NFL Football Tickets

The National Football League: a brief history
The NFL consists of 32 teams that are divided into two conferences: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC), each of which has four divisions. The NFL season is played during the late summer, through autumn, and into January. Professional teams play 4 exhibition games, followed by 16 regular-season games. Teams play one game each week, using the time between games to recover, practice, and prepare for the next game. Each team receives one week without a game, known as a bye, during the season.

At the end of the regular season, each conference holds separate playoff games to determine the conference champion. The top team in each division automatically qualifies for the conference playoffs and is ranked number one through three based on its win-loss record. Three additional teams, called wild cards, also qualify for playoff berths based on their win-loss record in the conference. During the first round of the playoffs, the lowest-ranked wild-card team plays the lowest-ranked division champion, while the other two wild-card teams play each other. The losers are eliminated and the winner of each game advances to play one of the remaining division champions in the semifinals. Semifinal winners advance to the conference finals, and the winner of that game is declared the conference champion.

The Vince Lombardi Trophy, named in honor of former Green Bay Packers coach, is a sterling silver trophy awarded annually to the winners of the National Football League's championship.

The Super Bowl is the final contest of the NFL’s season. Held each January, it pits the AFC and NFC champions against each other. The Super Bowl reaches hundreds of millions of viewers around the world. The first Super Bowl took place in 1967, when there were actually two separate football leagues, the NFL and the American Football League (AFL). In this game, the Green Bay Packers of the NFL defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL in what was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The game was renamed the Super Bowl in 1969.

Every April the NFL conducts its amateur draft, in which each team obtains the rights to the professional services of the best college players. Any player who is three seasons out of high school qualifies for the NFL draft if that player renounces college football eligibility by early January. To determine the draft order the NFL goes by the win-loss records of the previous season, so that teams with poorer records draft earlier than those with better records. The NFL draft consists of seven rounds. Those players not selected in the draft can be invited to try out for a team and are sometimes signed to contracts as free agents.

The NFL is a big business for players, owners, advertisers, and other industries tied to the sport. NFL franchises generate huge revenues for host cities, in addition to promoting civic pride and national exposure. Thus, cities often compete for teams, offering prospective teams bigger and better stadiums, guaranteed fan support, and various economic incentives. In the 1980s three NFL teams relocated: the Oakland Raiders moved from Oakland, California, to Los Angeles in 1982; the Colts moved from Baltimore, Maryland, to Indianapolis, Indiana, and became the Indianapolis Colts in 1984; and the Cardinals moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Phoenix, Arizona, and became the Phoenix Cardinals in 1988 (later changed to Arizona Cardinals). Several other moves occurred in the 1990s. In 1995 the Los Angeles Rams became the St. Louis Rams when they moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis, and the Raiders returned to Oakland. The Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1996; the team was renamed the Baltimore Ravens. In 1997 the Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee and became the Tennessee Titans. Other teams have agreed to stay in their home cities only with the promise of new facilities.

New teams are periodically accepted into the NFL, and there is usually fierce competition among cities to be selected as the home for a new team. In 1995 two of these expansion teams began play: the Carolina Panthers, in Charlotte, North Carolina; and the Jacksonville Jaguars, in Jacksonville, Florida. A new Cleveland Browns franchise began play in 1999. In 2002, the newest expansion franchise, the Houston Texans, started playing at Reliant Stadium