Pre-season
In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of September. In other team sports, like association football or basketball, it is generally from August or September to May although in some countries - such as Northern Europe or East Asia - the season starts in the spring and finishes in autumn, mainly due to weather conditions encountered during the winter. A year can often be broken up into several distinct sections (sometimes themselves called seasons). These are: a preseason, a series of exhibition games played for training purposes; a regular season, the main period of the league's competition; the postseason, a playoff tournament played against the league's top teams to determine the league's champion; and the offseason, the time when there is no official competition. Preseason In ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Rugby League
The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership between the Australian Rugby League (ARL) and media giant News Corporation-controlled Super League, in the aftermath of the 1990s Super League war, in which both ran parallel to each other in 1997. The partnership was dissolved in 2012, with control of the NRL going to the re-constituted ARL, which was re-structured with an independent board of directors and renamed the Australian Rugby League Commission. NRL matches are played in Australia and New Zealand from March to October. Each team plays 24 matches, with the highest placed team at the end of the regular season awarded the minor premiership. This is followed by a finals series contested between the eight highest placed teams from the regular season. The season culminates in the prem ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Australian Football League
The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the game. Originally known as the Victorian Football League (VFL), it was founded in 1896 as a breakaway competition from the Victorian Football Association (VFA), with its inaugural season commencing the following year. The VFL, aiming to become a national competition, began expanding beyond Victoria to other Australian states in the 1980s, and changed its name to the AFL in 1990. The league currently consists of 18 teams spread over five of Australia's six states (Tasmania being the exception). Matches have been played in all states, plus the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, as well as in New Zealand and China to expand the league's audience. The AFL season currently consists of a 23-round regular (or "home-and-away") s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sports League
A sports league is a group of sports teams or individual athletes that compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur sports, amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete on weekends; at its most complex, it can be an international professional sports league organization, professional league making large amounts of money and involving dozens of teams and thousands of players. Terminology Synonyms In many cases, organizations that function as leagues are described using a different term, such as National Basketball Association, association, Conference (sports), conference, Division (sport), division, league table, leaderboard, or Playoff format, series. This is especially common in individual sports, although the term "league" is sometimes used in amateur individual sports such as golf. The term "league" is also sometimes applicable to competitions that would more traditionally be called tournamen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Toronto Raptors
The Toronto Raptors are a Canadian professional basketball team based in Toronto. The Raptors compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. They play their home games at Scotiabank Arena, which they share with the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL). The team was founded in 1995 as part of the NBA's expansion into Canada, along with the Vancouver Grizzlies. Since the 2001–02 season, the Raptors have been the only Canadian-based team in the league, as the Grizzlies relocated from Vancouver to Memphis, Tennessee. As with most expansion teams, the Raptors struggled in their early years, but after the acquisition of Vince Carter through a draft-day trade in 1998, the franchise set league-attendance records and made the NBA playoffs in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Carter was instrumental in leading the team to their first playoff series win in 2001, where they advanced to the Eastern Conf ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Campeonato Brasileiro Série A
The Campeonato Brasileiro Série A (; English: "Brazilian Championship A Series"), commonly referred to as the Brasileirão (; English: "Big Brazilian"), and also known as Brasileirão Assaí due to sponsorship with Assaí Atacadista, is a Brazilian professional league for men's football clubs. At the top of the Brazilian football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the Campeonato Brasileiro Série B. In 2021 the competition was chosen by the IFFHS as the strongest national league in South America as well as the strongest in the world. Due to historical peculiarities and the large geographical size of the country, Brazil has a relatively short history of nationwide football competitions. Only in 1959, with the advancements in civil aviation and air transport and the need to appoint a Brazilian representative to the first edition of the Copa Libertadores was a nationw ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spanish Language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of List of countries where Spanish is an official language, 20 countries. It is the world's list of languages by number of native speakers, second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's list of languages by total number of speakers, fourth-most spoken language overall after English language, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani language, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance languages, Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico. Spanish is part of the Iberian Romance languages, Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in I ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Apertura And Clausura
The ' and ' tournaments is a split season format for Spanish-speaking sports leagues. It is a relatively recent innovation for many Latin American football leagues in which the traditional association football season from August to May is divided in two sections per season, each with its own champion. ' and ' are the Spanish words for "opening" and "closing". In French-speaking Haiti, these are known as the ' and the ', while in English-speaking Belize, they are respectively the ''Opening'' and ''Closing'' seasons. When used in the United States and Canada, they are known as the ''Spring'' and ''Fall'' seasons. The Americas The ' is held in the first half of the calendar year in Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti, Paraguay and Uruguay while it is held in the second half of the calendar year in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. The words ' and ' are used in most Latin American countries. Some, however, use different terminology: * Colombia: ' an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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League Table
Standings or rankings are listings which compare sports teams or individuals, institutions, nations, companies, or other entities by ranking them in order of ability or achievement. A table or chart (such as a league table, a ladder or a leaderboard) may be employed to display such listings. A league table may list several related statistics, but they are generally sorted by the primary one that determines the rankings. Many industries and institutions may compete in league tables in order to help bring in new customers and clients. Those tables ranking sports teams are generally used to help determine who may advance to the playoffs or another tournament, who is promoted or relegated, or who gets a higher draft pick. Sport In sport, league tables group teams of similar abilities in a chart to show the current standing of the participants (teams or individuals) in a sports league or competition. These lists are generally published in newspapers and other media, as well as the o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rugby League
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112–122 metres (122 to 133 yards) long with H shaped posts at both ends. It is one of the two codes of rugby football, the other being rugby union. It originated in 1895 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire as the result of a split from the Rugby Football Union over the issue of payments to players.Tony Collins, ''Rugby League in Twentieth Century Britain'' (2006), p.3 The rules of the game governed by the new Northern Rugby Football Union progressively changed from those of the RFU with the specific aim of producing a faster and more entertaining game to appeal to spectators, on whose income the new organisation and its members depended. Due to its high-velocity contact, cardio-based endurance and minimal use of body protection, rugby league i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Australian Rules Football
Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval ball between the central goal posts (worth six points), or between a central and outer post (worth one point, otherwise known as a "behind"). During general play, players may position themselves anywhere on the field and use any part of their bodies to move the ball. The primary methods are kicking, handballing and running with the ball. There are rules on how the ball can be handled; for example, players running with the ball must intermittently bounce or touch it on the ground. Throwing the ball is not allowed, and players must not get caught holding the ball. A distinctive feature of the game is the mark, where players anywhere on the field who catch the ball from a kick (with specific conditions) are awarded unimped ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff, and the winning team is awarded the Commissioner's Trophy. Prior to the AL and NL being split into divisions in 1969, the team with the best regular-season win–loss record in each league automatically clinched its league's pennant and advanced to the World Series, barring the rare tie necessitating a pennant playoff. Since then each league has conducted a League Championship Series ( ALCS and NLCS) preceding the World Series to determine which teams will advance, while those series have been preceded in turn by Division Series ( ALDS and NLDS) since 1995, and Wild Card games or series in each league since 2012. Until 2002, home-field advantage in the World Series ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interleague Play
Interleague play in Major League Baseball refers to regular-season baseball games played between an American League (AL) team and a National League (NL) team. Interleague play was first introduced during the 1997 Major League Baseball season. Prior to that, matchups between AL teams and NL teams occurred only during spring training, the All-Star Game, other exhibition games (such as the Hall of Fame Game in Cooperstown, New York), and the World Series. Unlike modern interleague play, none of these contests, except for the World Series, counted toward official team or league records. History Early discussions Regular season interleague play was discussed for baseball's major leagues as early as 1903, when the two major leagues made peace and formed the National Commission as governing body. The first National Commission Chairman, Cincinnati president August Herrmann (who had already been a proponent of interleague play), proposed an ambitious scheme in late 1904. Herrmann's p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |