What Is NFL?
Many people recognize these three letters, even if they are not avid football fans. In fact, NFL has become a term that can stand by itself in the U.S. language of the 21st century.
NFL stands for National Football League and refers to the organization that oversees the professional level of football in the United States. (This type of football is very different from what fans in other countries know as football. U.S. residents call the European and Asian game soccer.)
The National Football League has 32 member teams divided into two conferences – the NFC or National Football Conference and the AFC or American Football Conference. In the past 45 years, two winners meet at the end of the season to play in the Super Bowl, which has become a major social event in the U.S.
The history of the NFL goes back to 1920, when organizers saw the need for standard rules and guidelines for the playing of professional football. The league or organization first had a title that included the word “American” and the group eventually acquired the name of American Professional Football Association. This name quickly changed to National Football League, a moniker that stayed with the organization for more than 80 years.
Over the next couple of decades, the NFL gained in popularity. The growth of administration duties for this league made it necessary to have a full-time commissioner, a position that parallels the commissioner of major league baseball, basketball and hockey. A championship game was soon established.
One of the building blocks of the NFL was the American Football League or AFL, which started playing games separate from the NFL. But this new league merged with the National Football League in 1969. The AFL was the basis for what is now the American conference section of the NFL. But as teams moved from one city to another and the league expanded, the makeup of the two conferences has changed. (Another challenger, the World Football League, folded after two years in the 1970s.)
The NFL championship game, became the Super Bowl, with the winner of the American conference playing the winner of the National conference. This is the major difference from the league championship played in the 1960s between pioneer teams such as the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs.
The 1990’s were years filled with record-breaking professional football, and at the turn of the century, ticket sales records were being broken as well. In 2000, there was a special reunion for NFL Hall of Fame legends, and over 100 of the greats were there to celebrate.
Professional football has a much longer history than the NFL or any other organization of professional-level football. Players were first paid to play in the 1890s. Team owners and palyers arranged their own schedules and pay levels for many years. Records show that few of the original teams exist today. The current Chicago Bears were once the Decatur Staleys, the last real connection to the first professional game played in Illinois.
Category: Sports