattle franchise due to become the 32nd team in 2021. while MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has expressed interest in expanding to 32 teams, which would match the size of the NFL.
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league consisting of 32 teams, divided equally between the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). The NFL is one of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, and the highest professional level of American football in the world. The NFL's 17-week regular season runs from early September to late December, with each team playing 16 games and having one bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, six teams from each conference (four division winners and two wild card teams) advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament culminating in the Super Bowl, which is usually held in the first Sunday in February, and is played between the champions of the NFC and AFC.
History of the National Football League
In league meetings prior to the 1933 season, three new teams, the Pirates, the Cincinnati Reds and the Eagles, were admitted to the NFL. Ten teams were then in the NFL and, at George Preston Marshall's urging, with Halas' support, the NFL was reorganized into an Eastern Division and a Western Division. In the Eastern Division were the Philadelphia Eagles, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, Boston Redskins, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the Western Division were the Chicago Bears, Portsmouth Spartans, Chicago Cardinals, Green Bay Packers, and the Cincinnati Reds. Furthermore, the two owners convinced the league to have the two division winners meet in a NFL Championship Game.
NFL playoffs
The NFL is the only one out of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States to use a single-elimination tournament in all four rounds of its playoffs; Major League Baseball (MLB) (not including their Wild Card postseason round), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL) all use a "best-of" series format instead.
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League (AFL) is a professional indoor American football league in the United States. It was founded in 1987 by Jim Foster, making it the third longest-running professional football league in North America, after the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the National Football League (NFL). The AFL plays a proprietary code known as arena football, a form of indoor American football played on a 66-by-28 yard field (about a quarter of the surface area of an NFL field), with rules encouraging offensive performance, resulting in a faster-paced and higher-scoring game. The sport was invented in the early 1980s and patented by Foster, a former executive of the United States Football League (USFL) and the NFL.
Minor League Baseball
As part of the 1963 reorganization, Major League clubs increased their commitments to affiliate with minor league teams through Player Development Contracts, outright ownerships, or shared affiliations and co-op arrangements.The Pacific Coast League, which operated from 1952 to 1957, was the only minor league to obtain open classification. At this time, the major leagues only extended as far west as St. Louis and as far south as Washington, D.C. This classification severely restricted the rights of the major leagues to draft players out of the PCL, and at the time it seemed like the PCL would eventually become a third major league. The PCL would revert to Triple-A classification in 1958 due to increasing television coverage of major league games and in light of the Dodgers and Giants moving to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. The open classification no longer exists in the major league rules.
NFL preseason
Even in years when there has been second-tier or competing professional leagues playing by standard 11-man rules, the NFL has opted not to play exhibition games against them. The XFL, USFL, UFL and FXFL never played against the NFL in their short lifetimes, with the NFL not wanting to run the risk of injuring its star talent and/or giving any credibility to potential threats to its monopoly on American professional football.
United States Football League
The NFL would also eventually have franchises in some of the markets which the USFL had proved fertile for pro football or had renewed interest in the game. Jacksonville, in particular, was being courted by the Houston Oilers as a potential relocation destination as early as 1987; that city eventually got the expansion Jaguars in 1995. The Oilers would instead relocate to Tennessee in 1997, initially playing one season in Memphis (to minuscule crowds) before moving to Nashville to become the Tennessee Titans. Although the USFL's stay in Baltimore was brief, the city's acceptance of the Stars, coupled with the success of the Canadian Football League's Baltimore Stallions a decade later, were factors in Art Modell's decision to relocate his NFL franchise to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens in 1996. Arizona was never one of the USFL's strongest markets but still managed to lure the former St. Louis Football Cardinals to take up residence in the state in 1988. Three decades after the USFL's failure, the NFL awarded the 2017 Pro Bowl to Orlando. Outside the NFL, Tampa Bay's embrace of Bandit Ball and the rapid growth of the Sun Belt prompted the establishment of other major league teams in the metro area: the National Hockey League's Tampa Bay Lightning and Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays. Other cities that did not get NFL franchises, such as Birmingham, Memphis and Orlando, would receive teams from the numerous short-lived pro football leagues that have attempted to launch in the years that have followed, such as the 2001 XFL (which, with the lone exception of the Las Vegas Outlaws, resided entirely in USFL markets), CFL, UFL, AAF and 2020 XFL.
Dallas Texans (NFL)
Although the NFL rapidly grew more prosperous during the latter part of the 1950s, (especially after the success of "The Greatest Game Ever Played" – the 1958 championship game in old Yankee Stadium between the vaunted New York Giants versus the developing Colts leading to a later profitable nationwide television contract), the fiasco in Dallas left the NFL leery of further expansion. Unable to persuade other NFL owners to reconsider, Texas oil scion Lamar Hunt with others, founded the American Football League as a direct competitor to the older NFL. When Hunt's new Dallas Texans were announced as charter members of the new league, the NFL quickly reconsidered its position on expansion and made a second venture into Dallas in 1960, establishing what would become a more successful and later world-wide famous team, the Dallas Cowboys, briefly known in the beginning as the Dallas Rangers. A minor league baseball team of that same name was expected to disband, but didn't and the "Cowboys" name was later adopted for the NFL team in mid-March 1960. Both franchises shared the Cotton Bowl (also the home of Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Mustangs) stadium for their first three seasons. The new AFL team moved after winning the 1962 AFL Championship in double overtime and became the Kansas City Chiefs for its fourth season in 1963.
Minor League Baseball
Except for the Mexican League, teams in the organized minor leagues are generally independently owned and operated but are directly affiliated with one major league team through a standardized Player Development Contract (PDC). These leagues also go by the nicknames the "farm system", "farm club", or "farm team(s)" because of a joke passed around by major league players in the 1930s when St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey formalized the system, and teams in small towns were "growing players down on the farm like corn".
NFL Classics
The NFL is the last United States-based major professional sports league to make such broadcasts available on TV. Previously, NFL Network and ESPN Classic had aired "NFL's Greatest Games", 90-minute edited versions using footage from NFL Films. The other major leagues – MLB, NBA, NHL, and NASCAR – have all had games (or races, in NASCAR's case) air on ESPN Classic. However, at this time, full-length MLB games are shown on Classic only occasionally, while NHL games are presently aired on NHL Network.This schedule reflects only game re-airs that NFL Network did not show the previous year. Also, most of the premieres tied into the participating teams in Super Bowl XLII and to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only perfect team for an entire season in NFL history.
Minor league
The minor league concept is a manifestation of the franchise system used in North American sports, whereby the group of major league teams in each sport is fixed for long periods between expansions or other adjustments, which only take place with the consent of the major league owners. In Europe, and many other parts of the world, the football leagues have many divisions below the "top-flight" as part of the football pyramid. In other parts of the world there is usually either a system of annual promotion and relegation, meaning that clubs have no fixed status in the hierarchy, or there is only one professional league per country in each sport, rendering the major/minor distinction irrelevant.
Fall Experimental Football League
As its name implies, the league adopted several experimental rule changes differing from those at other levels of the game with some at the request of the NFL. Initial plans for the league had punting, the PAT and kickoffs taken out of the game, but this proposal was scrapped prior to the start of the season.Woods was quoted as saying about the new league: "Our long-term goal is to establish a partnership with the NFL and we feel can do that on many platforms. It would give them a way to work with younger players that they don't currently have. We can help them train prospective NFL officials—in the NBA, every referee entering the league (in recent years) comes from NBA Development League. We can be a testing ground for proposed rules, too." The league has an agreement with the NFL to use officials from the elder league's training academy for FXFL games. Had the FXFL succeeded in establishing a formal partnership with the NFL, it would have been the fifth such time the NFL has established a partnership with a minor league, following the Association of Professional Football Leagues of the 1940s, the Atlantic Coast Football League in the 1960s, NFL Europe of the 1990s and 2000s, and the NFL-owned teams in the Arena Football League (prior to 2008).
Out-of-market sports package
Major League Baseball and the National Football League are the only professional sports leagues to black out local affiliates' internet radio feeds. Ironically, while the NFL charges money for radio feeds, it sells the Internet television rights to other networks that make those games available online for free, the opposite model of the other U.S cities major sports leagues.
History of American football
The AFL became a viable alternative to the NFL as it made a concerted effort to attract established talent away from the NFL, signing half of the NFL's first-round draft choices in 1960. The AFL worked hard to secure top college players, many from sources virtually untapped by the established league: small colleges and predominantly black colleges. Two of the eight coaches of the Original Eight AFL franchises, Hank Stram (Texans/Chiefs) and Sid Gillman (Chargers) eventually were inducted to the Hall of Fame. Led by Oakland Raiders owner and AFL commissioner Al Davis, the AFL established a "war chest" to entice top talent with higher pay than they got from the NFL. Former Green Bay Packers quarterback Babe Parilli became a star for the Boston Patriots during the early years of the AFL, and University of Alabama passer Joe Namath rejected the NFL to play for the New York Jets. Namath became the face of the league as it reached its height of popularity in the mid-1960s. Davis's methods worked, and in 1966, the junior league forced a partial merger with the NFL. The two leagues agreed to have a common draft and play in a common season-ending championship game, known as the AFL-NFL World Championship. Two years later, the game's name was changed to the Super Bowl.
AFL teams won the next two Super Bowls, and in 1970, the two leagues merged to form a new 26-team league. The resulting newly expanded NFL eventually incorporated some of the innovations that led to the AFL's success, such as including names on player's jerseys, official scoreboard clocks, national television contracts (the addition of "Monday Night Football" gave the NFL broadcast rights on all of the Big Three television networks), and sharing of gate and broadcasting revenues between home and visiting teams.
The Spring League
The National Football League (NFL) has not had an official developmental league since 2007 with NFL Europe. Several other developmental leagues unaffiliated with the NFL have popped up, the FXFL, Gridiron Developmental Football League and the Rivals Professional Football League. On September 2, 2016, the FXFL, after two abbreviated seasons of operation, announced it had suspended operations in hopes of finding a more effective business model. A developmental league continued to be an internal NFL discussion as of December 2016 with a decision deadline of February 2017.
Minor League Baseball
There are several baseball clubs that operate teams at multiple levels of the minor leagues; they are not required to affiliate all of their clubs to the same major league franchise. Bob Rich, Jr., for example, owns the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons and the short-season Class A West Virginia Black Bears, the latter of which had been the Jamestown Jammers before the 2015 season. Even though the teams were located slightly more than 70 miles (110 km) apart before the Jammers' relocation, Rich has never affiliated the two teams with the same parent club.
Association of Professional Football Leagues
The minor leagues agreed to uphold a five-year ban on NFL players who jumped from the major league to the "big three" (actually just the PCPFL, who signed away several NFL players in 1945, while the other two leagues were inactive). This provision was later applied to players who jumped to the AAFC or any other "outlaw league."
New Orleans Ads
While the NSL was regarded as a minor league throughout most of its existence, with the collapse of the first Negro National League in 1932, the league is considered a major league for that one season.
Sports-related curses
The Arizona Cardinals National Football League (NFL) franchise is allegedly suffering a curse by the citizens of Pottsville, Pennsylvania for undeservedly claiming the 1925 NFL championship from the Pottsville Maroons who were stripped of their title by the NFL in one of the greatest controversies in sports history. The curse will supposedly only be lifted when the championship is returned to Pottsville and to the correct shade of red team; this can only be met by overturning the original ruling, as Pottsville no longer has an NFL team and is too small to ever receive another one (with a metropolitan area roughly half the population of Green Bay, the league's smallest), making it impossible for the long-defunct Maroons to win another title. The Cardinals team holds the record for the longest championship drought, with their most recent championship coming in 1947, which is also the longest drought in American professional sports; the 1947 team was notable for having two of its members die during their playing careers within a year of each other, with Jeff Burkett dying in a plane crash following appendix surgery during the season and Stan Mauldin dying of a heart attack after a game the following season. Arizona also lost Super Bowl XLIII to another Pennsylvania team: the Pittsburgh Steelers (whose founder Art Rooney supported Pottsville's claim to the title). The franchise also leads the NFL in the total number of losses (730 through the 2017 season).
Minor League Baseball
The first true minor league is traditionally considered to be the Northwestern League of 1883 to 1884. Unlike the earlier minor associations, it was conceived as a permanent organization. It also, along with the NL and the American Association (AA), was a party to the National Agreement of 1883. Included in this was the agreement to respect the reserve lists of clubs in each league. Teams in the NL and the AA could only reserve players who had been paid at least $1000. Northwest League teams could reserve players paid merely $750, implicitly establishing the division into major and minor leagues. Over the next two decades, more minor leagues signed various versions of the National Agreement. Eventually, the minor leagues joined together to negotiate jointly.
History of the National Football League
Several NFL franchises led by Cowboys General Manager Tex Schramm asked to meet with AFL owners to negotiate a merger. In an agreement brokered by Schramm and AFL founder Lamar Hunt, the two leagues announced their merger deal on June 8, 1966. The leagues would thenceforth 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. Since the pre-merger NFL had six more teams than the AFL, three NFL teams – the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cleveland Browns, and Baltimore Colts – moved to the AFC, the conference containing the AFL teams. Two other teams, the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, were also added to the NFL as part of the merger agreement. (These two teams were not added until 1976; during the early 1970s, there were some concerns that several of the newly transplanted teams did not have stadiums big or modern enough to accommodate the NFL, and Seattle and Tampa Bay unsuccessfully attempted to court teams such as the Buffalo Bills and Boston Patriots to their cities. Once the Bills and Patriots built new stadiums and solidified their place in their home markets, the NFL awarded Seattle and Tampa Bay expansion franchises of their own.) There was also a financial settlement, with the AFL teams paying a combined $18 million over 20 years.
National Football League
The NFL was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) before renaming itself the National Football League for the 1922 season. The NFL agreed to merge with the American Football League (AFL) in 1966, and the first Super Bowl was held at the end of that season; the merger was completed in 1970. Today, the NFL has the highest average attendance (67,591) of any professional sports league in the world and is the most popular sports league in the United States. The Super Bowl is among the biggest club sporting events in the world and individual Super Bowl games account for many of the most watched television programs in American history, all occupying the Nielsen's Top 5 tally of the all-time most watched U.S. television broadcasts by 2015. The NFL's executive officer is the commissioner, who has broad authority in governing the league. The players in the league belong to the National Football League Players Association.
American Football League
Prior to the start of the 1970 NFL season, the merged league was organized into two conferences of three divisions each. All ten AFL teams made up the bulk of the new American Football Conference. To avoid having an inequitable number of teams in each conference, the leagues voted to move three NFL teams to the AFC. Motivated by the prospect of an intrastate rivalry with the Bengals as well as by personal animosity toward Paul Brown, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell quickly offered to include his team in the AFC. He helped persuade the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Browns' archrivals) and Baltimore Colts (who shared the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. market with the Washington Redskins) to follow suit, and each team received US $3 million to make the switch. All the other NFL squads became part of the National Football Conference.
Minor league
Below Major League Soccer several lower-level leagues operate on both sides of the U.S.–Canada border as part of the American and Canadian soccer pyramids. As is standard for sports in both countries, the formal promotion and relegation system is not used, although teams have been informally "promoted" from lower leagues up to Major League Soccer. As of the current 2018 U.S.–Canada soccer season, the second level is the United Soccer League (USL), which will be rebranded as the USL Championship for 2019 and beyond. The North American Soccer League had previously been the second level, sharing that status with the USL in 2017, but major instability in the NASL led to the loss of that league's second-division status and raised serious questions as to its very survival. USL's parent organization, known as the United Soccer Leagues (note the plural), also operates USL League Two (formerly the Premier Development League, or PDL), a semi-professional league that has some age restrictions. The National Premier Soccer League operates at approximately the same level as League Two. While there was no official third-level professional league in 2018, the USL organization plans to launch USL League One at that level in 2019, and another third-level circuit, the National Independent Soccer Association, also plans a 2019 launch.
National Football League Cheerleading
National Football League Cheerleading, or simply NFL Cheerleading, is a professional cheerleading organization in the United States. 26 of the 32 NFL teams include a cheerleading squad in their franchise. Cheerleaders are a popular attraction that can give a team more coverage/airtime, popular local support, and increased media image. In 1954, the Baltimore Colts became the first NFL team to have cheerleaders. They were part of the Baltimore Colts Marching Band.
Modern history of American football
The AFL was able to become a viable alternative to the NFL as it made a concerted effort to attract established talent away from the NFL, signing half of the NFL's first-round draft choices in 1960. The AFL worked hard to secure top college players, many from sources virtually untapped by the established league: small colleges and predominantly black colleges. Two of the eight coaches of the Original Eight AFL franchises, Hank Stram (Texans/Chiefs) and Sid Gillman (Chargers) eventually were inducted to the Hall of Fame. Led by Oakland Raiders owner and AFL commissioner Al Davis, the AFL established a "war chest" to entice top talent with higher pay than they got from the NFL. Former Green Bay Packers quarterback Babe Parilli became a star for the Boston Patriots during the early years of the AFL, and University of Alabama passer Joe Namath rejected the NFL to play for the New York Jets. Namath became the face of the league as it reached its height of popularity in the mid-1960s. Davis's methods worked, and in 1966, the junior league forced a partial merger with the NFL. The two leagues agreed to have a common draft and play in a common season-ending championship game, known as the AFL-NFL World Championship. Two years later, the game's name was changed to the Super Bowl.
AFL teams won the next two Super Bowls, and in 1970, the two leagues merged to form a new 26-team league. The resulting newly expanded NFL eventually incorporated some of the innovations that led to the AFL's success, such as including names on player's jerseys, official scoreboard clocks, national television contracts (the addition of "Monday Night Football" gave the NFL broadcast rights on all of the Big Three television networks), and sharing of gate and broadcasting revenues between home and visiting teams.
Sports in the United States
The NFL is the preeminent professional football league in the United States. The NFL has 32 franchises divided into two conferences. After a 16-game regular season, each conference sends six teams to the NFL Playoffs, which eventually culminate in the league's championship game, the Super Bowl.
American Football League
The American Football League stands as the only professional football league to successfully compete against the NFL. When the two leagues merged in 1970, all ten AFL franchises and their statistics became part of the new NFL. Every other professional league that had competed against the NFL before the AFL–NFL merger had folded completely: the three previous leagues named "American Football League" and the All-America Football Conference. From an earlier AFL (1936–1937), only the Cleveland Rams (now the Los Angeles Rams) joined the NFL and are currently operating, as are the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers from the AAFC. A third AAFC team, the Baltimore Colts (not related to the 1953–1983 Baltimore Colts or to the current Indianapolis Colts franchise), played only one year in the NFL, disbanding at the end of the 1950 season. The league resulting from the merger was a 26-team juggernaut (since expanded to 32) with television rights covering all of the Big Three television networks and teams in close proximity to almost all of the top 40 metropolitan areas, a fact that has precluded any other competing league from gaining traction since the merger; failed attempts to mimic the AFL's success included the World Football League (1974–75), United States Football League (1983–85), XFL (2001) and United Football League (2009–2012).
Major League Football
Major League Football was founded in December 2014 with the intention of a being a spring football league in an attempt to fill the void left by minor or development football leagues such as the World Football League, the United States Football League, the XFL and United Football League (all of which lasted less than five years), and the then current Fall Experimental Football League (FXFL). The league looked to establish teams in unrecognized U.S. markets such as Birmingham, Alabama, Memphis, Tennessee, Las Vegas, Nevada, Orlando, Florida, Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, California, and San Antonio, Texas. It also planned to develop a non-conflicting and competitive league to the National Football League and other sports leagues in the United States (including the Arena Football League and Indoor Football League) and expand the media platform. The league named former NFL player Wes Chandler as its first president.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
Although they are competitors, the "big four" leagues also cooperate. Some owners have teams in multiple leagues; as mentioned above, the NFL restricts cross-league ownership but the other leagues do not. In the early years of professional basketball, the American Basketball League, the "de facto" major league of the 1920s, was backed primarily by NFL owners.
There are common business and legal interests; the leagues will often support one another in legal matters since the courts' decisions might establish precedents that affect them all. One recent example was the Supreme Court decision in 2010 in "American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League", in which the NFL (which ultimately lost the case) received "amicus curiae" briefs from the NBA, NHL, and MLS. The leagues' commissioners occasionally meet in person, most recently in 2009.
NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented cable and satellite television network that is owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and NFL RedZone. Dedicated to American football, the network features game telecasts from the NFL, as well as NFL-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries. The network is headquartered in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City, California, and broadcasts its worldwide feed from Encompass Digital Media (formally Crawford Communications) in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Spring League
CEO Brian Woods founded The Spring League in early 2016. On December 22, 2016, SiriusXM NFL Radio initially reported the league as being owned by the NFL, but retracted that by the end of the day. The NFL informed its teams of the league's existence and its plans to operate from April 5 through April 26, 2017. The Spring League's 2017 season consisted of a four-team, three-week single round-robin tournament in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia at The Greenbrier resort in April, and a two-team "Showcase" game in Napa, California in July. The teams in each tournament were only identified with vague geographic names such as North, South, East, West and California. A game streamed on Facebook received 60,000 views while a practice received 30,000 views.
National Football League rivalries
Purely geographic rivalries are rare in the NFL, since crosstown rivals do not play each other nearly as often as in other leagues that have more games (and therefore more opportunities to play other teams). For example, Major League Baseball teams face each league opponent at least six times in the regular season, and within a division as many as 19 times. In recent years, the NFL changed its scheduling formula to ensure every possible matchup happens within a four-year span, not counting pre-season games or the Super Bowl. A main factor in the fact that crosstown rivals are almost always in opposing conferences is history: in the three current markets (New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco Bay Area) that have two NFL teams, all have one team (Jets in New York, Raiders in Oakland, Chargers in Los Angeles) that was a member of the American Football League. As part of the AFL–NFL merger, all AFL teams had to be retained, even if it meant multiple teams in one metropolitan area. The newly merged league opted not to go through an extensive geographical realignment, and instead, the AFL formed the basis of the AFC, and the old NFL formed the basis of the NFC; as a result, each team ended up in an opposite conference from their crosstown rival. This allowed the combined league to retain both existing television partnerships of each league—NBC for the AFL/AFC, and CBS for the NFL/NFC—instead of choosing one or the other (ABC joined the mix in 1970 with "Monday Night Football").
List of North American cities by number of major sports championships
Championships are only from the preeminent league in each of the four major sports. NFL championships include all AFL & NFL championship games prior to Super Bowl I. The AFL is the only professional rival league to exist 100%. NFL championships include the Super Bowl from 1966–present, AFL championships from 1960-1965 and NFL championship games from 1920-1965. MLB championships begin in 1903 when the first World Series was played. NHL championships begin in 1927 when the NHL became the only league competing for the Stanley Cup. NBA championships began in 1946.
List of current National Football League broadcasters
This is a list of current (entering the 2018 season) NFL broadcasters, including those for each individual team as well as those that have national rights. Unlike the other three major professional sports leagues in the U.S. (Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL), all regular-season and post-season games are shown on American television on one of five national networks. Pre-season games are still televised by regional/local broadcasters which selected preseason games will be simulcast on NFL Network.
Expansion of major sports leagues in the United States and Canada
American football is the member of the top four major league sports with the least international exposure. The NFL has attempted to promote its game worldwide by scheduling selected pre-season games since 1976 in Mexico, Europe, Australia, and Japan. The NFL had promoted the game abroad through NFL Europe, but NFL Europe was never profitable and ceased operations in 2007.
In 2005, the NFL held its firstregular-season game outside the United States. The matchup in Mexico City between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals drew a crowd of over 103,000 to Azteca Stadium (a 1994 crowd of over 112,000 at Azteca Stadium is the largest to attend a pre-season game). There has been talk of expanding the International Series to Ireland, where the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers is currently serving as US ambassador.
History of the NFL Commissioner
By 1965, the rival American Football League was firmly established, with a new NBC-TV contract, and a new superstar in New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. After an NFL team (the Giants) had signed an AFL player (the Buffalo Bills' Pete Gogolak) in early 1966, American Football League commissioner Al Davis had shaken the NFL. Davis had immediately started signing NFL stars such as Roman Gabriel, John Brodie and Mike Ditka to contracts with AFL teams. Fearful of their league's collapse, NFL owners, without the knowledge of Rozelle, approached AFL owners (without the knowledge of Davis) and requested merger talks. AFL and NFL executives including Lamar Hunt, founder of the AFL and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, completed a plan. Rozelle is erroneously credited with forging the merger. In October 1966, he did testify to Congress to convince them to allow the merger, promising that if they permitted it, ""Professional football operations will be preserved in the 23 cities and 25 stadiums where such operations are presently being conducted.""; and ""Every franchise of both leagues will remain in its present location."" The merger was allowed, but despite Rozelle's promises, numerous NFL teams have since moved, or used the threat of moving to have cities build or improve stadiums. Following the urging of American Football League commissioner Al Davis , Rozelle also agreed to the creation of the Super Bowl and later supported the concept of "Monday Night Football". NFL sources have since aggrandized Rozelle's part in both the merger and Monday Night Football . Rozelle is also often erroneously credited with introducing the concept of shared television revenues to professional football. He did advocate it for the merged NFL, but he was simply embracing the concept which had been implemented by the AFL ten years before the merger.
Professional football (gridiron)
In 1922, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League. While the Ohio League mostly ceased to exist after the foundation of the NFL (other than a few independent teams such as the Ironton Tanks and the pre-NFL Portsmouth Spartans), the other regional leagues continued. The New York league continued throughout the 1920s, outlasting many of the teams that it had contributed to the NFL, albeit without championships. Western Pennsylvania's league lasted until 1940. 1924 saw the foundation of eastern Pennsylvania's Anthracite League, the last regional "major league." The Anthracite League was won by the Pottsville Maroons, who, after one year (and winning the league title), jumped to the NFL. The Anthracite League remanifested itself as the Eastern League of Professional Football, an explicitly minor league, in 1926 and 1927.
NFL International Series
Starting in the 2007 season, the National Football League (NFL) has hosted regular season American football games outside the United States every year. Collectively officially known through 2016 as the NFL International Series, since 2017 the series has two sub-series: the NFL London Games in London, which has been in place since 2007, and the NFL Mexico Game in Mexico City, which began in 2016 with a predecessor game in 2005.
Sports in North Carolina
Athletes and sports teams from North Carolina compete at every level of competition in the United States including NASCAR, the NBA, the NFL, the NHL, leagues operated by the United Soccer League organization, and MLL, and along with several colleges and universities in various conferences across an array of divisions. North Carolina is a state known for minor league sports. There are also a number of indoor football, indoor soccer, minor league basketball, and minor league ice hockey teams throughout the state.
Professional sports leagues in the United States
The National Football League was founded in 1920 as a combination of various teams from regional leagues such as the Ohio League, the New York Pro Football League, and the Chicago circuit. The NFL partially absorbed the All-America Football Conference in 1949 and merged with the American Football League in 1970. It has 32 teams, all located in the United States.
National Football League on television
Several factors determine which games are carried in each market. Each of the 32 NFL teams is assigned a "primary market" which is the metropolitan area where the club is located. Most teams also have a selected number of secondary markets. Secondary markets - which are almost exclusively non-NFL cities and towns - can be of any size, and are typically defined by an area where any part of the market falls within 75 miles of an NFL stadium. Small markets that have no clubs tend to strongly associate with geographically nearby or particularly relevant teams, but may fall outside of a 100-mile radius, are not necessarily an officially designated secondary markets by the NFL. Generally, games are aired in the primary and secondary markets as follows:
List of American and Canadian football leagues
Minor outdoor leagues
National Football League
The NFL operates several other drafts in addition to the NFL draft. The league holds a supplemental draft annually. Clubs submit emails to the league stating the player they wish to select and the round they will do so, and the team with the highest bid wins the rights to that player. The exact order is determined by a lottery held before the draft, and a successful bid for a player will result in the team forfeiting the rights to its pick in the equivalent round of the next NFL draft. Players are only eligible for the supplemental draft after being granted a petition for special eligibility. The league holds expansion drafts, the most recent happening in 2002 when the Houston Texans began play as an expansion team. Other drafts held by the league include an allocation draft in 1950 to allocate players from several teams that played in the dissolved All-America Football Conference and a supplemental draft in 1984 to give NFL teams the rights to players who had been eligible for the main draft but had not been drafted because they had signed contracts with the United States Football League or Canadian Football League.
National Football League
Each NFL club is granted a franchise, the league's authorization for the team to operate in its home city. This franchise covers 'Home Territory' (the 75 miles surrounding the city limits, or, if the team is within 100 miles of another league city, half the distance between the two cities) and 'Home Marketing Area' (Home Territory plus the rest of the state the club operates in, as well as the area the team operates its training camp in for the duration of the camp). Each NFL member has the exclusive right to host professional football games inside its Home Territory and the exclusive right to advertise, promote, and host events in its Home Marketing Area. There are several exceptions to this rule, mostly relating to teams with close proximity to each other: the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders only have exclusive rights in their cities and share rights outside of it; and teams that operate in the same city (e.g. New York City and Los Angeles) or the same state (e.g. California, Florida, and Texas) share the rights to the city's Home Territory and the state's Home Marketing Area, respectively.
Athletic conference
The National Football League (NFL) is divided into an American Football Conference (AFC) and a National Football Conference (NFC). Both conferences have 16 teams, and each conference is divided into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. These conferences, for the most part, derive from the fact that they were once separate organizations: the original National Football League and the 1960s American Football League; the two entities merged in 1970, with each league forming the basis of the NFC and AFC respectively. The NFL allocates six teams from each conference for the NFL playoffs; the four division winners (guaranteed one of the top four seeds, based on winning percentage), and the two best-non division winners, also known as wild cards.
List of defunct National Football League franchises
The following is a list and brief history of American football franchises that at one time played in the National Football League (NFL). The NFL was known as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1920 and 1921. Note that the list represents NFL franchises that no longer exist, not franchises/teams that relocated. However, during the 1920s it is hard to tell if some teams changed nicknames from year to year or if each nickname represented a new franchise. It was also not uncommon for two or more teams to have the same nickname during the same season. No NFL franchise has folded since 1952. The Buccaneers, Colts, Cowboys, Giants, Lions, Panthers, and Texans franchises listed on this page are not the current franchises of those names. A defunct team, in this case, refers to a team which has had the rights to have a team returned to the NFL (or league collective at the time). Massillon Tigers attended the meetings in 1920, but never fielded a team in 1920.
Professional football (gridiron)
After twelve years without black players in the NFL, the Los Angeles Rams added them in 1946, as they were required by their stadium lease to integrate the team. The league had two five-team divisions, each team playing an unwieldy 11-game schedule, with some teams playing more home games than others. They increased to twelve games the following year, partly because of the success of the rival AAFC's 14-game format. After the AAFC folded, the NFL added three of its teams, for a total of thirteen, but maintained the 14-game format. The first year after admitting the Cleveland Browns, the NFL was humbled by having the Browns, a team from what it had ridiculed as an inferior league, win its championship. The Browns went on to be NFL champions in three of their first six years in the league. In 1958, the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 23-17 in professional football's first sudden-death championship game, and repeated the victory against the same team in the 1959 NFL title game, this time by a score of 31–16. The Colts had folded after the 1950 season and from 1951 through 1959 the NFL had twelve teams, six each in the East and West conferences. The league during this period featured not only star players absorbed from the AAFC 'merger' but others such as halfback Frank Gifford (New York Giants); the Philadelphia Eagles' quarterback Norm Van Brocklin and receiver Tommy McDonald; and the Colts' quarterback Johnny Unitas and running back Lenny Moore. Television coverage of the league was spotty, with some teams starting in 1950 to have individual arrangements with the Dumont Network and NBC. CBS began to televise selected NFL regular season games in 1956, but there was no league-wide, national television (the Browns, for instance, held out and syndicated games themselves until the early 1960s when a league-wide contract was imposed).
Professional sports leagues in the United States
The AHL and the ECHL are the only minor leagues recognized by the collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the National Hockey League Players' Association, meaning any player signed to an entry-level NHL contract and designated for assignment must report to a club in either the ECHL or the AHL.
National Football League rivalries
Games between opponents in the same NFL division. Since 2002, there are 32 teams in eight divisions of four teams each. Each team plays each division opponent twice in the regular season (once at home, once away) for a total of six regular season games out of 16 total. Occasionally, two teams will play three times in a year if they meet again in the playoffs. The Chiefs, Cowboys, Packers, and Steelers are the only teams with winning records against all of their current division rivals for rivalries going back at least 20 years.
American Association (American football)
The American Association was the first minor football league with a working arrangement with the National Football League as a system of farm clubs, beginning with the purchase of the Stapleton Buffaloes (which played one game as the New York Tigers) by New York Giants owner Tim Mara in 1937.
List of top level minor league sports teams in the United States by city
This article features a listing of the top level professional minor league sports teams based in the United States. The minor leagues listed below also include six teams in Canada (one in the NBA G League, four in the American Hockey League, and two in the USL Championship). Triple-A minor league baseball has two leagues in the International League and Pacific Coast League. The United States Soccer Federation has had one top level league since 2018, when the league then known as the United Soccer League, now the USL Championship (USLC), was promoted to a Division II status after a provisional year with two Division II leagues. The North American Soccer League (NASL) contested their loss of Division II sanctioning but lost the case and canceled the 2018 season. Officially, there is no top level minor league for American or Canadian football as most of its recruiting is done through college football, but the Arena Football League is often considered the top level minor league for gridiron football.
Professional sports leagues in the United States
Minor League Baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the United States that compete at levels below Major League Baseball (MLB) and provide opportunities for player development and a way to prepare for the major leagues. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses. Most are members of the umbrella organization known as Minor League Baseball (MiLB), which operates under the Commissioner of Baseball within the scope of organized baseball, a seven-tier league hierarchy (eight when Major League Baseball is included as the top tier) that classifies leagues by level of development. The highest level of minor league baseball, Triple-A, features high level major league prospects almost ready to join the majors playing in large cities without MLB franchises, while each successively lower class (Double-A, A-Advanced, Class A, Short Season A, Rookie-Advanced and Rookie) features players with correspondingly less experience and, generally, playing in smaller markets. Additionally, several independent baseball leagues, which do not have any official links to Major League Baseball, also operate, with varying quality of competition, some in suburban communities too close to affiliated baseball teams to avoid territorial exclusivity.