NFL

For many in America and throughout the world, baseball is America’s sport. The argument behind this is that it’s the only true major sport created in the United States, but for many, the sport of football is not only America’s sport, it is the only sport. Though the game has it’s origins in soccer and rugby from Europe and the British Isles, the modern game of football resembles those little, with the exception of the shape of the ball in rugby.

The game of football has evolved much over the years, but the main focus of the game is to advance the ball forward using players with specific functions. Much like chess, with its long distance bishops and rooks and its front line of pawns, football is a game of command and conquer, with the various positions playing their roles, with one goal in mind: advancing the team forward to take the enemy’s territory.

The National Football League or NFL is the premier football association in the United States and a major part of the sports panoply. Though it has made many attempts to expand beyond the United States with exhibition games in Europe, these have yet to garner the world-wide popularity that soccer commands. For many Americans, however, there is no other game.

During the NFL season, from early autumn to mid winter, the game of football dominates the American sports scene. Sunday games are the norm, though there are often games played during the week, with the extremely popular Monday Night Football game and its rarer counterpart, Thursday Night Football. The season culminates with the post-season playoffs to determine which two teams will face off for the championship, the Super Bowl.

The birth of the NFL could be said to have begun as early as 1876, when the first American Rules for football were written, but the league as we now know it was truly born from the marriage of two professional sports organizations. The first incarnation of the NFL was born in 1922, when the American Professional Football Association changed their name. In 1945 the NFL had new competition, in the form of the All American Football Conference.

Over the years, the two competitive leagues would vie for dominance of the American football audience, sometimes with a good amount of animosity displayed on both sides. At one point the American Professional Football Association, having changed its name to the American Football League, sued the National Football League in court, citing anti-trust laws, claiming the NFL had an unfair monopoly on the game and thus, the business of the game.

In the end, and in hindsight, seemingly inevitably, the two organizations merged to become one league, keeping the name of the NFL, but separating the two leagues into competing conferences: the National Football Conference, or NFC and the American Football Conference, or AFC. From these two conferences, the rivalry was harnessed to produce a tremendous competition, which would be funneled toward the ultimate goal; the Super Bowl, where only one conference and one team would claim to be the best of the best.

From these not-so-humble beginnings came perhaps the most intense sporting exhibition in American history. NFL games, numbering approximately 16 games a week, regularly pull fans in excess of 50,000 into stadiums across the country. The shear size of such an audience is rivaled only by European soccer events or major world sporting events such as the Olympics. These numbers are further dwarfed by the number fans who view the games broadcast on television.

The NFL is divided into two Conferences, as noted above: the AFC and the NFC. These conferences are further divided into Divisions: AFC East, AFC West, AFC North and AFC South, as well as the NFC East, West, North and South. Each Division has four teams. Teams generally play teams within their own conference, though this is not always the rule. This loose setup allows for many continuing rivalries between division teams, which often culminate in extremely intense playoff games where the teams within each division play each other for the right to advance to the championship.

NFL teams can be found in nearly every major city, with the most notable exception being Los Angeles. However, California itself does have 3 teams at the present time: the San Francisco 49ers, the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders. The home city of teams have been known to change, as team owners sometimes sell their team or decide to move their team to another city, often for financial reasons. As a result, there are teams within the NFL that have a long history and tradition and there are relative newcomers to the league. The most recent additions to the league are the Houston Texans, which grew up out of the dissolution of the Houston Oilers, the Baltimore Ravens and the Tennessee Titans.

These three teams are the most recent additions, but there have been other incidences of teams being added to the league to increase competition and allow major cities to be represented. Teams that have been created this way include the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Seattle Seahawks and the Carolina Panthers. In addition to these additions, teams have been known to change cities as their owners have moved or sold their franchises. These include the Arizona Cardinals, previously known as the St. Louis Cardinals and the Indianapolis Colts, previously the Baltimore Colts. The city of Baltimore reclaimed their status as a football city by petitioning the league to let them field the Ravens.

The teams in the AFC East, for the 2006 season are as follows: the Buffalo Bills, the Miami Dolphins, the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. These four teams harbor intense rivalries, dating to the early 60’s and the first NFL games between the AFC and NFC. It often seems as though no matter how a team is playing in a particular season, when these teams go head to head there is no telling what the outcome will be.

The AFC West consists of the Denver Broncos, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers. These Western Division teams have a long history of their own, with the Denver Broncos and the Oakland Raiders claiming the Championship Title five times between them.

The AFC South consists of the Houston Texans, the Indianapolis Colts, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Tennessee Titans. Arguably the youngest set of teams in the league, of the four teams, only the Titans have made it to the championship, which they lost, but the Colts had made it their twice, as the Baltimore Colts, however.

The AFC North contains the Baltimore Ravens, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. This division might be considered the oldest in the NFL, though the Baltimore Ravens are among the youngest teams. The Bengals, Browns and Steelers can trace their history to the very earliest games. In their early years, the Browns dominated the then-new AAFC.

The NFC East division is made up of the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants, one of the oldest teams in the league, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Washington Redskins. The Eagles joined the league in 1933 as an expansion team after the Frankford yellow Jackets in Philadelphia went bankrupt. The Cowboys have at times been referred to as America’s team for their stellar performances throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, particularly there string of 5 wins out of an amazing 8 trips to the Super Bowl.

The NFC West consists of the Arizona Cardinals, who moved from St. Louis in the 90’s, the St. Louis Rams who had previously been known as both the Cleveland Rams and the Los Angeles Rams, the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks. The 49ers were the first team to win five Super Bowl championships.

The teams that comprise the NFL’s NFC South are the Atlanta Falcons, the Carolina Panthers, the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Panthers are an expansion team, added to the league in 1995 and the Buccaneers are as well, being added to the NFL in 1976.

And finally, the NFC North consists of the Chicago Bears, the Detroit Lions, the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. The Bears trail only the Green Bay Packers for most championships won, with nine NFL Championships and one Super Bowl victory. The Packers have an impressive 12 wins. Along with the Cardinals, the Bears are the only original team still in existence, though it could be argued that the Cardinals, now being in Arizona as opposed to their original home in St. Louis, are not the same team they were as charter members of the NFL.

The 32 NFL teams start out there season with 4 exhibition games. These games do not count toward their win-loss record and are both a means of ramping up the season, and a time for teams to try out new players and get veterans into the flow of regular season play. It is during the pre-season exhibition games that coaches look at new recruits to see how they handle the pressures of NFL football and how well they function as members of the team.

Once the exhibition games are taken care of, the coaches make their cuts, culling out players to bring their team down to the allowed 53 players. Coaches also use this time to set their roster, deciding who will play at which position and who will “start”, or play at the beginning of each game. Throughout the regular NFL season, coaches will reassess and re-evaluate players and often shift starters around in order to achieve a stronger, cohesive team.

Once the regular NFL season begins, on the weekend after Labor Day, teams will each play 16 games during a 17 week period, with each team getting a “Bye” week to rest and recuperate. The predetermined formula for regular season play is as follows:

Each NFL team plays six games against the other teams in their division. They play each team twice, once at home and once on the road. Each team also plays once, the other four teams in its conference, from another division. This rotates on a three year cycle. Each team will also play four teams in a division in the other conference, rotating on a four year cycle. Each team also plays two games based on the previous year’s standings. The teams that came out on top of their division the previous year will now play each other again. So would the second place team and the third place team, and so forth down the line.

The post season, also referred to as the Playoffs, pits the six teams in each conference with the best record against each other. This is single elimination, with the loser of each match up going home, and the winner advancing on to the next playoff game. The teams are chosen by their records of wins and losses, with two “Wildcard” teams participating. These “Wildcard” teams are chosen for their record, though they have not won their division in the playoffs.

The NFL Post Season begins with the third seed team vying against the sixth seeded team, the fourth and fifth seeded teams going against each other. These first games are called the Wildcard Playoffs. The first and second seeded teams get the week off as they are automatically advanced to the second round of playoff games. In any post season game, the highest surviving seeded team always plays against the lowest surviving seeded team.

The final teams play out the post season in this manner until they are whittled down to just two teams. The final winners of wither conference are declared the NFC Champions and the AFC Champions. These two teams will go on to the NFL Championship game: The Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl began as a Championship between the two rival conferences that joined forces to become the NFL. This is still the game’s purpose at heart, but in reality, the game has become so much more. To call this a simple championship would be like calling the Sistine Chapel just a painting.

The NFL Super Bowl is an event that encompasses so many thing it is hard to put them all into a rational list. What began as a rivalry between 32 teams has been distilled down into a battle between the two best teams in the league. Though each football fan might have rode the season out rooting for their own favorites, usually their home team, at this point, the build up has reached such a boiling point that nearly every fan has become a fan of either of these two teams. What began as splintered loyalties has now been transformed into a single unifying event.

With this single event comes a tremendous wave of publicity and hype. The Playoffs have set the scene, and the Super Bowl draws all the seemingly discordant notes of fandom into one point of contention. The pie that is that single event is huge and is split in a multitude of ways.

The simple ticket sales for the Super Bowl are one such aspect. Tickets to the Super Bowl are highly sought after. Ticket costs for the game are set at $400 for Super Bowl XXXVI, but there is a vibrant market in brokered or scalped tickets. For one reason or another, there are a large number of tickets that get put aside, whether for players or other members of the teams or whatever reason. These tickets often get resold through brokers and scalpers for upwards of $1,250.

Then there’s the broadcast market for the game. The NFL sells the rights to broadcast the game to a television network for millions of dollars. Networks vie for the chance to air the game, knowing that it brings viewers to their network in record numbers every year. Viewers mean ad revenue. Advertisers willingly pay millions of dollars for a single 30 second commercial within the game. The competition among advertisers rivals that on the field, to the point that some viewers watch the Super Bowl simply to see the extremely creative commercials that are sure to air.

The NFL has become so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that it would take a catastrophic event to remove it. The game of football is part of our culture to such an extent that whole phraseologies can be traced to the game. Terms such as “Gridiron”, “Pigskin” and “Handoff” have entered into our lexicon. Terms like “Monday Morning Quarterback”, which refers to a person who analyzes something with the benefit of hindsight, have become part of our language.

The game of football has come to symbolize the American ideal of perfection and perseverance. It is the symbolic representation of conquest, the conquering of an enemy through relentless determination, the gaining of land through planning and hard fought battle. To some this is an ironic pastime which seems to symbolize what is wrong with our society and to others it epitomizes all that is right with it. Whatever you believe, NFL football is here to stay and will continue to inspire and entertain for many years to come.


Super Bowl
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