The Eastern and Western Divisions of the

National Football League 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 ...

, renamed the American and National Conferences in 1950 and then the Eastern and Western Conferences in 1953, were organized as a result of the disputed NFL championship of 1932. NFL owners agreed that henceforth there would be an annual

championship game In sport, a championship is a Competition#Sports, competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match sy ...

, to be played between the teams with the best records from two divisions, Eastern and Western. The two-division/conference structure remained essentially stable for over 35 years, including the absorption of former

All-America Football Conference The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a 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 ...

teams in 1950, and the early

expansion team An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...

s added in the 1960s in response to the

American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...

. With the 1970

AFL–NFL merger 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, w ...

the new, larger league was reorganized.

Teams

1933–1949

1950–1966

1967–1969

Champions

1933–1966

1967–1969

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eastern and Western Conferences (NFL) 1933-1969 History of the National Football League