The History of the National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is the highest level of professional American Football in the United States. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association and the league changed its name to the National Football League in 1922. The league currently has thirty-two teams. The league is divided evenly into two conferences the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC), and each conference has four divisions that have four teams, for a total of sixteen teams in each conference.
The regular season is a seventeen-week schedule during which each team plays sixteen games and has one bye week. The season currently starts on the Thursday night in the first full week of September (the Thursday after Labor Day) and runs weekly to late December or early January. At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference play in the NFL playoffs, a twelve-team single-elimination tournament with the championship game, known as the Super Bowl.
This game is held at a site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team. Additions to the National Football League Monday night football is a great addition to the National Football League. Monday Night Football started on September 21, 1970 and has been with the NFL ever since. The NFL’s Play 60 program is for children to be active for 60 minutes a day in order to help stop the trend of childhood obesity.
The National Football League is more than making plays on the field, it is also about making plays off the field and in to the community. The NFL gives 10 million dollars to non-profit organizations each year. A tradition known as “NFL Tuesdays” is when players volunteer each week at local schools, shelters, and hospitals. The NFL also responds to emergencies such as when the NFL Players Association contributed $10 million to the 9/11 Disaster Relief Fund.
