The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins annually with a three-week preseason in August, followed by the 18-week regular season, which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, seven teams from each conference, including four division winners and three wild card teams, advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament, which culminates in the Super Bowl, played in early February between the winners of the AFC and NFC championship games.
NFL Europe League was a professional American football league that functioned as the developmental minor league of the National Football League (NFL). Originally founded in 1989 as the World League of American Football, the league was envisioned as a transatlantic league encompassing teams from both North America and Europe. Initially, the WLAF consisted of seven teams in North America and three in Europe. It began play in 1991 and lasted for two seasons before suspending operations; while the league had been "wildly popular" in Europe, it failed to achieve success in North America. After a two-year hiatus, it returned as a six-team European league, with teams based in England, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Spain. NFL Europa was dissolved in 2007 due to its continued unprofitability and the NFL's decision to shift its focus towards hosting regular-season games in Europe; at the time of its closure, the league consisted of five German teams and one team based in the Netherlands.
A rookie is a person new to an occupation, profession, or hobby. In sports, a rookie is a professional athlete in their first season.
A sports league is a group of individual athletes, sports teams or clubs who form a league to compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete periodically, at its most complex, it can be an international professional league making large amounts of money and involving dozens of teams and thousands of players.
The 1987 NFL season was the 68th regular season of the National Football League (NFL). This season featured games predominantly played by replacement players, as the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) players were on strike from weeks four to six with week three being cancelled in its entirety. This remains the last NFL season in which regular-season games were impacted by a labor conflict.
The American Bowl was a series of National Football League pre-season exhibition games that were held at sites outside the United States between 1986 and 2005.
National Football League records are the superlative statistics of the National Football League.
TNT Sunday Night Football also known as NFL on TNT was the name for the series of National Football League (NFL) broadcasts on Sundays produced by Turner Sports for Turner Network Television (TNT).
A doubleheader is a term used by television networks to refer to two games involving the same sport that are shown back-to-back on the same network, even though the events do not involve the same two teams. A doubleheader purposely coincides with a league's scheduling of "early" and "late" games. In North America, games usually start at the same time period in different time zones. The concept is less often extended to three games—a tripleheader—or, much more rarely, a quadrupleheader of four games.
The National Football League (NFL) regular season begins on the weekend following the first Monday of September and ends in early January, after which that season's playoffs tournament begins. It consists of 272 games, with each of the NFL's 32 teams playing 17 games during an 18-week period with one "bye" week off.
The National Football League (NFL) has been playing games in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, since 1959 when an interleague game between the Chicago Cardinals of the NFL and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (CFL) took place at Exhibition Stadium. Subsequently, a number of neutral site preseason and regular season games between NFL teams have been staged in the city. Toronto is one of five cities outside the United States, along with London, Mexico City, Frankfurt and Munich, which have hosted regular season NFL games.
The NFL International Series is a series of American football games during the National Football League (NFL) regular season that are played outside the United States. Since 2024, the series has three sub-series: the NFL London Games in the United Kingdom, which have been in place since 2007; the NFL Germany Games in multiple cities, the NFL Brazil Game in São Paulo, and the future NFL Madrid Game in Spain.
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 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 BAFANL (BAFA National Leagues) is the primary American football domestic league competition in Great Britain. Originally formed in 1983, the league is run by the British American Football Association to coordinate contact football within England, Scotland and Wales. The top level is the Premier Division and the BritBowl is the annual final championship game. The league was reformed in 2010 following the collapse of the British American Football League, which had run in a number of different guises since the early 1980s. Previous names of the league were the UKAFL (UK American Football League), the Budweiser League and the BNGL (British National Gridiron League). From 1998 until 2005 the league was known as the BSL (British Senior League). Tensions grew throughout 2009 between the directors of BAFL and those of the governing body the British American Football Association, and at the beginning of 2010 the BAFL formally, but unconstitutionally, withdrew from BAFA. This led to uproar from the teams within BAFL, ultimately signalling the end for BAFL as an entity. The league ceased operations on 1 April 2010 and was replaced by the BAFA Community Leagues for the 2010 season, rebranding in 2011 to become the BAFANL. Notable players to have come from the BAFANL who have gone on to play in the NFL are Efe Obada, Aden Durde, Jermaine Allen and Marvin Allen.
The sport of American football is played in the United Kingdom in domestic and international levels. Domestic games in England. Scotland and Wales are operated by British American Football Association who run the BAFA National Leagues for Adult Contact football and British Universities American Football League for the University contact game. Games in Northern Ireland are structured by American Football Ireland who are based in the Republic of Ireland. The UK has played host to games in association with the Americans' National Football League (NFL), including four regular-season NFL games, as of 2021.
Madden NFL 25 is an American football sports video game based on the National Football League and published by EA Sports. It was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in August 2013. Instead of numbering it Madden NFL 14 with the year like in previous versions, the "25" in the title refers to the 25th anniversary of the Madden NFL series. The eighth-generation console versions of Madden NFL 25 are the first games to run on EA Sports's Ignite game engine. However, the seventh generation versions still run on EA's previous game engine, Impact. The seventh-generation versions featured former Detroit Lions running back Barry Sanders on the cover, while the eighth-generation versions featured Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, and were released as launch titles for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2013.
A potential London NFL franchise is a hypothetical National Football League (NFL) American football team based in London, formed as a new expansion team or by relocating one of the existing 32 NFL teams currently based in the United States. Should the league establish a team in London, it would become the first of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada to establish a franchise outside either of those two countries.
Your Call Football was an interactive competition in which participants called plays in real time for a series of live exhibition American football games with players, some of whom have played in the NFL or CFL. The participants watch the game via live streaming media and use a smartphone app to select the plays. A series of three games were played in May 2018 at Historic Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida, and again in 2019 in Jacksonville, Florida, with cash prizes awarded in both series.
