The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a major professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the nation's best players, and introduced many lasting innovations to the game. However, the AAFC was ultimately unable to sustain itself in competition with the NFL. After it folded, three of its teams were admitted to the NFL: the San Francisco 49ers, the Cleveland Browns and the original Baltimore Colts.
The Duluth Eskimos were a professional football team from Duluth, Minnesota in the National Football League (NFL). After spending most of their time as a traveling team, they withdrew from the league after the 1927 season.
The Rock Island Independents were a professional American football team, based in Rock Island, Illinois, from 1907 to 1926. The Independents were a founding National Football League franchise. They hosted what has been retrospectively designated the first National Football League game on September 26, 1920 at Douglas Park. The Independents were founded in 1907 by Demetrius Clements as an independent football club. Hence, the team was named the "Independents."
St. Louis All-Stars was a professional football team that played in the National Football League during the 1923 season. The team played at St. Louis, Missouri's Sportsman's Park. Ollie Kraehe owned, managed, coached, and played guard for the team.
The AFL–NFL merger was the merger of the two major professional American football leagues in the United States at the time: the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL). It paved the way for the combined league, which retained the "National Football League" name and logo, to become the most popular sports league in the United States. The merger was announced on the evening of June 8, 1966. Under the merger agreement, the leagues maintained separate regular-season schedules for the next four seasons—from 1966 through 1969 with a final championship game which would become known as the Super Bowl—and then officially merged before the 1970 season to form one league with two conferences.
Cleveland Stadium, commonly known as Municipal Stadium, Lakefront Stadium or Cleveland Municipal Stadium, was a multi-purpose stadium located in Cleveland, Ohio. It was one of the early multi-purpose stadiums, built to accommodate both baseball and football. The stadium opened in 1931 and is best known as the long-time home of the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1932 to 1993, and the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL), from 1946 to 1995, in addition to hosting other teams, other sports, and concerts. The stadium was a four-time host of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, one of the host venues of the 1948 and 1954 World Series, and the site of the original Dawg Pound, Red Right 88, and The Drive.
The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The first team to bear the name, it was a member of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) from 1947 to 1949 and then joined the National Football League (NFL) for one season before folding. The Colts were one of the least successful teams in the AAFC and NFL both on and off the field, winning only 11 of their 54 games in their history. In 1953, Baltimore was granted an expansion team that revived the Colts name. That franchise moved in 1984 and became the Indianapolis Colts.
The 1921 APFA season was the second season of the American Professional Football Association, which was renamed the National Football League in 1922.
Daniel Farrell Reeves was an American sports entrepreneur, best known as the owner of the National Football League (NFL) franchise Los Angeles Rams. He owned the franchise when it was operating in Cleveland, Ohio in 1941, and he would own the team until his death in 1971.
The Buffalo Bills were an American football team, based in Buffalo, New York, that played in the All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1949. During its first season in 1946, the team was known as the Buffalo Bisons. Unlike the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts, the franchise was not one of the three AAFC teams that merged with the National Football League prior to the 1950 season. It was named after Buffalo Bill.
Throughout the years, a number of teams in the National Football League (NFL) have either moved or merged.
The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis, Missouri from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, California, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994.
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 Los Angeles Bulldogs were a professional American football team that competed from 1936 to 1948. Formed with the intention of joining the National Football League in 1937, the Bulldogs were the first team on the major league level to play its home games on the American West Coast. They were considered "the best football team in existence outside the NFL".
The Cleveland Panthers were a professional American football team. They were an independent team founded in 1919 from the remains of the Youngstown Patricians. The Panthers played, with various degrees of success, continuously from 1919 and eventually, as fewer opponents played them each year after 1926, sputtered to a quiet folding in 1933.
The Cleveland Browns relocation controversy—colloquially called "The Move" by fans—was a controversy during the 1995 NFL season in which the then-Browns owner Art Modell announced that he intended to move the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from its longtime home of Cleveland to Baltimore.
This timeline of the National Football League (NFL) tracks the history of each of the league's 32 current franchises from the early days of the league, through its merger with the American Football League (AFL). The history of franchises that began as independent teams, or as members of the Ohio League, New York Pro Football League, and other defunct leagues are shown as well.
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team that plays and competes in the National Football League (NFL). The Rams franchise was founded in 1936 as the Cleveland Rams in the short-lived second American Football League before joining the NFL the next year. In 1946, the franchise moved to Los Angeles. The Rams franchise remained in the metro area until 1994, when they moved to St. Louis, and were known as the St. Louis Rams from 1995 to 2015. The Rams franchise returned to Los Angeles in 2016. This article chronicles the franchise's history during their time in Los Angeles, from playing at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum between 1946 and 1979, to playing at Anaheim Stadium in Anaheim from 1980 to 1994, and its return to Southern California beginning with the 2016 to 2019 seasons playing temporarily at their old home the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before moving to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood in 2020 alongside the Los Angeles Chargers.
