The National Football League (NFL) is the professional football league of the United States. It consists of 32 teams, divided equally between two conferences: the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). The NFL is one of the four major American professional sports leagues and is the leading exponent of American football in the world. Their regular season is played for seventeen weeks, from September to December, with each team playing sixteen games and taking a week off. After the conclusion of the regular season, six teams from each conference (four division champions and two recap teams) advance to the playoffs in a sudden-death competition culminating in the grand final, the Super Bowl, which is typically played on the first Sunday in February and pits the NFC and AFC champions head-to-head.
| Sport | American football |
|---|---|
| Founded | August 20, 1920 |
| Ceo | Roger Goodell |
| Inaugural season | 1920 |
| Country(s) | United States |
| Continent | North America |
| Teams | 32 |
| Current champion | Kansas City Chiefs (3 titles) |
| Greatest champion | Green Bay Packers (13 titles) |
| Website | NFL.com |
The NFL was formed in the 1920s as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) before changing its name and became known as the National Football League in 1922. The NFL was not the only American football league in the United States and during the 1960s nurtured a rivalry with the American Football League (AFL). Due to player salaries inflation and other issues (mostly financial and competitiveness), the two rival leagues decided to start a merger process, which began in 1966 with the first Super Bowl, a match between the champions of each league; the merger was completed in 1970.
Currently, the NFL is the sports league with the highest average attendance (67,591 per game) in the world, and is also the richest. Since the 1990s, the NFL is still the most popular sports league in the United States, a leader in audiences, TV ratings and profits raised. The Super Bowl is one of the highest-audience sports club events in the world and the championship final is the most-watched event on American television, with a strong worldwide audience as well. The NFL’s executive board is in charge of its commissioner, elected by the thirty-two team owners, who has the authority to govern the day-to-day administration of the league.
The NFL team with the most titles is the Green Bay Packers with thirteen (nine before the AFL merger and four Super Bowl champion trophies); the teams with the most Super Bowl championship rings are the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots, with six each. The defending league champion is the Los Angeles Rams, who defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in the LVI Super Bowl. In financial terms, in 2016, the richest team was the Dallas Cowboys, with an estimated market value of more than $4 billion (the world’s most valuable sports brand), according to Forbes magazine.
History of NFL
Foundation and growth
On August 20, 1920, a meeting was made with representatives of the Teams Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, Rock Island Independents and Dayton Triangles in Canton, Ohio. This meeting resulted in the creation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), a group that, according to the Canton Evening Repository, aimed to “increase the standard of professionalism of [American] football in every possible way, eliminating fights between players between rival clubs and ensuring greater cooperation in the formation of game schedules”. Another meeting took place on September 17, 1920, and resulted in the league renaming itself the American Professional Football Association (APFA). The league hired athlete Jim Thorpe as its first president. At this time, The APFA had 14 teams. Only two of these teams, the Decatur Staleys (currently the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (currently the Arizona Cardinals), remain in the NFL to this day.
Although the league did not maintain an official table for its inaugural season in 1920 and the schedule of games included teams that were not even in the league, the APFA gave Akron Pros the title of champion due to their 8–0–3 campaign (8 wins, 0 losses and 3 draws). The first event took place on September 26, 1920, when Rock Island Independents defeated St. Louis. Paul Ideals (not affiliated with the league) 48-0 at Douglas Park Stadium. On October 3, the first full week of the league was played. The following season saw the Chicago Staleys becoming champions over the Buffalo All-Americans, but the title did not come without controversy. On June 24, 1922, the APFA formally changed its name to the National Football League (NFL).
In 1932, the season ended with the Chicago Bears (6–1–6) and Portsmouth Spartans (6–1–4) tying for first place in the league table. In this period, the teams were ranked on a single table and the team with the highest winning percentage (not including draws, which did not count on the leaderboard) when the season ended was declared league champion; the only form of tiebreaker was if two teams played twice in a season, the result of the second game would determine the title (this was the source of the 1921 controversy as well).
This method had been used since 1920, but such a situation had never happened with two teams tied at the top of the table. The league then determined a playoff game between Chicago and Portsmouth to decide the champion of the season. The match would take place at Wrigley Field in Chicago and would count as a regular-season game but the combination of snow and cold caused the match to be moved to Chicago Stadium, which was closed but did not have the standard dimensions of a football field, according to regulations.
Playing under changed rules, the Bears won the game 9-0 and established themselves as champions that year. The public’s interest in this kind of de facto “championship final”, caused the NFL in 1933 to split into two divisions with a deciding game between the division champions. The 1934 season also marked the first of twelve seasons where African Americans were absent from the league. This ban for black players was only lifted in 1946 after public pressure, and coincided with the removal of a similar ban in Major League Baseball.
The NFL was the top American football league in the United States; however other leagues emerged between the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them disappeared at the same speed as they appeared, but others could last for a while. Among these rival leagues were the American Football Leagues (several had similar names) and the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), as well as several regional leagues of different calibers. Currently, three teams trace their origins to rival NFL leagues of this period, including the Los Angeles Rams (who emerged in 1936 in the American Football League), the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers (these two former members of the AAFC). In the 1950s, the NFL had an effective monopoly on professional football in the United States; their only “competition” was with Canadian football when the Canadian Football League (CFL) emerged in 1958, but these leagues never directly rivaled.
In 1960, the fourth version of the American Football League (AFL) appeared. Unlike other leagues, it managed to establish itself and so the AFL began to thrive and become popular, managing to rival the NFL now, agreeing lucrative television contracts and vying with the NFL for the right to free agent players and college draft picks. When the rivalry began to bring certain losses to the leagues (mainly due to competition for athletes that led to wage inflation), the two rival leagues began negotiating a merger, agreed on June 8, 1966, becoming effective and complete in 1970.
In the meantime, the two leagues established a joint draft and a championship final, on a neutral field, to see which of each league’s champions was really “the best team in the United States.” The game, called the Super Bowl, saw four editions before the merger came to fruition and attracted enormous public interest. NFL teams won the first and second editions of the big game, while the AFL won the third and fourth editions. After the league merger, the NFL reorganized into two conferences: the National Football Conference (NFC), made up mostly of former NFL pre-merger teams, and the American Football Conference (AFC), consisting primarily of former AFL teams and three pre-merger NFL teams.
The merger of the NFL and the AFL was extremely successful and led to an explosion in American football’s popularity in the United States. Currently, the NFL is considered the most popular sports league in North America; much of this growth is attributed to the work of Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who commanded the league from 1960 to 1989. The NFL’s attendance rose from three million in the early 1960s to seventeen million in the late 1980s, and Super Bowl XXIII attracted an estimated audience of more than 400 million people worldwide.
The league also established NFL Properties in 1963 to address licensing and merchandising issues; over the years, it became one of the facets of the league that generated the most money, with annual profits estimated at billions of dollars. Rozelle’s tenure also saw the creation of NFL Charities to raise money for charity, and a partnership was signed with United Way. Paul Tagliabue was elected commissioner to succeed Rozelle; stayed ahead of the league for seventeen years, until leaving in 2006. His warrant saw a continuation of the NFL’s growing popularity, with the million-dollar audience leading to increasing broadcast rights contracts, in addition to the addition of four new teams, and initiatives to increase racial diversity in the league, attracting minorities to serve as athletes or in administrative roles.
Current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell focused his efforts on trying to make the sport safer by increasing regulations in the game, such as making various types of tackles illegal, punishing players (with fines and suspensions) who violated league rules. These actions occurred after studies showed the prolonged effect of the blows received by athletes, especially concussions.
Regular season and playoff development
From 1920 to 1934, the NFL did not have a fixed number of games a team would play, stipulating only a minimum number. The league went on to stipulate twelve regular season games for each team from 1935, reducing two years later to eleven games and then to ten in 1943 (the latter change due to the entry of the United States into World War II). With the conclusion of the war in 1945, the number of games in a season returned to eleven already in 1946 and to twelve in 1947.
The NFL raised this number again in 1961 to fourteen, which would be maintained until 1978, when the league adopted the sixteen-game season format, which lasted until 2020. Recently, the NFL has studied increasing the number of games per year to eighteen, but the players’ association, the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), resists the idea. However, in 2021, the league increased the number of regular season games to seventeen.
The NFL operated on a two-conference system between 1933 and 1966, with the champion of each conference facing off in the NFL Championship Game. If two teams tied for the conference lead, a playoff tiebreaker was made to determine who would advance to the finals. In 1967, the NFL expanded its roster from fifteen teams to sixteen.
Instead of balancing the number of teams per conference with the expansion of the New Orleans Saints, the league decided to realign the conferences and divide them into two divisions of four teams in each. The four division champions would advance to the playoffs with two rounds. Between 1960 and 1969, the league had the Playoff Bowl, which effectively defined third place in the league, between the two teams that were defeated in the conference finals. The match, considered more of an exhibition game, was abandoned in 1970 as many considered it a “game between losers”.
After the AFL teams were absorbed by the NFL in 1970, the league split into two fixed conferences, with three divisions each. The expanded league, now with twenty-six teams, also expanded its postseason, accepting eight teams, the three division champions of each conference and a wild card team, which was the best campaign team without being a division champion, of each conference. In 1978, the NFL added a second conference recap team, bringing to ten the number of teams that qualified each year for the playoffs, and two more recap teams were added in 1990, bringing the number of ranked to twelve, all to accommodate more teams that were accepted into the league.
In 2002, the NFL now had 32 teams, leading to a realignment of its table, changing the structure of the divisions (which now become four in each conference). With each division champion qualifying, the number of recap teams qualifying for the postseason decreased from three to two (per conference). However, the playoffs were expanded again in 2020, adding two more teams that ranked in the playoffs, leading to a total of fourteen teams that could play in the postseason.
The NFL corporate structure
On a corporate level, the National Football League considers itself a trade association made and funded by its 32-member teams. Until 2015, the league was an unincorporated non-profit association. Section 501(c)(6) of the Revenue Act gives federal tax exemption to “business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate councils, business councils, or professional football leagues (whether or not they manage a pension fund for their players), not organized for profit, or that do not have part of their revenue to benefit private shareholders or individuals”. In contrast, each team individually (except the Green Bay Packers, which is a non-profit organization) is subject to federal taxes (and state taxes as well) because they are profit-awaiting organizations.
In 2015, the NFL gave up the tax exemption it was entitled to after being criticized by the public; in a letter to club owners, Commissioner Roger Goodell stated that all this was a “distraction,” saying, “the effect of untaxed company status that the league had been mischaracterized over and over again in recent years… Every dollar of revenue generated through television contracts, licensing agreements, sponsorships, ticket sales and other means are earned by the 32 clubs and are taxable. This will continue to be the case even when the league office and the Board of Directors issue returns as taxable entities and the change of status will not make a material difference in our business.” As a result, the league may owe around $10 million in income tax per year, but is now no longer required to disclose the salaries of its executive officers.
The league has three definite officers: the commissioner, the secretary and the treasurer. Each conference has its executive officer, the president, who is an honorary position with few powers and basically has ceremonial duties.
The commissioner, the highest administrative power figure within the league, must be elected by two-thirds or 18 votes of league team owners, while the conference president is elected by a three-quarter or ten-member conference vote. The commissioner appoints the secretary and treasurer and has broad authority to arbitrate issues between clubs, players, coaches and employees in general. He is the NFL’s “chief executive officer” and has the authority to hire employees, negotiate television contracts, discipline individuals who are members of nfl clubs or employees, if they violate league laws, or have committed “conduct detrimental to the welfare of the league or professional football”. The commissioner may, in the event of harmful behavior by someone associated with the league, suspend individuals, issue fines of up to $500,000, cancel league contracts, and award or withdraw draft picks from teams.
In extreme cases, the commissioner may offer recommendations to the NFL Executive Committee, including “cancellation or confiscation” of a club’s franchise right or any other action it deems necessary. The commissioner may also authorize league sanctions or bans if individuals connected to the NFL have placed bets on games or failed to notify the league of conspiracies or plans to broker gambling. The current league commissioner is Roger Goodell, elected in 2006 and succeeding Paul Tagliabue, who had retired.
According to economist Richard Wolff, the NFL redistributes its revenues to all league teams equally, a contrast to other typical corporate structures. By redistributing its profits to all teams, the NFL ensures that no club dominates the league through excessive profits and exerts undue financial influence on the rest of the entity.
Times
The NFL consists of 32 clubs divided into two conferences of sixteen teams each. Each conference is divided into four divisions with four teams in each. During the regular season, each team must have a maximum of 53 players in the roster; of these, 46 must be active (available) to play. Each team must also have at least ten athletes in the practice squad. A player can only stay in the practice squad for a maximum of three years.
Each NFL club is a franchise (in the sense of a company) with league authorization to operate in a city. This “franchise” covers the entire ‘territory’ of the club (120 km from the city limit). Each NFL member has exclusive rights to organize professional football games within their ‘territory’ and also holds exclusive rights to advertise and promote events linked to their brand within their limits. However, teams very close to each other can only promote events within their very neighboring cities and regions; teams operating in the same counties (such as teams in New York and Los Angeles) or in the same state (such as teams in California, Florida, and Texas) share rights in the territory of the city or the state’s ‘marketing area’, respectively.
All NFL teams are based in the continental United States. Recently, the league has chosen to promote itself abroad, with matches going on, for example, in England, with teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars having played frequently at London’s Wembley Stadium once a year as part of the NFL International Series. The Buffalo Bills also played at least one game a year at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Canada, from 2008 to 2013. Mexico has also hosted NFL regular season games, such as 2005, and 39 preseason games between 1986 and 2005. The Raiders and Houston Texans played in November 2016 at Azteca Stadium.
According to Forbes, the Dallas Cowboys, valued at approximately $4 billion, is the NFL franchise with the highest market value in the United States and the world. In addition, all 32 NFL teams are in the Top 50 of the world’s most valuable sports teams; and fourteen of the team owners are on the Forbes 400 list, more than any other sports organization.
The 32 NFL teams are organized into eight geographic divisions with four teams in each. These divisions are divided into two conferences, the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). The two conferences have their origins in the period of the creation of the league’s current format, following the merger of the AFL with the NFL in 1970. After the merger, the two leagues reorganized their structures, with some teams changing division and conference to give more balance and ensure an equal division of teams by conference.
| American Football Conference | |||||
| Division | Team | Stadium | City | Foundation | Coaches |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| East | Buffalo Bills | Highmark Stadium | Buffalo, New York | 1960 | Sean McDermott |
| Miami Dolphins | Hard Rock Stadium | Miami, Florida | 1966 | Brian Flores | |
| New England Patriots | Gillette Stadium | Foxborough, Massachusetts | 1960 | Bill Belichick | |
| New York Jets | MetLife Stadium | East Rutherford, New Jersey | 1960 | Robert Saleh | |
| North | Baltimore Ravens | M&T Bank Stadium | Baltimore, Maryland | 1996 | John Harbaugh |
| Cincinnati Bengals | Paycor Stadium | Cincinnati, Ohio | 1968 | Zac Taylor | |
| Cleveland Browns | FirstEnergy Stadium | Cleveland, Ohio | 1946 | Kevin Stefanski | |
| Pittsburgh Steelers | Acrisure Stadium | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | 1933 | Mike Tomlin | |
| South | Houston Texans | NRG Stadium | Houston, Texas | 2002 | David Culley |
| Indianapolis Colts | Lucas Oil Stadium | Indianapolis, Indiana | 1953 | Jeff Saturday | |
| Jacksonville Jaguars | TIAA Bank Field | Jacksonville, Florida | 1995 | Urban Meyer | |
| Tennessee Titans | Nissan Stadium | Nashville, Tennessee | 1960 | Mike Vrabel | |
| West | Denver Broncos | Empower Field at Mile High | Denver, Colorado | 1960 | Vic Fangio |
| Kansas City Chiefs | Arrowhead Stadium | Kansas City, Missouri | 1960 | Andy Reid | |
| Las Vegas Raiders | Allegiant Stadium | Paradise, Nevada | 1960 | Josh McDaniels | |
| Los Angeles Chargers | SoFi Stadium | Inglewood, California, U.S. | 1960 | Brandon Staley | |
| National Football Conference | |||||
| Division | Team | Stadium | City | Foundation | Coaches |
| East | Dallas Cowboys | AT&T Stadium | Arlington, Texas | 1960 | Mike McCarthy |
| New York Giants | MetLife Stadium | New York, New York | 1925 | Joe Judge | |
| Philadelphia Eagles | Lincoln Financial Field | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | 1933 | Nick Sirianni | |
| Washington Commanders | FedEx Field | Landover, Maryland | 1932 | Ron Rivera | |
| North | Chicago Bears | Soldier Field | Chicago, Illinois | 1920 | Matt Nagy |
| Detroit Lions | Ford Field | Detroit, Michigan | 1930 | Dan Campbell | |
| Green Bay Packers | Lambeau Field | Green Bay, Wisconsin | 1921 | Matt LaFleur | |
| Minnesota Vikings | U.S. Bank Stadium | Minneapolis, Minnesota | 1961 | Mike Zimmer | |
| South | Atlanta Falcons | Mercedes-Benz Stadium | Atlanta, Georgia | 1966 | Arthur Smith |
| Carolina Panthers | Bank of America Stadium | Charlotte, North Carolina | 1995 | Matt Rhule | |
| New Orleans Saints | Caesars Superdome | New Orleans, Louisiana | 1967 | Sean Payton | |
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Raymond James Stadium | Tampa, Florida | 1976 | Bruce Arians | |
| West | Arizona Cardinals | State Farm Stadium | Glendale, Arizona | 1920 | Kliff Kingsbury |
| Los Angeles Rams | SoFi Stadium | Inglewood, California, U.S. | 1936 | Sean McVay | |
| San Francisco 49ers | Levi’s Stadium | San Francisco, California, U.S. | 1946 | Kyle Shanahan | |
| Seattle Seahawks | Lumen Field | Seattle, Washington | 1976 | Pete Carroll | |
Format
The format of NFL seasons consists of, first, four weeks of preseason, followed by eighteen weeks of regular season (with each team playing seventeen games), and then the elimination playoffs, sudden-death, with twelve teams, culminating in the Super Bowl, the championship final.
Preseason of NFL
The NFL preseason begins with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, played at Fawcett Stadium in Canton, Ohio. Each team in the league plays three games. NFC teams must play at least two home games in odd years and AFC teams must play at least two at home in even years. Teams participating in the Hall of Fame and American Bowl games play four games.
The numbers and status players accumulate in the preseason do not count toward their official statistics. As these games are only worth practically as training and the numbers made there do not count for the rest of the year, the focus for many teams is not to win and the starters only play enough to warm up and then are replaced; coaches use these matches to evaluate the team and the athletes, especially the reserves to see who can stay on the roster when the season actually begins.
The quality of preseason games is criticized by fans, who do not like to pay the price of a full ticket to an exhibition game. Athletes, coaches and even analysts also criticize the games and their format due to the risk of injuries, but many defend preseason matches as a good warm-up for the year.
Regular season
| POS | AFC East | AFC North | AFC South | AFC West |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | Patriots | Steelers | Texans | Chiefs |
| Second | Dolphins | Ravens | Titans | Raiders |
| Third | Bills | Bengals | Colts | Broncos |
| 4th | Jets | Browns | Jaguars | Chargers |
| POS | NFC East | NFC North | NFC South | NFC West |
| First | Cowboys | Packers | Falcons | Seahawks |
| Second | Giants | Lions | Buccaneers | Cardinals |
| Third | Washington | Vikings | Saints | Rams |
| 4th | Eagles | Bears | Panthers | 49ers |
This table shows the 2016 season leaderboard, showing an expansion of the NFL calendar formula. The 2016 Patriots (highlighted in green) finished first in the AFC East. Thus, in the 2017 season, the NE Patriots played two games against division rivals (highlighted in light blue), plus a match against an AFC West team and another against one in the NFC South (highlighted in yellow) and one against the top-placed AFC north and AFC south divisions (highlighted in orange).
Currently, the fourteen opponents each team faces over the seventeen matches of the season are predetermined in a formula. The regular season takes place over eighteen weeks and 272 days. Since 2021, the season begins the week after Labor Day (the first Monday in September) and ends the week after the New Year. The first game of the season is on a Thursday and traditionally features the previous year’s champion team.
Most games are played on Sundays, with the exception of Monday Night Football (played on Monday) and Thursday Night Football on Thursdays. There are usually no games played on Fridays or Saturdays until near the end of the year, as federal law prohibits professional football leagues from compete on time with college and university football matches, which typically play these days until December. Since 1948, the NFL has scheduled only two games for Tuesdays or Wednesdays, although there are exceptions, such as in 2010, when a Sunday game had to be postponed due to blizzards, or in 2012 when a Thursday game moved to Wednesday to avoid scheduling a conflict with the Democratic Party Convention.
Regular season games are organized following a formula. Within the division, all four teams play fourteen of the seventeen matches against ordinary opponents – two games (home and away) are played against each team from within their division, while at least one game is played against an NFC opponent and an AFC division as determined in a rotation system. The other two games are against teams from other conferences, determined by the previous season’s leaderboard – for example, if a team finishes first in its division, it will play against two other division champions, while a team that finishes last within its division also faces teams with similar performance within the conference. In total, there are seventeen games per team and one week off.
Although teams know in advance who they will face the following season (due to the table organization formula), the exact dates, the teams they will face exactly, when and whether they will play at home or not, it takes a while to know since the NFL releases its official schedule of games between seasons and well after the draft. During the 2010 season, more than 500,000 potential calendars were created by computers, 5,000 of these were considered “playable” and reviewed by the NFL. When the league arrives at a consensus that the calendars are finally close to ideal, about 50 of them are caught to be developed and then the best of them is chosen and disseminated.
Postseason
Soon after the end of the regular season, the fourteen ranked teams reach the playoffs, a knockout competition with sudden death. There are seven teams from each conference: the four division champions and three recap teams (the three best campaign teams in the conference among the non-division champions). The order the team face is determined by their campaign this season, with the division champion with the best campaign off in the first week of the playoffs, while the other six teams face off in the wild-card round.
The winners of the recap round advance to the division albeit. In the course of these two rounds, the keys are set with the team with the best campaign always facing a team with the lower campaign, such as, for example, in the recap, the third place will always face the sixth place and the fourth place will face the fifth. The winners of the division allocated playoffs in the conference finals, with the team’s best campaign playing at home (in fact, the best campaign team in the conference will always play in its own stadium, regardless of the round it is). The AFC and NFC champions then advance to the Super Bowl and there they faced off to see who will be the champion of the season.
In addition to regular postseason games, there’s still the Pro Bowl, the NFL’s all-star game. Since 2009, the Pro Bowl has been the week before the Super Bowl; in previous years, it happened the week after the grand final, but this was changed to try to increase the audience, which was never very good. Since that change, however, players who will play the Super Bowl have hardly ever participated in Pro Bowl events. Like preseason games, the NFL stars game is criticized due to lack of competitiveness and due to the fact that many players choose not to go, fearing injuries.
Trophies and awards
NFL team trophies
The National Football League had, in its existence, three trophies to reward the champion teams. The first trophy, the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup, was donated to the NFL (then called APFA) in 1920 by the Brunswick-Balke Collender Corporation. The trophy would not stay with the champion team permanently until he won three titles. The trophy was given to the Akron Pros, champions of the inaugural 1920 season; however, the cup was lost and was never used again.
The second trophy the league gave away was the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy, awarded between 1934 and 1969. The namesake of the award is Ed Thorp, who was a referee in the NFL and a friend of the league’s owners; when he died in 1934, the NFL created the trophy named after him to honor him. When given, the trophy would spend the year with the winning team and the following year, the club would receive a scaled-down replica to store. Like its predecessor, the whereabouts of the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy are unknown. One theory is that the Minnesota Vikings, the last team to lift the trophy, lost it in 1969.
The current NFL trophy is the Vince Lombardi Trophy. This is the trophy given to the Super Bowl champion and his name was given in 1970 as a tribute to Vince Lombardi, who was coach of the Green Bay Packers and won the first two editions of the Super Bowl. Unlike the other trophies given by the NFL earlier, Vince Lombardi is given to the champion team and the team gets the trophy.
The Vince Lombardi Trophy is made by Tiffany & Co. and contains sterling silver and has a value of between $25,000 and $300,000. In addition, players and coaches earn a championship ring. The champion team chooses the company that will manufacture its rings; Thus, each ring is customized, but the NFL requires some specifications, such as the requirement of the Super Bowl logo. The losing team also wins a ring, which should have half the value of the champion, but most runners-up teams don’t even make a point of it.
Conference champions also receive trophies. The NFC is called the George Halas Trophy, named after Chicago Bears founder George Halas, who is also considered one of the NFL’s own co-founders. The AFC champion receives the Lamar Hunt Trophy, named after Lamar Hunt, founder of the Kansas City Chiefs and the American Football League. Conference champion players also receive rings.
Athletes and coaches awards
The NFL recognizes a number of awards for its athletes and coaches in its NFL Honors presentation. The most prestigious award is the AP Most Valuable Player (MVP). There is also the AP Attack Player of the Year, AP Defense Player of the Year, AP Comeback Player of the Year and AP Best Defense Rookie or Attack of the Year. Another prestigious award is the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes the player who contributed the most off the field, whether with charitable or quality-of-life actions for his community. The highest award for coaches is the NFL Coach of the Year. There are also the FedEx Air & Ground NFL Players of the Week awards for the best players of each week, and the Pepsi MAX NFL Rookie of the Week, for the best rookies each week.
Media coverage of the NFL
In the United States, the National Football League has television contracts with four major networks: CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC. Collectively, these contracts cover the entire regular season and the postseason as well. In general, CBS broadcasts afternoon games when AFC teams play away from home and Fox broadcasts afternoon games when NFC teams play away from home. Not all affiliates of these broadcasters broadcast the matches, since there are several games happening at the same time; each affiliate network gets one game per time slot, according to a number of complicated rules.
Since 2011, the league has reserved the right to be able to exchange Sunday games, under contract, between those of networks (this is known as “flexible programming”). The only way for someone to watch a local game not broadcast by one of the broadcasters is through the NFL Sunday Ticket, which is available, as pay-per-view, to subscribers to the DirecTV satellite service. The league also provides RedZone, which shows a live version of what happens relevant.
In addition to regional games, the league also offers packages through satellite networks, most prime-time matches, which are broadcast nationally. NBC broadcasts Sunday Night Football, which includes the season opener and also the Thanksgiving match. ESPN broadcasts Monday Night Football on Monday. The league still maintains its own broadcast network, the NFL Network, which broadcasts Thursday Night Football, which is also broadcast via streaming on CBS (since 2014) and NBC (since 2016). For the 2017 season, the NFL Network broadcast eighteen regular season games, including Thursday Night Football, in addition to games played on foreign soil (the NFL International Series) and the Christmas match. In addition, ten of Thursday night’s games were streamed via Amazon Prime. NFL games in 2017 had the most expensive 30-second commercial venues on Television in the United States, such as the insertion in the Sunday Night Football commercial break costing $699,602.
Super Bowl broadcast rights are rotating and renewed every three years, alternating between CBS, Fox and NBC. In 2011, the broadcasters signed a nine-year contract with the NFL; Forbes magazine estimated that the CBS, Fox and NBC contract was estimated to be worth $3 billion a year, while ESPN paid around $1.9 billion for the year. The league also made a Spanish-language broadcast agreement with NBC Universe, Fox Deportes and ESPN Deportes. League contracts do not include preseason matches, where teams negotiate with local stations; it is rare for a pre-season game to be televised nationally.
Over the years and the popularization of the league, with huge ratings, it has led to more investments in technology in the broadcasts of NFL matches. In 1984, Skycam was introduced in a live broadcast on CBS.
In 2015, the NFL began sponsoring a series of public announcements to bring attention to domestic abuse and sexual assault cases as a response to a series of domestic violence incidents committed by league players.
Draft
In The Month of April of each year (excluding in 2014, when it happened in May), the NFL conducts the draft of college players. The draft consists of seven rounds, with each of the 32 clubs having one pick per round. The order of picks for teams that did not make the playoffs is determined by the team’s regular season campaign, where the table is reversed, with the team’s worst campaign selecting first; among the teams that played the playoffs, the more the team advances, the later in the draft he has his first pick.
The Super Bowl champion always has the last pick in each round and the runner-up gets the penultimate pick. All college players who want to go to the draft have three years of their high school (gym) removed to become eligible. Players in their last two years of college who may be eligible for the draft must register with the NFL by January 15. Clubs may trade draft picks for future picks or as a condition or offer in exchange for players.
In addition to the 32 choices made per round, there are also the “compensatory choices” that are given to teams that have lost more free agents than they have won. These extra choices are spread between rounds 3 through 7, with a total of 32 given choices. When it comes time to select your player, each team has a maximum time to be able to decide. If the team can’t make its choice in time, the next team makes its choice, but the club that blew time doesn’t lose a pick in the round.
Players selected in the draft can only trade with the team that chose them, but they can choose not to sign with such a team and wait for the next year’s draft. Under the last collective bargaining agreement, all players out of the draft who sign their contracts must stay with the team for at least four years, with the club’s option to renew it for another season. Draft rookie contracts also have a value limit, depending on which round the athlete was selected in. Eligible players who are not drafted can sign with any team they want.
The NFL operates several other drafts besides its official, with the so-called supplemental draft, which is annual. Clubs submit, via email, to the league their requests, saying what kind of players they want to select and the round they will do, and the team with the highest offer wins the rights to the player. The exact order is determined through a lottery held prior to the draft and a successful offer will result in the team watering the right to select a player in the equivalent round in the next draft. Players who want to go to the supplemental draft have to be accepted through an official petition. The league also retains the expansion drafts, the most recent of which came in 2002 when the Houston Texans joined the league.
Like all other major sports leagues in the United States, in the NFL, in a disaster event (where at least 15 players die or get hurt in a short period of time) that cause a club to lose a quarterback, they can draft one from a team that has at least three quarterbacks. In the event of a ‘disaster’ (15 or more players killed or out of action) that results in a club having to cancel its season, a new draft will be made for the team to be able to hire new players. None of these emergency protocols have been invoked to this day.
Free agency
Free agents are athletes who are not under a team’s contract. In the National Football League, they are divided between the “restricted free agents “, who have three accumulated seasons and that their contract is expired, and the “unrestricted free agents “, who have four or more accumulated seasons and that their contract is expired. An accumulated season is defined as “six or more games on a club’s list of assets/inactives/injured/reserved/physically barred from a club”. Restricted free agents are allowed to trade with teams other than their own club, but their former team has the right to try to match the offer. If they choose not to, they are compensated with extra picks in the draft. Unrestricted free agents are free to negotiate with whoever they want and no compensation is given to clubs he has played.
Teams receive the so-called franchise tag to make offers to unrestricted free agents. The franchise tag is a one-year agreement that pays the player 120% of their salary in the previous contract or no less than the average salary of the five highest-paid players in their position, choosing which one is the highest. There are two types of franchise tags: “exclusive tags”, which does not allow the athlete to negotiate with other clubs, and “non-exclusive tags”, which allows the player to negotiate with other teams but they should give the old club a chance to match the offer and two first-round draft picks if they refuse to match.
Clubs also have the option to use the transition tag, which is similar to the non-exclusive franchise tag but offers no compensation to the former team if they refuse to match the offer. Due to this stipulation, the transition tag is rarely used.
Each team is subject to a salary cap that limits spending on hiring athletes. This ceiling in 2015 was $143.28 million, $10 million more than in 2014 and $20 million more than in 2013. The salary cap in 2016 was $155.27 million. For 2017, it was $167 million.
Members of the practice squad (training teams, who cannot take a place on the active player’s list), despite being paid and working on the team they are on, are also a type of free agent and can negotiate with other teams (provided that the club he is going to do not play against his old team in the following weeks) without compensation for the previous club; practice squad players cannot join other teams ‘ practice squads, however, unless they have been formally dismissed from their former team.
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