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American football in the United States | |
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![]() The US Navy Midshipmen (at left, in blue) line up on offense against the Army's Black Knights | |
Country | United States |
Governing body | USA Football |
National team(s) | United States |
First played | 1869, New Brunswick, New Jersey |
Registered players | 5 million+ [1] |
Club competitions | |
List
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International competitions | |
American football is a form of gridiron football and the most popular sport in the United States. In the United States, the game is most often referred to as simply "football". Football is played in leagues of different size, age and quality, in all regions of the country.
There is no single national governing body for American football in the United States or a continental governing body for North America. There is an international governing body, the International Federation of American Football, or IFAF. The National Football League has the highest revenue and average attendance of any sports league in the world.
American football is the most popular sport in the United States. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] It is a form of gridiron football. In the United States, the game is most often referred to as simply "football".
Befitting its status as a popular sport, football is played in leagues of different size, age and quality, in all regions of the country. A team / academy may be referred to as a "football program". [9]
There is no single national governing body for American football in the United States or a continental governing body for North America. There is an international governing body, the International Federation of American Football, or IFAF.
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 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. The National Football League has the highest revenue and average attendance of any sports league in the world.
The NFL has not operated any developmental minor leagues since the folding of the NFL Europe League in 2007. There are some "independent" leagues operating in the US, but they are not overseen by the NFL and the teams has no affiliation to NFL franchises.
The Dallas Cowboys drew the highest average home attendance in the 2023 edition of the NFL. These figures reflect the popularity of professional American football as a spectator sport:
# | NFL team | Home games | Average attendance [10] |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Dallas Cowboys | 8 | 80,000¹ |
2 | New York Giants | 8 | 79,307 |
3 | New York Jets | 9 | 77,890 |
4 | Green Bay Packers | 8 | 77,829 |
5 | Denver Broncos | 9 | 76,388 |
6 | Los Angeles Rams | 8 | 73,150 |
7 | San Francisco 49ers | 8 | 71,655 |
8 | Carolina Panthers | 8 | 71,635 |
9 | Houston Texans | 9 | 71,193 |
10 | Kansas City Chiefs | 9 | 70,968 |
11 | Baltimore Ravens | 9 | 70,597 |
12 | New Orleans Saints | 8 | 70,020 |
13 | Philadelphia Eagles | 8 | 69,878 |
14 | Los Angeles Chargers | 9 | 69,736 |
15 | Buffalo Bills | 9 | 69,609 |
16 | Atlanta Falcons | 8 | 69,603 |
17 | Jacksonville Jaguars | 9 | 69,031 |
18 | Seattle Seahawks | 8 | 68,735 |
19 | Cleveland Browns | 9 | 67,810 |
20 | Pittsburgh Steelers | 9 | 66,977 |
21 | Minnesota Vikings | 8 | 66,913 |
22 | Cincinnati Bengals | 9 | 66,040 |
23 | Miami Dolphins | 9 | 65,922 |
24 | Indianapolis Colts | 8 | 65,230 |
25 | Detroit Lions | 8 | 64,850 |
26 | Tennessee Titans | 9 | 64,520 |
27 | Washington Commanders | 8 | 63,950 |
28 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 8 | 63,756 |
29 | New England Patriots | 9 | 63,018 |
30 | Arizona Cardinals | 8 | 62,864 |
31 | Las Vegas Raiders | 9 | 62,190 |
32 | Chicago Bears | 8 | 61,769 |
¹ 93,594 with people watching on screens at the party decks
The United Football League is the predominant professional spring football league. It consists of two four-team conferences, the XFL and the USFL, that originally were founded and played as separate eight-team leagues in 2020 and 2022 respectively before agreeing to a merger with each other. Both conferences bear the names of leagues before them: the USFL was named after a 1980s major professional league known as the United States Football League and reached a settlement with the remaining rightsholders to that league; the XFL was a revival of a 2001 league of the same name from the same founder, Vince McMahon, who sold the league and brand after the 2020 season.
Other active minor league are the Gridiron Developmental Football League and the Rivals Professional Football League which are viewed as low-level or semi-pro leagues.
There are several professional and semi-professional indoor American football leagues, played at hockey-sized arenas. The largest and oldest operating league is the Indoor Football League which has 13 teams spanning from Ohio to California. Historically the Arena Football League, which launched in 1987 was the most prominent league but as the league had operational issues following its 2008 bankruptcy, teams folded and left for other leagues before the Arena Football League folded in 2019. An attempt at reviving the Arena Football League collapsed a few weeks into its only season in 2024, with the remaining teams reorganizing to play out the season; this league abandoned the AFL brand to become Arena Football One.
Other pro leagues include the second-tier National Arena League and the third-tier regional, semi-professional American Indoor Football (Iowa and Michigan), American Arena League (East Coast), and The Arena League (Great Plains, a league originally playing six-man football).
Indoor football leagues play by significantly different rules that accommodate a smaller field of play.
Some American players go to Canada and play in the Canadian Football League, which operates professionally on a somewhat older rule system with a number of differences from the American game but still recognizable as "football" to the casual American football observer. The CFL allocates half of its teams' rosters for players born and raised in Canada but allows the rest of the players to be foreign born (in practice, these spots are almost always filled by Americans); the CFL also has television presence in the United States and as recently as 1995 played games in the U.S.
College football is also popular throughout North America. [11] Most of college football in the United States is governed by the NCAA. Many colleges and universities have football teams, often with dedicated football stadiums. These teams mostly play other similarly sized schools, through the NCAA's divisional system, which divides collegiate sports teams into four divisions (I-FBS, I-FCS, II and III). The largest, most popular collegiate teams routinely fill stadiums larger than 75,000. [12] Eight college football stadiums—the University of Michigan's Michigan Stadium, Penn State's Beaver Stadium, Ohio State's Ohio Stadium, Texas A&M's Kyle Field, the University of Tennessee's Neyland Stadium, LSU's Tiger Stadium, Alabama's Bryant–Denny Stadium, and Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium at the University of Texas at Austin—seat more than 100,000 fans and usually sell out. The weekly autumn ritual of college football includes marching bands, cheerleaders, homecoming, parties, the tailgate party; it forms an important part of the culture in much of small-town America. [13] [14] Football is a major source of revenue to the athletic programs of schools, public and private, in the United States. [15] Top college football players enter the NFL Draft after their college careers are over, in hopes of signing with an NFL team.
"FBS" and "FCS" are abbreviations for the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision, two sections of Division I that exist only in football. These two subdivisions were formerly known as Divisions I-A and I-AA respectively. The Championship Subdivision, consisting mostly of smaller schools than the FBS but larger than D-II, has a multiple-round playoff system just like Divisions II and III, while the Bowl Subdivision has only a limited, and unofficial, twelve-team playoff and has historically only featured division championships and bowl games. FBS and FCS teams can, and often do, play against each other. Unofficially, the Bowl Subdivision is divided into two further subdivisions, "major conferences" (also known as "Power Five conferences," since reduced to four with the breakup of the Pac-12 Conference) and "mid-majors" (known in modern parlance as the "Group of Five"). In practice, only major conference teams are eligible to compete for the national championship and receive significant favor in the opinion polling over mid-majors, and it was not until the addition of the BCS National Championship Game that mid-majors had a realistic chance at appearing in one of the major bowls. Although the FCS has a playoff, three conferences do not participate (the Ivy League does not allow its teams to play in the postseason, and the historically black SWAC and MEAC instead play each other in a bowl of their own). Division III teams do not offer scholarships to their players; two Division I FCS leagues also do not offer scholarships—the Ivy League, which prohibits athletic scholarships in any sport, and the Pioneer Football League, which only competes in football and whose members all offer scholarships in non-football sports.
With the exception of the annual Army–Navy Game, only Power Five conference teams air on national broadcast television, although mid-majors, FCS teams, D-II and D-III games can see more limited coverage on cable and local television.[ citation needed ]
Though the NCAA is the most publicized college athletic organization, the NAIA (which houses mostly smaller private colleges in the midwest) also sanctions football games. At the community college level, the NJCAA oversees the sport in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, the lone exception being California, where the California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) operates outside the bounds of the NJCAA. There also exists a club football circuit for student-run teams and colleges that choose not to compete at the varsity level. In addition to this, 10 northeastern colleges field teams in the Collegiate Sprint Football League, a league in which all players must weigh no more than 178 pounds (81 kg) in order to be eligible to play; a second sprint league based in the midwest, the Midwest Sprint Football League, launched in 2021.
The Michigan Wolverines drew the highest average home attendance of all college football teams in 2023. These figures reflect the popularity of college football as a spectator sport:
Most American high schools field football teams. High school football is popular; top schools regularly fill stadiums holding over 10,000 fans, and can afford artificial playing surfaces.[ citation needed ]
High school teams generally play only against other teams from their state (notable exceptions include matchups between nearby schools located on opposite sides of a state line and occasional matchups between two nationally ranked teams for television purposes). Still, some private Christian high schools play for national championships through organizations like the Federated Christian Athletic Association. Public high school football in most states, as is the case with other high school sports, is governed by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).
For rural schools that do not have the student body to support a full football team, the NFHS sanctions nine-man football (most popular in the upper Midwest), six-man football (most commonly used in Texas, although previously more widely popular and undergoing a minor revival elsewhere), and eight-man football (which the most common reduced-man format in most other states).
Adult amateur football, also known as semi-pro football, is a level of American football. It is commonly known as "working man's" football, meaning the players have regular jobs and play football on the weekends. Though the players do not get paid, the leagues and the games are run in a somewhat professional manner. For most leagues, it is against the rules to pay its players to play. The rules of the game are usually a hybrid of NFL and NCAA rules.
There are several different leagues, regional in nature, playing in the United States:
League | First season | Type | Geographical area |
---|---|---|---|
Amateur to Professional Developmental Football League [18] [19] [20] | 2013 [21] | Outdoor | Southeast |
East Coast Football League [22] [23] | 2013 | Outdoor | New England |
Eastern Football League [24] [25] [26] | 1961 [27] | Outdoor | Northeastern |
Empire Football League | 1969 | Outdoor | New York State |
Florida Football Alliance | 2008 | Outdoor | Florida |
Mason-Dixon Football League [28] [29] [30] | 1978 [31] | Outdoor | Mid-Atlantic |
MidStates Football League [32] [33] [34] | 1999 [35] | Outdoor | North Central |
Minor Football League [36] [37] [38] [39] | 1993 | Outdoor | Eastern & Central United States |
North Louisiana Football Alliance | 2020 | Nine-man football | South Central |
New England Football League | 1994 | Outdoor | New England |
Pacific Coast Football League [40] [41] [42] | 2006 [43] | Outdoor | California |
Pacific Northwest Football League [44] [45] | 2016 | Outdoor | Pacific Northwest |
Rocky Mountain Football League [46] [47] | 1997 [48] | Outdoor | Rocky Mountains |
Several leagues supporting women's semi-professional football play have existed. The current major league is the Women's Football Alliance (WFA). The WFA started to play in 2009 stocked with teams from two dissolved leagues, the National Women's Football Association and Women's Professional Football League (NWFA and WPFL respectively).
American 7s Football League (A7FL) is a semi-professional league which plays a seven-man version of gridiron football, while the American Flag Football League plays a variant of American football where, instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier to end a down.
USA Football assembles a national football team for competition in the IFAF World Championship every four years. Because of concerns over competitive balance, USA Football did not field teams for the first two events in 1999 and 2003. The 2007 team consisted solely of amateur players who had graduated from college that spring, from a diverse mix of smaller and larger colleges and universities. The 2011 squad's criteria were looser, allowing some professional players to play (mostly unemployed, lower-end and minor league players; no NFL or NCAA stars participated). Both the 2007 and 2011 incarnations of the team won their year's respective world championship.
The IFAF also fields an U-19 team composed of high school football players that has participated in the 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2016 junior world championships. The national U-19 team won the 2009 and 2014 contests but lost the 2012 contest to Canada.
Women's football teams in the United States have had many sports leagues. Among them are the Women's Professional Football League (1965–1973), the Women's Professional Football League, the Independent Women's Football League, the Women's Football Alliance, and the X League. In 1970, Patricia Palinkas became the holder of the Orlando Panthers and became the first woman to play in the Atlantic Coast Football League, [49] and in 2010 Katie Hnida became the kicker for the Fort Wayne FireHawks in the Continental Indoor Football League. [50]
Women's gridiron football, more commonly known as women's tackle football, women's American football, women's Canadian football, or simply women's football, is a form of gridiron football played by women. Most leagues play by similar rules to the men's game. Women primarily play on a semi-professional or amateur level in the United States. Very few high schools or colleges offer the sport solely for women and girls. However, on occasion, it is permissible for a female player to join the otherwise male team.
Flag football is a variant of gridiron football where, instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier ("deflagging") to end a down. In flag football, contact is limited between players. The sport has a strong amateur following with several national and international competitions each year sponsored by various associations but is most popularly played in America where it was invented. The international governing body for the sport is the International Federation of American Football (IFAF) with the International Woman's Flag Football Association (IWFFA) governing the women's game.
In North America, a bowl game, or simply bowl, is one of a number of postseason college football games primarily played by NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams. For most of its history, the FBS did not use a playoff tournament to determine an annual national champion, instead relying on a vote by sportswriters or coaches. In place of such a playoff, cities developed regional festivals featuring bowls. Prior to 2002, bowl game statistics were not included in players' career totals. Despite moves to establish a permanent system to determine the FBS national champion on the field — such as the Bowl Coalition from 1992 to 1994, the Bowl Alliance from 1995 to 1997, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) from 1998 to 2013, and the College Football Playoff (CFP) from 2014 through the present — some bowls are still held.
Gridiron football, also known as North American football, or in North America as simply football, is a family of football team sports primarily played in the United States and Canada. American football, which uses 11 players, is the form played in the United States and the best known form of gridiron football worldwide, while Canadian football, which uses 12 players, predominates in Canada. Other derivative varieties include arena football, flag football and amateur games such as touch and street football. Football is played at professional, collegiate, high school, semi-professional, and amateur levels.
The United States National American Football Team often referred to as Team USA represents the United States in international men's American football competitions. It is currently controlled by USA Football and is recognized by the International Federation of American Football (IFAF). The team is currently ranked no.1 in the world in tackle Football by the IFAF.
USA Football is the governing body of American football in the United States. It is the United States' member of the International Federation of American Football (IFAF), and a recognized sports organization of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. It selects and organizes the U.S. men's national team and the U.S. women's national team in federation-sanctioned international competition. They also organize the men's and women's flag football teams.
Sports in Pennsylvania includes numerous professional sporting teams, events, and venues located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
Athletes and sports teams from North Carolina compete across an array of professional and amateur levels of competition, along with athletes who compete at the World and Olympic levels in their respective sport. Major league professional teams based in North Carolina include teams that compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Soccer (MLS), and National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). The state is also home to NASCAR Cup Series races. At the collegiate and university level, there are several North Carolina schools in various conferences across an array of divisions. North Carolina also has many minor league baseball teams. There are also a number of indoor football, indoor soccer, minor league basketball, and minor league ice hockey teams based throughout the state.
The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As of the 2024 season, there are 10 conferences and 134 schools in FBS.
The Idaho Vandals are the college football team that represents the University of Idaho and plays its home games at the Kibbie Dome, an indoor facility on campus in Moscow, Idaho. Idaho is a member of the Big Sky Conference in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The Vandals are coached by Thomas Ford.
The Villanova Wildcats football program represents Villanova University in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision.
American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with possession of the oval-shaped football, attempts to advance down the field by running with the ball or throwing it, while the defense, the team without possession of the ball, aims to stop the offense's advance and to take control of the ball for themselves. The offense must advance the ball at least ten yards in four downs or plays; if they fail, they turn over the football to the defense, but if they succeed, they are given a new set of four downs to continue the drive. Points are scored primarily by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone for a touchdown or kicking the ball through the opponent's goalposts for a field goal. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.
The NAU Lumberjacks football program is the intercollegiate American football team for the Northern Arizona University located in Flagstaff, Arizona. The team competes in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) and is a member of the Big Sky Conference. The school's first football team was fielded in 1915. The team plays its home games at the 10,500 seat Walkup Skydome. Brian Wright was hired as the Head Football Coach on December 3, 2023.
A variety of sports are popular in the US state of South Carolina.
The National Football League (NFL) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) are respectively the most popular professional and amateur football organizations 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 people per game during the 2011 NFL season. 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.
Ohio is home to many professional and college sports teams. The metropolitan areas of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus are home to major league professional sports teams in baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer.
The modern history of American football can be considered to have begun after the 1932 NFL Playoff Game, which was the first American football game to feature hash marks, the legalization of the forward pass anywhere behind the line of scrimmage, and the movement of the goal posts back to the goal line; it was also the first indoor game since 1902. Other innovations to occur in the years after 1932 were the introduction of the AP Poll in 1934, the tapering of the ends of the football in 1934, the awarding of the first Heisman Trophy in 1935, the first NFL draft in 1936, and the first televised game in 1939.
The North American continent is the birthplace of several organized sports, such as basketball, charrería/rodeo, gridiron football, ice hockey, jaripeo/bull riding, lacrosse, ollamaliztl, mixed martial arts (MMA), padel, pickleball, racquetball, ultimate, and volleyball. The modern versions of baseball and softball, skateboarding, snowboarding, stock car racing, and surfing also developed in North America.
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