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In the United States and Canada, the term professional football includes the professional forms of
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
and
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
. In common usage, it refers to former and existing major football leagues in either country. Currently, there are multiple professional football leagues in North America: the two best known are 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 ...
(NFL) in the U.S. and the
Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...
(CFL) in Canada. American football leagues have existed in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
since the late 1970s, with competitive leagues all over Europe hiring American Imports to strengthen rosters. The
Austrian Football League
The Austrian Football League (AFL) is the highest level of American football in Austria founded in 1984.
The Austrian Football League (AFL) has always been considered among the best and strongest leagues in Europe. The league plays by rules based ...
and
German Football League
The German Football League (GFL) is an American football league in Germany and was formed in 1979. Playing rules are based on those of the American National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA. In 1999, the league switched its name from ''Ameri ...
top division are known as the best leagues in Europe. The
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
X-League is also a strong league that has a long history since 1971. The NFL has existed continuously since being so named in 1922.
The best
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, 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 ...
players are among the
highest paid athlete
An athlete (also sportsman or sportswoman) is a person who competes in one or more sports that involve physical strength, speed, or endurance.
Athletes may be professionals or amateurs. Most professional athletes have particularly well-devel ...
s in the world.
Organization
Compared to the other
, football has comparatively few levels of play and does not have a well-developed
minor league system or
pyramid
A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...
, either official or otherwise.
In North America, the top level of professional football is 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 ...
, with the
Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...
second to the NFL in prominence and pay grade. Despite the much lower level of pay, the CFL has greater popularity in Canada because of its long history in the country, the NFL's limited presence in Canada, and a general environment of
Canadian cultural protectionism
Cultural protectionism in Canada has, since the mid-20th century, taken the form of conscious, interventionist attempts on the part of various governments of Canada to promote Canadian cultural production and limit the effect of foreign culture ...
.
Indoor football has also developed in the United States, beginning with the
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...
, which formed in 1987. The AFL is the second longest running professional football league in the United States after the NFL, although its current incarnation is a separate entity from the original, which folded due to bankruptcy in 2008. From its debut until 1997, the Arena Football League operated with a monopoly on the indoor game, due to a broad interpretation that virtually all of the league's rules, collectively known as
arena football
Indoor American football, or arena football, is a variation of gridiron football played at ice hockey-sized indoor arenas. While varying in details from league to league, the rules of indoor football are designed to allow for play in a smaller ...
, were covered under its patent; the
Professional Indoor Football League
The Professional Indoor Football League (PIFL) was a professional indoor football league that played four seasons from 2012 to 2015. Like the Lone Star Football League, the PIFL was mainly composed of teams formerly part of Southern Indoor Foo ...
successfully defeated the AFL's legal action against it in 1997, opening the possibility for other indoor football leagues to form. Only one significant aspect of the patent, the large rebound nets the AFL has used since its debut to keep balls in play, was fully protected; the patent expired in 2007, although no other professional indoor league has adopted rebound nets since. As of 2011, two national leagues (the AFL and the
Indoor Football League
The Indoor Football League (IFL) is a professional indoor American football league created in 2008 out of the merger between the Intense Football League and United Indoor Football. It has one of the largest number of currently active teams am ...
), along with several regional professional and semi-pro leagues, are in operation. As of 2011, no professional indoor football league has had any significant presence in Canada (despite an abundance of hockey arenas that are ideal for the game); only one indoor team, the AFL's short-lived
Toronto Phantoms
The Toronto Phantoms were a professional arena football team based in Toronto, Ontario. The team was a member of the Eastern Division of the National Conference of the Arena Football League (AFL). The team also previously operated in New York Ci ...
(2000 to 2002), has ever played its games in Canada. The all-female
Lingerie Football League
The Extreme Football League (X League) is an American women's semi-professional tackle football league.
The league was originally founded in 2009 as the Lingerie Football League (LFL), and later rebranded as the Legends Football League in 2013.
...
had operations in Canada from 2011 to 2014, but that league dropped to amateur level by the time the LFL entered the country.
Up until the 1970s, semiprofessional and minor football leagues would often develop lower end players into professional prospects. Though there are still numerous teams at the semi-pro level in both the United States and Canada, they have mostly dropped to regional amateur status, and they no longer develop professional prospects, in part due to the rise of indoor football.
Though Japan (
X-League) and Europe (
Austrian Football League
The Austrian Football League (AFL) is the highest level of American football in Austria founded in 1984.
The Austrian Football League (AFL) has always been considered among the best and strongest leagues in Europe. The league plays by rules based ...
and
German Football League
The German Football League (GFL) is an American football league in Germany and was formed in 1979. Playing rules are based on those of the American National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA. In 1999, the league switched its name from ''Ameri ...
) have professional football leagues composed primarily of national citizens along with a limited number of American Imports, these leagues are generally of a lower level of play than the Western Hemisphere counterparts and have only recently begun contributing players to the NFL on a regular basis.
Player development
Professional football is considered the highest level of competition in gridiron football. Whereas most of the other major sports leagues draw their players from the minor leagues, the NFL currently draws almost all of its players directly from
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
. College football, in turn, recruits players from
high school football
High school football (french: football au lycée) is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both countries, but its popularity is declining, part ...
, with most potential stars receiving
athletic scholarship
An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United Stat ...
s to play. The source for the vast majority of professional football players is the
Division I Bowl Subdivision
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic ...
, with most coming from the
five conferences with automatic bids into the
College Football Playoff
The College Football Playoff (CFP) is an annual postseason knockout invitational tournament to determine a national champion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the highest level ...
bowl game
In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivis ...
s. Under current regulations, players must be at least three years removed from high school graduation to qualify to play in the NFL. Because of these
barriers to entry
In theories of competition in economics, a barrier to entry, or an economic barrier to entry, is a fixed cost that must be incurred by a new entrant, regardless of production or sales activities, into a market that incumbents do not have or have ...
, players who do not play college football have very few options for breaking into the league.
The college football development system is a unique feature in the professional football system, stemming from the fact that the game of American football originated at the college level, unlike other sports that were products of independent clubs. Although ostensibly amateurs, college athletes are compensated with five years of free undergraduate college education (more than enough time to pursue a
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
), room and board for their time. As a result of the college system, first-time players (rookies) enter professional football older, more mature and more prepared for the professional game than players in other sports.
The Canadian Football League has a special requirement that a minimum of half of each team's roster be composed of persons who were Canadian citizens at the time they first joined the league (prior to 2014, the restrictions were much tighter in that the person also had to be resident in Canada since childhood). As such,
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
U Sports (stylized as U SPORTS) is the national sport governing body of university sport in Canada, comprising the majority of degree-granting universities in the country. Its equivalent body for organized sports at colleges in Canada is the Can ...
feeds players to the CFL to meet these quotas, much as the NCAA does in the United States. The remaining half of the roster may be filled by either Canadians or by ''internationals'' (formerly ''imports''; these are typically American players who play in the CFL).
The NFL has, over the course of its history, recruited
rugby union
Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...
,
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
and
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 k ...
players from other countries (particularly those who are retired from competition in their home countries) to play in the league, almost always as kickers and punters.
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is an integral part of professional football. Not only does it provide the sport with exposure to an audience wider than just the audience attending at the stadium, but it can also provide revenue in the form of rights fees.
The NFL relies on television for nearly half of its revenue; this is in part because the league only plays one game each week, leaving fewer opportunities for ticket sales than the other professional sports (in turn, however, NFL stadiums have among the highest per-game attendance thanks to large stadium capacities, figures only exceeded or matched by some of the major college football teams and by the
NASCAR Sprint Cup
The NASCAR Cup Series is the top racing series of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). The series began in 1949 as the Strictly Stock Division, and from 1950 to 1970 it was known as the Grand National Division. In 1971, ...
, both of which are also weekly events) and because the expense of the game (it has the largest rosters of any professional sport) makes the cost highly prohibitive. The NFL has sold broadcast rights to each of the
major television networks, who pay large annual fees on top of the cost of production for the rights to air the game. The networks make back much of their money through advertising and
retransmission consent
Retransmission consent is a provision of the 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act that requires cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to obtain permission from commer ...
fees. The use of multiple broadcasters dated to before the NFL's merger with 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. ...
; each competing league had its own broadcaster, both of which kept the rights to their respective conference after the merger, while additional networks were sold showcase packages of once-a-week games held at night.
In Canada, where the threat of competing sports leagues is far less, the CFL opts instead for an exclusive contract with
TSN, available only by subscription to a cable or satellite service, to carry all of the league's games. The
CFL on TSN
The ''CFL on TSN'' is TSN's presentation of the Canadian Football League. The Sports Network (TSN) has broadcast CFL games since the 1987 season and has been the exclusive broadcaster of all CFL games (including the playoffs and Grey Cup) sin ...
exclusive contract began in 2008; previously, like the NFL, it split its broadcasts up between two providers.
Other leagues have found it much more difficult to find an outlet on American television, much less one that pays a rights fee large enough to make it worthwhile. One of the reasons for the
United Football League's failure was its having to pay for television coverage instead of being paid for the rights to it, along with its use of networks that were not widely available. Similarly, the
Continental Football League only had one of its games televised nationally in its five-year existence, and the
American Football Association blamed its failure on an inability to secure television coverage.
Virtually all professional football teams broadcast at least some of their games on local radio.
Rules
The
rules of professional football are more likely to vary from league to league than the high school and college levels. Since interleague play is extremely rare, there is no need for a nationwide standard for all leagues, and each league will adopt and discard rules as they see fit. The
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...
had a patent on several of its rules that expired in 2007. Several professional leagues have experimented with rules in an effort to improve the quality of the game or to create a novelty. Nevertheless, the rules of professional football at the outdoor level are nearly identical to those at the high school and college levels, with some minor exceptions (such as the locations of
hash marks
In sports, a hash mark or hash line is a short line/bar marking that is painted perpendicular to the sidelines or side barricades, used to help referees and players recognize on-field locations and visually measure distances. Hash marks serve the ...
, procedures for
overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:
*by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society) ...
, and the number of feet required to be in-bounds to catch a
forward pass
In several forms of football, a forward pass is the throwing of the ball in the direction in which the offensive team is trying to move, towards the defensive team's goal line. The forward pass is one of the main distinguishers between gridiron ...
). Indoor football's rules are closely based on outdoor football but are heavily altered to compensate for the smaller field.
U.S. professional football history
The first professional football player
Professional football evolved from amateur "club" football, played by general interest
athletic clubs or associations. These clubs began playing football in the late 1870s, approximately ten years after the game took form in American colleges. Amateur club football established itself as a somewhat lower quality alternative to the more popular
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
; some of the better teams would play against college teams. Eventually, some ostensibly amateur teams would secretly begin paying players a small sum to cover their expenses on an under-the-table basis, or arrange for amateur athletes to receive jobs in a company connected to the team (the
Olympic Club
The Olympic Club is an sports club, athletic club and private social club in San Francisco, San Francisco, California.
First named the "San Francisco Olympic Club", it is the oldest sports club, athletic club in the United States. Established o ...
of San Francisco, California is believed to have done the latter, thus creating the designation of "
semi-pro
''Semi-Pro'' is a 2008 American sports comedy film. The film was directed by Kent Alterman in his directorial debut, written by Scot Armstrong, and produced by Jimmy Miller. It stars Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, André Benjamin and Maura Tier ...
" football in 1890, before football had gone professional); in most cases, the practice was within the rules of amateurism at the time. Many of the early semi-professional and professional teams were
works team
A works team (sometimes factory team, company team) is a sports team that is financed and run by a manufacturer or other business. Sometimes, works teams contain or are entirely made up of employees of the supporting company.
Association footb ...
s consisting mostly of employees of the companies that sponsored them.
The first record of an American football player receiving "pay for play" came in 1892 with
Pudge Heffelfinger's $500 contract to play in a game for the
Allegheny Athletic Association
The Allegheny Athletic Association was an athletic club that fielded the first ever professional American football player and later the first fully professional football team. The organization was founded in 1890 as a regional athletic club in A ...
against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, with the second being
Ben "Sport" Donnelly
Benjamin Shenstone "Sport" Donnelly (October 18, 1869 – August 3, 1922) was an American football player and coach. He was the second-ever known professional football player, behind Pudge Heffelfinger. He was paid $250 for one game on November ...
's $250 contract to play for the same team the next week; the sums were very large by the standards of the day, and like most payment arrangements, both players denied any payment ever took place for much of their lives. For several years afterwards, individual players and sometimes entire teams received compensation to play in "barnstorming" type games without rigid schedules and against a variety of opponents.
John Brallier
John Kinport "Sal" Brallier (December 12, 1876 – September 17, 1960) was one of the first professional American football players. He was nationally acknowledged as the first openly paid professional football player when he was given $10 to play f ...
became the first open professional after accepting $10 to play for the
Latrobe Athletic Association
The Latrobe Athletic Association was a professional football team located in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, from 1895 until 1909. A member of the unofficial Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit, the team is best known for being the first f ...
; Latrobe became the first all-professional club soon after.
William Chase Temple
William Chase Temple (December 28, 1862 – January 9, 1917) was a coal, citrus, and lumber baron during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from baseball's N ...
would become the first man to directly bankroll a football team himself when he assumed "ownership" of the
Duquesne Country and Athletic Club
The Duquesne Country and Athletic Club was a professional football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1895 until 1900. The team was considered one of the best, if not the best, professional football teams in the country from 1898 until 1 ...
in either 1898 or 1899. Throughout the 1890s, the
Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit The Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit was a loose association of American football clubs that operated from 1890 to approximately 1940. Originally amateur, professionalism was introduced to the circuit in 1892; cost pressures pushed ...
would act as the ''de facto''
major league (and, in fact, the ''only'' professional circuit) for football in the United States; it, like many of its successors, was not a "league" in the modern sense of a formalized organization, but rather an informal group of teams in free association with each other and any other team willing to play them.
The oldest existing professional football club is the
Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division, and play t ...
, a current member of the National Football League. The Cardinals organization, which was originally based on Racine Street in Chicago, has operated near-continuously since 1913, but counts an earlier team that played from 1898 to 1906 as part of its history. The
Watertown Red & Black
The Watertown Red & Black is a semi-professional American football team based in Watertown, New York. The team is the oldest active semi-pro football team in the United States, and can trace its history to 1896, although the Professional Footba ...
is the oldest semi-professional club that is still in operation, tracing its history to 1896.
Early leagues: 1902–1919
While the practice of professional and semi-pro teams playing college and amateur teams was common in the 1890s, the
Amateur Athletic Union
The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is an amateur sports organization based in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs. It has ...
began pressuring and threatening college teams with the loss of amateur status if they did so. Over the course of the first few years of the 20th Century, college and professional football began to diverge, until the
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
formed in 1906, giving college football a separate sanctioning body. The stigma of being a professional athlete, and the threat it was to one's amateur status, meant that
pseudonyms and nicknames were commonplace among professional players through the early part of the 20th century, in the hopes that covert professionals would not have themselves outed in a publicly released roster. Very few pro football players played under their given first names (John Brallier was a prominent exception).
The next step in pro football stemmed from an unusual source: baseball. Teams from each championship city (Pittsburgh and Philadelphia), three in all, received support from baseball teams in their cities and formed the
National Football League of 1902, the first all-professional league. The league hoped to draw fans by featuring stars such as
Rube Waddell
George Edward Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). A left-hander, he played for 13 years, with the Louisville Colonels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago Orphans in the National ...
and
Christy Mathewson
Christopher Mathewson (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1925), nicknamed "Big Six", "the Christian Gentleman", "Matty", and "the Gentleman's Hurler", was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher, who played 17 seasons with the New York Gia ...
touring Pennsylvania and New York. It was during this time that
Blondy Wallace
Charles Edgar "Blondy" Wallace (died March 5, 1937) was an early professional football player and later convicted criminal during the Prohibition Era. He was a 240-pound, former Walter Camp second-team All-American tackle from the University ...
emerged as the biggest, and most controversial, name in professional football. The league didn't draw as many fans as hoped, but promoter Tom O'Rourke considered the league to be the best teams in America. O'Rourke brought a coalition of the two Philadelphia teams to his
World Series of Football
The World Series of Soccer was a series of club games hosted by Major League Soccer from 2005 to 2007. It was used by MLS to provide its teams with opportunities to compete against top international teams.
Previous uses of name
The term, World S ...
and immediately labeled them the favorite for the tournament, bestowing the team
home-field advantage
In team sports, the term home advantage – also called home ground, home field, home-field advantage, home court, home-court advantage, defender's advantage or home-ice advantage – describes the benefit that the home team is said to g ...
and naming it
"New York." New York was upset by the
Syracuse Athletic Club in the first round.
An agreement between the baseball leagues to form modern
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
led directly to the end of the first NFL. From there, professional football's focus moved north and west, as teams such as the
Massillon Tigers
The Massillon Tigers were an early professional football team from Massillon, Ohio. Playing in the "Ohio League", the team was a rival to the pre-National Football League version of the Canton Bulldogs. The Tigers won Ohio League championships i ...
and the short-lived
Franklin Athletic Club
The Franklin Athletic Club was an early professional football team based in Franklin, Pennsylvania. It was considered the top team in professional football in 1903, by becoming the US Football Champions and winning the 1903 World Series of Foot ...
went on buying sprees in an effort to defeat local teams. Massillon's buying spree led to the rise of the
Ohio League
The Ohio League was an informal and loose association of American football clubs active between 1902 and 1919 that competed for the Ohio Independent Championship (OIC). As the name implied, its teams were mostly based in Ohio. It is the direct pr ...
, drawing much of the top professional football talent in America from Pennsylvania to Ohio, including Wallace, who signed with the
Canton Bulldogs. Ohio pioneered the concept of playing games on Sundays to avoid competition with college football games; this was illegal in Pennsylvania (as well as New York City) due to still-existing
blue laws, but eventually became the professional standard. A
fabricated betting scandal, coupled with a lack of competitive games and increasing price tags, effectively ruined the Ohio League by 1907. Professional football took a step back as the Ohio League relied more on local, cut-rate talent, such as player-promoter
George Parratt, and its Pennsylvania counterpart also steered clear of major spending.
Another bidding war was sparked in 1915, when a revived Bulldogs signed multi-sport athletic superstar
Jim Thorpe
James Francis Thorpe ( Sac and Fox (Sauk): ''Wa-Tho-Huk'', translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native ...
to a contract. During the late 1910s, the Ohio League not only had to compete among its own teams for talent, but also against leagues in Chicago and the
New York Pro Football League
The New York Pro Football League (NYPFL) was a professional American football league, active in the 1910s, and based in upstate New York, primarily Western New York. Between 1920 and 1921, the league's best teams were absorbed into the National Foo ...
. New York, with future NFL teams such as the
Buffalo Prospects,
Tonawanda Kardex Tonawanda may refer to:
*Tonawanda (CDP), New York, consisting of the Town of Tonawanda less the Village of Kenmore
*Tonawanda (city), New York, officially City of Tonawanda, bordered on three sides by the Town of Tonawanda
*Tonawanda (town), New Y ...
, and
Rochester Jeffersons
The Rochester Jeffersons from Rochester, New York played from 1898 to 1925, including play in the National Football League from 1920 to 1925.
History
Formed as an amateur outfit by a rag-tag group of Rochester-area teenagers after the turn of t ...
, introduced the playoff tournament to professional football; Buffalo won the last contest in 1919. World War I and the
1918 flu pandemic
The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
caused a severe disruption in professional football, which shut down most teams but allowed those that could continue (including most of the New York squads) to pick up the talent that stayed stateside, effectively ending the Ohio League's decade-long monopoly on pro football talent.
Barnstorming
Barnstorming was a form of entertainment in which stunt pilots performed tricks individually or in groups that were called flying circuses. Devised to "impress people with the skill of pilots and the sturdiness of planes," it became popular in t ...
tours between the circuits, along with the continuing bidding wars, led to the regional circuits forming connections and laying the groundwork for the first truly national professional league.
American Professional Football Association: 1920–1921
A year after the Buffalo Prospects won the first Professional Football championship game, teams from the Ohio League organized to form the new American Professional Football Conference; two months later, adding teams from the other regional circuits surrounding Ohio, the league changed its name to the
American Professional Football Association (APFA). In an effort to expand beyond the midwest, the league staged a showcase game between Canton and Buffalo at the
Polo Grounds in New York City (Buffalo won) in December 1920. The league did not have a championship game or playoff, setting its championship with a vote of the league owners. The
Akron Pros had the best record in 1920, and the
Chicago Staleys
The Chicago Bears American football franchise is a charter member of the National Football League (NFL), and has played in all of the league's 100 seasons. The team has captured nine NFL championships – eight NFL championships and one Super ...
were the 1921 "champions", albeit
not without controversy.
National Football League: 1922–1932
In 1922, the APFA changed its name to 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 ...
. While the Ohio League mostly ceased to exist after the foundation of the NFL (other than a few independent teams such as the
Ironton Tanks and the pre-NFL
Portsmouth Spartans
The professional American football team now known as the Detroit Lions previously played in Portsmouth, Ohio, as the Portsmouth Spartans, from its founding in 1928 to its relocation to Detroit in 1934. Originally drawing players from defunct indepe ...
), the other regional leagues continued. The New York league continued throughout the 1920s, outlasting many of the teams that it had contributed to the NFL, albeit without championships. Western Pennsylvania's league lasted until 1940. 1924 saw the foundation of eastern Pennsylvania's
Anthracite League, the last regional "major league." The Anthracite League was won by the
Pottsville Maroons
The Pottsville Maroons were an American football team based in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, in the northeastern part of the state. Founded in 1920, they played in the National Football League (NFL) from 1925 to 1928. In 1929 they relocated to Bosto ...
, who, after one year (and winning the league title), jumped to the NFL. The Anthracite League remanifested itself as the
Eastern League of Professional Football
The Eastern League of Professional Football was an american football minor league formed in 1926 by independent clubs from Pennsylvania and New Jersey (separate from the ''" Eastern Pennsylvania Football League"'' which played in the late 1930s a ...
, an explicitly minor league, in 1926 and 1927.
From 1922 through 1932, the NFL still declared as champions the team with the best record. There were no set schedules, and each team did not play the same number of games: some teams played against college or other amateur teams. The confusion reached a peak in 1925, when the aforementioned Maroons were hailed as the NFL champions by several newspapers after Pottsville defeated the Chicago Cardinals on December 6, even though there were still two weeks left in the season. This led to other teams scrambling to add extra games, including the
Chicago Cardinals
The professional American football team now known as the Arizona Cardinals previously played in Chicago, Illinois, as the Chicago Cardinals from 1898 to 1959 before relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1960 through 1987 seasons.
Roots ...
, who won two 'extra' games and claimed the championship. In the melee, the league cancelled games and suspended Pottsville's franchise. Through the 1920s, the smaller cities gave up on top-level pro football, while larger cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia saw teams take root there. This portion of the NFL's existence saw the admission of the
Boston Braves, owned by
George Preston Marshall
George Preston Marshall (October 11, 1896 – August 9, 1969) was an American businessman best known for founding the Washington Commanders, an American football franchise belonging to the National Football League (NFL). He founded the team as ...
who was to exert major positive and negative influences on the league.
First American Football League: 1926
In 1926, teams from nine cities ranging from the
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Amer ...
to the
Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls are an American professional basketball team based in Chicago. The Bulls compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded on January 1 ...
to the
Los Angeles Wildcats Los Angeles Wildcats is a name shared by several American football teams from Los Angeles:
*Los Angeles Wildcats (AFL)
The Los Angeles Wildcats (also reported in various media as Pacific Coast Wildcats, Los Angeles Wilson Wildcats and Wilson's ...
(actually based in Chicago) formed the first
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. ...
in competition with the NFL. Because of the 1925 shenanigans, the NFL's
Rock Island Independents left the seven-year-old league to join the AFL. The major attraction of the new league was
Red Grange
Harold Edward "Red" Grange (June 13, 1903 – January 28, 1991), nicknamed "the Galloping Ghost" and "the Wheaton Iceman", was an American football halfback for the University of Illinois, the Chicago Bears, and the short-lived New York Yankees ...
of the Yankees, but the league folded after just one year, with the Yankees being absorbed into the NFL.
National Football League: 1933–1945
In 1933, the league divided into the Eastern and Western divisions, and finally instituted a championship game between the division winners. Each team played from 10 to 13 games per season during this period, and by 1945, the league had two five-team divisions, with each team playing a 10-game regular season schedule. In 1936, to select and assign graduating college players to particular Pro teams, the first Professional Football '
entry draft' was held. The
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
's
Heisman Trophy
The Heisman Memorial Trophy (usually known colloquially as the Heisman Trophy or The Heisman) is awarded annually to the most outstanding player in college football. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and hard ...
-winning running back
Jay Berwanger
John Jacob "Jay" Berwanger (March 19, 1914 – June 26, 2002) was an American college football player and referee. In 1935, Berwanger was the first recipient of the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, renamed the Heisman Trophy the following year. At ...
was selected first overall by the
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays ...
. However, Berwanger chose not to play Professional Football. The league was dominated by the
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...
,
Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...
, and
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...
, with stars like quarterback
Sid Luckman
Sidney Luckman (November 21, 1916 – July 5, 1998) was an American professional American football, football player who was a quarterback for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) from 1939 Chicago Bears season, 1939 through 19 ...
(Bears); and fullbacks
Tuffy Leemans
Alphonse Emil "Tuffy" Leemans (November 12, 1912 – January 19, 1979) was an American football fullback and halfback who played on both offense and defense. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1978 and was named in 1969 to th ...
(Giants) and
Clarke Hinkle
William Clarke Hinkle (April 10, 1909 – November 9, 1988) was an American football player. He played on offense as a fullback, defense as a linebacker, and special teams as a kicker and punter. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame ...
(Packers). Even with the stellar fullback
Cliff Battles
Clifford Franklin Battles (May 1, 1910 – April 28, 1981) was an American football halfback in the National Football League (NFL). Battles was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968.
Early life
Battles was born in Akron, Ohio, the ...
, Marshall's team, now called the Redskins, was driven out of Boston in 1936 by a competing league, and he moved his franchise to Washington, D.C. as the
Washington Redskins
The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) N ...
. Marshall introduced the marching band and a team song to Professional Football, along with other promotional efforts. However, he also refused to have black players on his team, and his influence resulted in the entire NFL excluding blacks after 1934. Also joining the NFL around this time was one of the last teams from Pennsylvania's independent era, the
Rooneys; they became the Pittsburgh Pirates when they joined the NFL in 1933, later renaming themselves the
Steelers as part of
a complicated franchise swap and abortive merger attempt in 1940.
In 1939,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
broadcast the first-ever televised Professional Football game from
Ebbets Field
Ebbets Field was a Major League Baseball stadium in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. It is mainly known for having been the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team of the National League (1913–1957). It was also home to five p ...
, an October 22 contest between the
Brooklyn Dodgers
The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1884 as a member of the American Association (19th century), American Association before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the ...
and the
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays ...
. There were two fixed monochrome iconoscope cameras and a single play-by-play commentator,
Skip Walz.
Although the NFL as a whole continued to play through World War II, the schedule was reduced, rosters were seriously impacted, and the Steelers were forced to merge operations with other NFL teams in
1943
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January 1 – WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad, with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured.
* January 4 – ...
and
1944
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January 2 – WWII:
** Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command French Army B, part of the Sixth United States Army Group in Nor ...
, while the
Cleveland Rams
The Cleveland Rams were a professional American football team that played in Cleveland from 1936 to 1945. The Rams competed in the second American Football League (AFL) for the 1936 season and the National Football League (NFL) from 1937 to 194 ...
were forced to suspend operations in 1943.
Second American Football League: 1936–1937
In 1936, a second
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. ...
of six teams was formed to challenge the NFL. It included another
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Amer ...
team, as well as the Cleveland Rams, the predecessor to today's
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams play ...
. Future
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. ...
(1960–1969) coach and Hall of Famer
Sid Gillman
Sidney Gillman (October 26, 1911 – January 3, 2003) was an American football player, coach and executive. Gillman's insistence on stretching the football field by throwing deep downfield passes, instead of short passes to running backs or w ...
played his only year of Professional Football with the Rams. Before this AFL's second year, the Rams jumped to the NFL and were replaced by the first Professional Football team to actually play its home games on the West Coast, the
Los Angeles Bulldogs
The Los Angeles Bulldogs were a professional American football team that competed from 1936 to 1948 (the last year as the Long Beach Bulldogs). Formed with the intention of joining the National Football League in 1937 (and turned down in favor of ...
, who had several stars including quarterback
Harry Newman
Harry Lawrence Newman (September 5, 1909 – May 2, 2000) was an All-Pro American football quarterback. He played for the University of Michigan Wolverines (1930–32), for whom in 1932 he was a unanimous first-team All-American, and the reci ...
and end
Bill Moore. The
Boston Shamrocks, with all-star end
Bill Fleming, outdrew the NFL's Redskins in 1936, causing George Preston Marshall to move the team to Washington. However, the league as a whole could not compete, and folded after the 1937 season.
Also in 1936, the
American Association American Association may refer to:
Baseball
* American Association (1882–1891), a major league active from 1882 to 1891
* American Association (1902–1997), a minor league active from 1902 to 1962 and 1969 to 1997
* American Association of Profe ...
was founded as a minor league. It played for five seasons, suspending operations for World War II, and returned under the "American Football League" name in 1946 before sputtering to a collapse in 1950.
Third American Football League: 1940–1941
Still another try at an
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. ...
was made in 1940, with five franchises, including a third
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Amer ...
team. The league was the first major Professional Football league to complete a double round robin schedule, in which each team played each other twice. The onset of World War II and the resultant draft dried up the source of players for professional football and the new league did not have enough resources to continue.
Also forming in 1940 was the
Pacific Coast Professional Football League
The Pacific Coast Professional Football League (PCPFL), also known as the Pacific Coast Football League (PCFL) and Pacific Coast League (PCL) was a professional American football minor league based in California. It operated from 1940 through 194 ...
, the first professional league on the West Coast. The PCPFL was notable for its continuous operation through World War II (it even
spun off a second league in 1944) and for its open embrace of
black talent that had been blacklisted from the NFL since the 1930s. Along with the American Association and the
Dixie League, the PCPFL were members of the
Association of Professional Football Leagues, the first
minor league compact with the NFL. The PCPFL folded in 1948 after years of declining attendance and the arrival of the NFL in its flagship Los Angeles market.
All-America Football Conference: 1946–1949
A year after World War II, another new Professional Football league was formed – the
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 ...
(AAFC). It attracted some of the nation's best football players and posed a serious challenge to the NFL. Like the pre-war AFL, it used a double round robin schedule. The league was dominated by a franchise owned and coached by
Paul Brown
Paul Eugene Brown (September 7, 1908 – August 5, 1991) was an American football coach and executive in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and National Football League (NFL). Brown was both the co-founder and first coach of the Clevela ...
: the
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference ( ...
, a team that would win the league's championship every year of its existence. The Browns featured players such as fullback
Marion Motley
Marion Motley (June 5, 1920 – June 27, 1999) was an American professional football player who was a halfback and linebacker for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and National Football League (NFL). He was a le ...
, quarterback
Otto Graham
Otto Everett Graham Jr. (December 6, 1921 – December 17, 2003) was an American professional football player who was a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and National Football League (NFL). Graha ...
and kicker
Lou Groza
Louis Roy Groza (January 25, 1924 – November 29, 2000), nicknamed "the Toe", was an American professional football player who was a placekicker and offensive tackle while playing his entire career for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America F ...
, while the
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...
had running back
Elroy 'Crazylegs' Hirsch and the
Baltimore Colts (not related to today's
Indianapolis Colts
The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. The Colts compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) South division. Since the 2008 ...
, which began play in Baltimore in 1953) fielded quarterback
Y. A. Tittle.
Paul Brown made many innovations to the game on and off the field, including year-round coaching staffs, precision pass patterns, face masks, and the use of "messenger guards". He was the first coach to film the opposition and break down those game films in a classroom setting, also attributed to him. While the NFL was still segregated, the AAFC's Browns became the first modern Professional Football team to sign black players.
Although many of its teams outdrew NFL teams, by 1949 the AAFC's costs had risen so steeply that the league agreed to a 'merger' with the NFL. It was more of a 'swallowing' of the AAFC, with only the Browns, 49ers, and Colts being admitted to the established league, even though the
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. ...
drew good crowds and raised funds from citizens to back the franchise. Players from the Bills and the other AAFC teams not 'merged' were distributed among the NFL teams. Motley, Graham, Groza, Hirsch and Tittle all starred in the NFL after the 'merger'.
Of the three AAFC teams that joined the NFL:
* The Colts lasted only one year in the NFL; the
second Baltimore Colts were officially a new franchise launched in 1953, though tracing their history through a series of teams dating back to 1919, before the formation of the NFL.
* The Browns remained in Cleveland until
their controversial move to Baltimore, becoming the
Baltimore Ravens
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The team plays its ...
, for the
1996 season. The controversy was ultimately settled by granting Cleveland a new franchise, which began play in
1999, that took the Browns name and official lineage.
* The 49ers have remained in the NFL and San Francisco since their admission to the league. They moved within the
Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
media market to
a new stadium in the
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
community of
Santa Clara in 2014.
National Football League: 1946–1959
Following five years of what the league perceived to be weak leadership on behalf of commissioner
Elmer Layden
Elmer Francis Layden (May 4, 1903 – June 30, 1973) was an American football player, coach, college athletics administrator, and professional sports executive. He played college football at the University of Notre Dame where he starred at full ...
(of
Four Horsemen
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Christian scriptures, first appearing in the Book of Revelation, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos.
Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand tha ...
fame), league officials appointed Philadelphia Eagles owner-founder
Bert Bell
De Benneville "Bert" Bell (February 25, 1895 – October 11, 1959) was the National Football League (NFL) commissioner from 1946 until his death in 1959. As commissioner, he introduced competitive parity into the NFL to improve the league's comme ...
as commissioner in 1946.
After twelve years without black players in the NFL, the
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams play ...
added them in 1946, as they were required by their stadium lease to integrate the team. The league had two five-team divisions, each team playing an unwieldy 11-game schedule, with some teams playing more home games than others. They increased to twelve games the following year, partly because of the success of the rival AAFC's 14-game format. After the AAFC folded, the NFL added three of its teams, for a total of thirteen, but maintained the 14-game format. The first year after admitting the
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference ( ...
, the NFL was humbled by having the Browns, a team from what it had ridiculed as an inferior league, win its championship. The Browns went on to be NFL champions in three of their first six years in the league. In 1958, the
Baltimore Colts defeated the
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...
23–17 in professional football's first sudden-death championship game, and repeated the victory against the same team in the 1959 NFL title game, this time by a score of 31–16. The Colts had folded after the 1950 season and from 1951 through 1959 the NFL had twelve teams, six each in the East and West conferences. The league during this period featured not only star players absorbed from the AAFC 'merger' but others such as halfback
Frank Gifford
Francis Newton Gifford (August 16, 1930 – August 9, 2015) was an American football player, actor, and television sports commentator. After a 12-year playing career as a halfback and flanker for the New York Giants of the National Foo ...
(
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...
); the
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays ...
' quarterback
Norm Van Brocklin
Norman Mack Van Brocklin (March 15, 1926 – May 2, 1983), nicknamed "The Dutchman", was an American football quarterback and coach who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 12 seasons. He spent his first nine seasons with the Los An ...
and receiver
Tommy McDonald; and the Colts' quarterback
Johnny Unitas
John Constantine Unitas (; May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 ...
and running back
Lenny Moore
Leonard Edward Moore (born November 25, 1933) is an American former professional football player who played both halfback and flanker in the National Football League (NFL) for the Baltimore Colts from 1956 to 1967. He played college football f ...
. Television coverage of the league was spotty, with some teams starting in 1950 to have individual arrangements with the
Dumont Network
The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being ...
and NBC. CBS began to televise selected NFL regular season games in 1956, but there was no league-wide, national television (the Browns, for instance, held out and syndicated games themselves until the early 1960s when a league-wide contract was imposed).
Fourth American Football League: 1960–1969
By the start of the 1960s, the NFL was complacent in its dominance of the market for Professional Football fans, and had little incentive to expand that market. The AAFC was history, and the NFL had chosen not to capitalize on the boost it had received from the 1958 Colts-Giants sudden-death game. It was content with a 12-team league playing a 12-game schedule and featured "ball-control" football. When Texas oilmen
Lamar Hunt
Lamar Hunt (August 2, 1932 – December 13, 2006) was an American businessman most notable for his promotion of American football, soccer, and tennis in the United States.
He was the principal founder of the American Football League (AFL) and ...
and
Bud Adams
Kenneth Stanley "Bud" Adams, Jr. (January 3, 1923 – October 21, 2013) was an American businessman who was the founder and owner of the Tennessee Titans, a National Football League franchise. A member of the Cherokee Nation who originally mad ...
tried to purchase existing NFL franchises to move to Texas, or to establish new NFL franchises there, they were told that the conservative NFL was not interested. The result was that Hunt and Adams joined with six other businessmen to form the fourth
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. ...
(1960–1969). The league started out by signing half of the NFL's 1960 first-round draft choices including the
Houston Oilers
The Houston Oilers were a professional American football team that played in Houston from its founding in 1960 to 1996 before relocating to Memphis, and later Nashville, Tennessee becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Oilers began play in 1960 a ...
'
Billy Cannon
William Abb Cannon (August 2, 1937 – May 20, 2018) was an American football halfback, fullback and tight end who played professionally in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL). He attended Louisiana State Un ...
, and never slowed down. With future Hall of Fame Coaches
Hank Stram
Henry Louis Stram (; January 3, 1923 – July 4, 2005) was an American football coach. He is best known for his 15-year tenure with the Dallas Texans / Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NF ...
(
Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs) and
Sid Gillman
Sidney Gillman (October 26, 1911 – January 3, 2003) was an American football player, coach and executive. Gillman's insistence on stretching the football field by throwing deep downfield passes, instead of short passes to running backs or w ...
(
LA/San Diego Chargers) as well as others like the
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. ...
'
Lou Saban
Louis Henry Saban (October 13, 1921 – March 29, 2009) was an American football player and coach. He played for Indiana University in college and as a professional for the Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference between 1946 a ...
, the league offered a more risk-oriented on-field approach that appealed to fans. The AFL also actively recruited from
predominantly black colleges and other small colleges, a source the NFL virtually ignored. This led to a higher percentage of minority players, as well as several firsts, such as the first black number one draft choice (
Buck Buchanan, Chiefs); the first black
middle linebacker
Linebacker (LB) is a playing position in gridiron football. Linebackers are members of the defensive team, and line up three to five yards behind the line of scrimmage and the defensive linemen. They are the "middle ground" of defenders, ...
,
Willie Lanier
Willie Edward Lanier (born August 21, 1945) is an American former professional football player who was a middle linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs from 1967 through 1977. He won postseason honors for eight consecutive years, making the Amer ...
, Chiefs; and the first modern black starting quarterback (
Marlin Briscoe
Marlin Oliver Briscoe (September 10, 1945 – June 27, 2022), nicknamed "the Magician", was an American professional football player who was a quarterback and wide receiver in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football Leagu ...
, Broncos).
The AFL was similar to the AAFC in that it offered innovations, like a return to the double round robin schedule introduced by the earlier league and had eight teams in two divisions like the AAFC. The AFL also introduced official scoreboard clocks, player names on jerseys, the two-point PAT conversion and important off-the field elements such as gate and TV revenue-sharing and national TV contracts. The AFL developed the first ever cooperative television plan for professional football, in which the proceeds of the contract were divided equally among member clubs. ABC and the AFL also introduced moving, on-field cameras (as opposed to the fixed midfield cameras of CBS and the NFL), and were the first to have players "miked" during broadcast games.
But the American Football League was different from the AAFC in its overall competitive balance. While the Browns-dominated AAFC had had the same champion every year, six out of the
Original Eight AFL teams won at least one AFL championship, and all but one (the lone exception being the
Denver Broncos
The Denver Broncos are a professional American football franchise based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The team is headquart ...
) played in at least one post-season game. In addition to traditional eastern cities, it placed teams in Texas, in the West with the Broncos,
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Raide ...
and the Chargers, and eventually in the Midwest
Kansas City
The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...
and the deep South
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
. The league forced a merger with its rival, and made possible the
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
at the end of the 1966 season. Although it lost the first two, by its demise it had beaten two NFL teams proclaimed as "the best in history" to win the final two World Championship games between two Professional Football league champions. The decade ended with the AFL retaining its original franchises, plus two expansion teams, and those ten teams represented the first time a major sports league had merged with another without losing a franchise.
The legacy of the American Football League is that virtually every aspect of today's wildly popular professional football, on and off the field, can be traced to innovations developed by the AFL and adopted by the NFL.
National Football League: 1960–1969
After the sudden death of commissioner
Bert Bell
De Benneville "Bert" Bell (February 25, 1895 – October 11, 1959) was the National Football League (NFL) commissioner from 1946 until his death in 1959. As commissioner, he introduced competitive parity into the NFL to improve the league's comme ...
in 1959,
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams play ...
general manager
Pete Rozelle
Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle (; March 1, 1926 – December 6, 1996) was an American businessman and executive. Rozelle served as the commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) for nearly thirty years, from January 1960 until his retirement i ...
was named his replacement after a contentious, eight-day, 23-ballot stalemated election in which the league's favored candidate, Marshall Leahy, repeatedly fell one vote short of the supermajority of votes necessary to be elected commissioner. Whereas his predecessors generally put their league offices in the city of the teams they previously represented (the key issue that prevented Leahy from becoming Commissioner, as he was previously an employee of the
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...
and was planning to move league offices to the West Coast), Rozelle instead agreed to establish a permanent office in New York City, where the league remains to this day.
The 1960 NFL had ten teams, only two south of Washington, D.C. and/or west of Chicago (the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers), and none in the
Southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
, where college football still dominated. Though it had rebuffed efforts to move or expand, it immediately was put on the defensive by the new AFL, first causing the owners of the proposed Minnesota franchise in that league to renege for an NFL franchise to start in 1961, and immediately establishing the Cowboys in previously rejected Dallas, as competition to Hunt's
Dallas Texans Dallas Texans may refer to:
American football
*Dallas Texans (NFL), 1952 team in the National Football League
*Dallas Texans (AFL), 1960–1962 team that is now the Kansas City Chiefs
* Dallas Texans (arena), 1990–1993 Arena Football League team ...
. The NFL also expanded its footprint by moving the
Chicago Cardinals
The professional American football team now known as the Arizona Cardinals previously played in Chicago, Illinois, as the Chicago Cardinals from 1898 to 1959 before relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1960 through 1987 seasons.
Roots ...
to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960. Later, it impeded the AFL's planned expansion to Atlanta by offering that city's investor the
Falcons
Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene.
Adult falcons ...
' NFL franchise. Ironically, the Falcons' replacement in the AFL were the
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team pla ...
who have appeared in five Super Bowls, winning two, while the Falcons were losers in their two appearances. Star NFL players during this period included the Browns' fullback
Jim Brown
James Nathaniel Brown (born February 17, 1936) is a former American football player, sports analyst and actor. He played as a fullback for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from 1957 through 1965. Considered to be one ...
; the
Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...
' quarterback
Bart Starr
Bryan Bartlett Starr (January 9, 1934 – May 26, 2019) was an American professional football quarterback and head coach for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at the University of Alab ...
, fullback
Jim Taylor and halfback
Paul Hornung
Paul Vernon Hornung (December 23, 1935 – November 13, 2020), nicknamed "the Golden Boy", was an American professional football player who was a Hall of Fame running back for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL) from 195 ...
; halfback
Gale Sayers
Gale Eugene Sayers (May 30, 1943September 23, 2020) was an American professional football player who was both a halfback and return specialist in the National Football League (NFL). In a relatively brief but highly productive NFL career, Sa ...
of the
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...
; Cowboys receiver
Bob Hayes
Robert Lee Hayes (December 20, 1942 – September 18, 2002), nicknamed "Bullet Bob", was an Olympic gold medalist sprinter who then became an American football split end in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys (for 11 seasons). ...
; the
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays ...
' and the Redskins'
Charley Taylor
Charles Robert Taylor (September 28, 1941 – February 19, 2022) was an American professional football player who was a wide receiver for 13 seasons with the Washington Redskins of the National Football League (NFL). After playing college foo ...
. The AFL's influence on the NFL was evident in several ways: in 1962, the NFL emulated the junior league by arranging its own league-wide national television contract, with CBS; and late in the 'sixties, the NFL began recognizing the wide talent pool the AFL had tapped in
small and predominantly black colleges, and it, too, started scouting and signing from those schools.
Tired of raids on players and escalating salaries, in the mid-1960s, certain NFL owners secretly approached AFL principals, seeking a merger of the two leagues. The merger was agreed to in 1966, with a championship game to be played between the league titlists, and a merged schedule beginning with the 1970 season, when existing TV contracts could be re-worked.
The decade was dominated in the NFL by the Packers, who won four NFL titles, and by the mid-to late 1960s their head coach
Vince Lombardi
Vincent Thomas Lombardi (June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) was an American football coach and executive in the National Football League (NFL). Lombardi is considered by many to be the greatest coach in football history, and he is recognized a ...
had fashioned a team that, with its ball-control style, would overpower the NFL and carry on to defeat AFL opponents in the first two AFL-NFL Championship Games after the 1966 and 1967 Professional Football seasons. The NFL champions in 1968, the Colts, and in 1969 the
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansion ...
, were each in turn considered to be "the best team in the history of the NFL." By 1969, the NFL had grown to 16 teams, with four teams directly attributable to the existence of the AFL: the Vikings, Cowboys, and Falcons, added to compete with the AFL, and the
New Orleans Saints
The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...
, who were added as a reward to Louisiana federal legislators for their support of PL 89-800, which permitted the merger. Likewise, the AFL-NFL wars brought two teams to Missouri (one in each league), marking the first time NFL teams had played in the state since the 1930s.
Minor Leagues: 1961–1973
Concurrently with the AFL and NFL rivalry, several minor leagues thrived in this era as well. The
United Football League lasted from 1961 to 1964 and was concentrated in the midwest. However, in 1962 it was quickly eclipsed by the
Atlantic Coast Football League
The Atlantic Coast Football League (ACFL) was a professional american football minor league that operated from 1962 to 1973. Until 1969, many of its franchises had working agreements with NFL and AFL teams to serve as farm clubs. The league paid ...
, which was run by the same people (the Rosentover family) as the previous American Association of the 1930s. When the UFL folded, and the Newark Bears of the ACFL unsuccessfully applied to join the AFL, two new leagues formed: the
Professional Football League of America
The Professional Football League of America (PFLA) was an American football minor league that operated in the Midwest region of the United States from 1965 through 1967. With franchises based in the Midwest, the league played three seasons befor ...
(PFLA), which ran from 1965 to 1967, and the more prominent
Continental Football League (ContFL), which ran from 1965 to 1969. The ACFL lost three of its best teams to the ContFL, but survived. The ContFL and ACFL had different strategies: the ContFL had major-league aspirations, while the ACFL was happy as a developmental league and (like previous leagues run by the Rosentovers) allowed its teams to become farm teams to the AFL and NFL teams (for instance, the
Hartford Knights
The Hartford Knights were a professional American football team based in Hartford, Connecticut. They began play in 1968 as a member of the Atlantic Coast Football League, replacing the Hartford Charter Oaks. For the 1969 season, they became the af ...
were a farm team to the AFL's
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. ...
). The ContFL arguably had better talent that went on to NFL and CFL stardom (
Ken Stabler
Kenneth Michael Stabler (December 25, 1945 – July 8, 2015) was an American professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 17 seasons, primarily with the Oakland Raiders. Nicknamed "Snake", he played col ...
,
Don Jonas
Donald Walter Jonas (born December 3, 1938) is a former American football player and coach. Jonas played in the American minor leagues (semi-pro) and the Canadian Football League. He was also the first head coach of the UCF Knights (1979–1981).
...
,
Johnnie Walton
John Booker Walton (born October 4, 1947) is a former American football player and coach. He played professionally as a quarterback in the Continental Football League (CFL), World Football League (WFL), National Football League (NFL), and Unit ...
and
Sam Wyche
Samuel David Wyche (; January 5, 1945 – January 2, 2020) was an American football quarterback and coach. He was a quarterback and head coach for the Cincinnati Bengals and a quarterbacks coach for the San Francisco 49ers. As head coach, he ...
), but folded after 1969, and plans to take on the CFL head-to-head were abandoned. The ACFL also produced some significant talent (e.g.
Marvin Hubbard
''For the career criminal of the same name, see Battle of Alcatraz''
Marvin Ronald Hubbard (May 7, 1946 – May 4, 2015) was a professional American football player. He played fullback for the American Football League's and later National Fo ...
,
Jim Corcoran
James Ashley Corcoran (born 10 February 1949 in Sherbrooke, Quebec) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and former broadcaster.
Biography
Jim Corcoran was born in Sherbrooke, but went to high school and obtained his B.A. in Boston, Massachusetts ...
and the first female professional football player, placeholder
Patricia Palinkas
Patricia Palinkas (née Barczi, born 1943) is credited as the first woman to play American football professionally in a league made predominantly of men. She was a holder for her husband Stephen Palinkas for the Orlando Panthers of the minor leag ...
) and lasted longer, through 1971, with a return season in 1973. The attempted major
World Football League
The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest t ...
sapped the ACFL of most of its talent, and forced it to fold prior to the 1974 season.
National Football League: 1970–1975
In 1970, the NFL realigned into two conferences, with the Browns, Steelers and Colts joining the ten former American Football League teams in the
American Football Conference
The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference ...
and the remaining NFL teams forming the
National Football Conference
The National Football Conference (NFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. The NFC and its counterpart, the American Football Conference ...
. The AFL's official scoreboard clock and jersey-back player names were adopted by the merged league, but the
two-point conversion
In gridiron football, a two-point conversion or two-point convert is a play a team attempts instead of kicking a one-point conversion immediately after it scores a touchdown. In a two-point conversion attempt, the team that just scored must run ...
was not adopted until
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...
.
The AFL–NFL merger also led to the creation of a weekly showcase game: ''
Monday Night Football
''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, AB ...
''. Originally broadcast on
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
beginning with the 1970 season, it moved to
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
in 2006.
All of the American Football League records and statistics were accepted by the merged league as equivalent to pre-merger NFL records and statistics. Thus, a yard gained in the AFL in 1960 is as valid as a yard gained in the NFL in 1960.
AFL All-Star Game
The American Football League All-Star game was the annual game which featured each year's best performers in the American Football League (AFL). The game was first played in 1961 and the final AFL All-Star game occurred in 1969, prior to the leagu ...
selections and appearances are equivalent to NFL 'Pro Bowl' choices. They are equivalent, but, however, not identical, and this has caused errors in reporting by some sources. For example,
John Hadl
John Willard Hadl (February 15, 1940 – November 30, 2022) was an American football quarterback who played in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL) for 16 years. He won an AFL championship with the San Diego Cha ...
is listed in most on-line records as having been selected for the 1970 Pro Bowl, played after the 1969 professional football season. However, in 1970, there were both an NFL Pro Bowl and an AFL All-Star Game, the AFL event being the final event ever staged under the auspices of the American Football League. Hadl, of the
San Diego Chargers
The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...
was MVP of the January 1970 AFL All-Star Game. The January 1970 NFL Pro Bowl was a different game, featuring only NFL players. Similar errors are made when players like the
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Raide ...
'
Jim Otto
James Edwin Otto (born January 5, 1938) is an American former professional football player who played as a center for the Oakland Raiders of the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL) for 15 seasons. He played colle ...
are cited as having "fifteen years of NFL experience." In fact, Otto had ten years of AFL experience and five years of NFL experience, or fifteen years of ''Professional Football'' experience.
In 1974, the rival
World Football League
The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest t ...
successfully lured several NFL stars to its upstart league, but collapsed midway through the 1975 season due to financial problems. The
Memphis Southmen
The Memphis Southmen, also known as the Memphis Grizzlies, were an American football team based in Memphis, Tennessee. They played in the World Football League (WFL), which operated in 1974 and 1975. They played their home games at Liberty Bowl M ...
made an unsuccessful bid to join the NFL, even going as far as taking deposits for season tickets and going to court to file a lawsuit to attempt to force this, and the
Birmingham Vulcans
The Birmingham Vulcans were a professional American football team located in Birmingham, Alabama. They were members of the five-team Eastern Division of the World Football League (WFL). The Vulcans, founded in March 1975, played in the upstart lea ...
collected petition signatures to attempt to show a similar high level of support, but never got as far as Memphis. Neither city has ever gotten an NFL franchise (though the
Tennessee Oilers
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to the ...
did later play
one season in Memphis).
Also in
1974, the NFL, after over four decades of having its goal posts on the goal line (as Canadian football still does), finally moved its goalposts back to the end line, as is the norm in high school and college football in the United States, in an effort to decrease the number of field goal attempts, and moved the kickoff back to the 35-yard line.
National Football League: 1976–1994
In 1976, the NFL added the
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 as ...
and the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South divisio ...
to the NFL. To accommodate the larger league, the schedule expanded from 14 games to 16 games in 1978. The playoff field was likewise expanded to ten teams, then again to twelve teams in 1990, where it remained until 2020.
The NFL began experiencing problems in the 1980s. Labor stoppages in 1982 (which led to the NFL season being cut in half) and 1987 (resulting in the league using replacement players for three games), combined with
Al Davis
Allen Davis (July 4, 1929 – October 8, 2011) was an American football coach and executive. He was the principal owner and general manager of the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (NFL) for 39 years, from 1972 until his death in ...
winning a lawsuit to allow his team, the Raiders, to move from Oakland to Los Angeles against league wishes, forced NFL Commissioner
Pete Rozelle
Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle (; March 1, 1926 – December 6, 1996) was an American businessman and executive. Rozelle served as the commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) for nearly thirty years, from January 1960 until his retirement i ...
into retirement.
Paul Tagliabue
Paul John Tagliabue (; born November 24, 1940) is an American lawyer who was the commissioner of the National Football League (NFL). He took the position in 1989 and served until September 1, 2006. He had previously served as a lawyer for the NFL ...
was named his replacement.
The NFL backed the minor-league
World League of American Football
NFL Europe League (simply called NFL Europe and known in its final season as NFL Europa League) was a professional American football league that functioned as the developmental minor league of the National Football League (NFL). Originally f ...
, a league based in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, which ran for two seasons. After its suspension, two American teams jumped to the Canadian Football League, though only one (the
Sacramento franchise) would play in that league.
United States Football League: 1983–1985
The
United States Football League
The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...
was the most significant challenger to the NFL since the American Football League, and the last of any significance to date. The USFL's gimmick was to avoid direct head-to-head competition with the NFL and college ball, and play in the spring. Originally intended as a minor league, this ended when several deep pocketed owners began luring top talent such as
Herschel Walker to the USFL with high salaries.
The groundwork for what eventually led to the demise of the USFL was set mainly by
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
, owner of the
New Jersey Generals
The New Jersey Generals were a franchise of the United States Football League (USFL) established in 1982 to begin play in the spring and summer of 1983. The team played three seasons from 1983 to 1985, winning 31 regular season games and losing ...
and a vocal opponent of the league's spring football concept, who led a coalition that sought to take the NFL on head-to-head with a fall schedule and later force a merger. This was a major problem for several teams, who were ill-prepared to face the NFL juggernaut, and fans quickly walked away from these lame-duck franchises when it became clear the USFL was done with spring football. The USFL pinned its hopes on an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL; though the USFL won the case, it was a
Pyrrhic victory
A Pyrrhic victory ( ) is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Such a victory negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress.
The phrase originates from a quote from P ...
, as the jury only awarded damages of US$3.
The USFL's biggest legacy was the fact that it helped develop some of the best quarterbacks in professional football during the 1990s. Many members of the prolific draft classes of 1983 through 1985 played in the USFL and went on to have strong careers in the NFL and CFL, including
Steve Young
Jon Steven Young (born October 11, 1961) is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 15 seasons, primarily with the San Francisco 49ers. He also played for the Tampa Bay Buccane ...
,
Jim Kelly
James Edward Kelly (born February 14, 1960) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons with the Buffalo Bills. He also spent two seasons with the Houston Gamblers of the United Stat ...
,
Doug Williams (who was actually drafted several years earlier, in 1978),
Bobby Hebert
Bobby Joseph Hebert Jr. (surname pronounced ; born August 19, 1960) is an American sportscaster and former professional football quarterback. He played in the United States Football League (USFL) and National Football League (NFL) from 1983 to ...
and
Doug Flutie
Douglas Richard Flutie (born October 23, 1962) is an American former football quarterback whose professional career spanned 21 seasons. He played 12 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), eight seasons in the Canadian Football League (CF ...
.
Arena Football League: 1987–2019
Immediately after the USFL suspended operations in 1986, USFL executive
James F. "Jim" Foster began work on a brand new variant of football. Known as "
arena football
Indoor American football, or arena football, is a variation of gridiron football played at ice hockey-sized indoor arenas. While varying in details from league to league, the rules of indoor football are designed to allow for play in a smaller ...
", the sport was played on a much shorter 50-yard field and was built heavily on a high-scoring offensive game. After two test games, he launched a professional league, the
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...
, in 1987. The AFL began its 24th season in 2011, and is currently the United States' second longest running professional football league ever, after the NFL. The AFL also had a minor league,
AF2
The AF2 (often styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football ru ...
, which ran for 10 seasons, from 2000 to 2009. The current version of the Arena Football League is technically the second league to bear that name; the first collapsed under the weight of bankruptcy after the 2008 season, then was bought by a coalition of its teams and relaunched in 2010 in its current incarnation. From a high of 18 teams in 2011, the second Arena Football League steadily shrunk until bottoming out at four teams in 2018. The league folded a second time after its 2019 season.
The success of arena football led to a revival of interest in
indoor football, particularly after the AFL lost a lawsuit over the extent of its patents in 1998. As of 2020, all of the leagues who play the indoor game play regionally, either in the midwest (
Indoor Football League
The Indoor Football League (IFL) is a professional indoor American football league created in 2008 out of the merger between the Intense Football League and United Indoor Football. It has one of the largest number of currently active teams am ...
and
Champions Indoor Football
Champions Indoor Football (CIF) is a professional indoor American football minor league created in 2014 out of the merger between the Champions Professional Indoor Football League (CPIFL) and Lone Star Football League (LSFL), plus one team from ...
), southeast (
National Arena League
The National Arena League (NAL) is a professional indoor football league that began play in 2017. It consists of teams based on the East Coast of the United States.
Teams' typical payroll budget is $600,000 per season, while players are paid $ ...
and
American Arena League
The American Arena League (AAL) is a professional indoor football minor league that began playing in 2018. The league was initiated by a merger between Arena Pro Football (APF) and the Can-Am Indoor Football League (Can-Am), although the AAL o ...
) or northwest (
America West Football Conference
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
). One unusual variant of indoor football was the
Lingerie Football League
The Extreme Football League (X League) is an American women's semi-professional tackle football league.
The league was originally founded in 2009 as the Lingerie Football League (LFL), and later rebranded as the Legends Football League in 2013.
...
, in which scantily clad women play the game by a modified variant of indoor rules; that league was at least semi-professional for its first two years, but since 2011, it (along with its successor league, the Legends Football League) has played at an amateur level.
National Football League: 1995–2001
The USFL's impact was not limited to players, however. The USFL apparently established Oakland, Baltimore, Jacksonville and Arizona as viable markets for professional football. As such, the St. Louis Cardinals moved to Phoenix, Arizona to become the
Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division, and play t ...
in 1988, while the Houston Oilers very nearly moved to Jacksonville in 1987 before deciding to stay, for the short term, in Houston.
In 1993, the NFL began exploring expansion, eyeing five proposals (
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
,
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
, Charlotte and Jacksonville), all of which were in cities that had hosted professional football before. The "Carolina Cougars" (later renamed
Carolina Panthers
The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. T ...
) and
Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team based in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jaguars compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division. The team play ...
received franchises to begin play in 1995. At the same time, Al Davis moved the Raiders back to its original home in Oakland for the 1995 season, while at the same time, the Rams, who had suffered in attendance since the Raiders' arrival, relocated to St. Louis; the concurrent departures of both teams from southern California began a 21-year stretch in which
the league had no teams in Los Angeles.
It was not until after the 1995 season, after Baltimore's CFL team won the Grey Cup, that Baltimore got a second look, this time from Art Modell, who took the core of his Cleveland Browns team to Baltimore to found the expansion
Baltimore Ravens
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The team plays its ...
. The effort effectively killed the CFL's American expansion. The Browns returned, restocked with new players and with new ownership, in 1999. Meanwhile, the Oilers left Houston for Tennessee after the 1996 season; initially beginning what was planned to be a two-year stint in Memphis, disastrous attendance levels prompted the team to cut that experiment short after a single year and move to its permanent home in Nashville in 1998, eventually rebranding as the
Tennessee Titans
The Tennessee Titans are a professional American football team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their h ...
.
Also borrowed from the USFL was the
two-point conversion
In gridiron football, a two-point conversion or two-point convert is a play a team attempts instead of kicking a one-point conversion immediately after it scores a touchdown. In a two-point conversion attempt, the team that just scored must run ...
, which the NFL adopted in 1994, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' color scheme, which was loosely based on that of the
Tampa Bay Bandits
The Tampa Bay Bandits were a professional American football team in the United States Football League (USFL) which was based in Tampa, Florida. The Bandits were a charter member of the USFL and was the only franchise to have the same principal o ...
.
The NFL revived the World League in 1995, this time headquartered solely in Europe, eventually changing the name of the league to the NFL Europe League (known as either
NFL Europe
NFL Europe League (simply called NFL Europe and known in its final season as NFL Europa League) was a professional American football league that functioned as the developmental minor league of the National Football League (NFL). Originally f ...
or, in its last season, as NFL Europa, to avoid
RAS syndrome
RAS syndrome (where "RAS" stands for "redundant acronym syndrome", making the phrase "RAS syndrome" Autological word, homological) is the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an acronym (or other initialism) in conjunction with ...
). Originally having its teams spread across several countries including Spain, England, Scotland, the Netherlands and Germany, by the end of the league's run in 2007, only the Netherlands and Germany (the latter of which had five of the league's six teams) were still in the league.
Strained relations between the NFL and its players' union quieted down significantly in the 1990s, and the development of
free agency
In professional sports, a free agent is a player who is eligible to sign with other clubs or franchises; i.e., not under contract to any specific team. The term is also used in reference to a player who is under contract at present but who is ...
as well as a
salary cap
In professional sports, a salary cap (or wage cap) is an agreement or rule that places a limit on the amount of money that a team can spend on players' salaries. It exists as a per-player limit or a total limit for the team's roster, or both. Sever ...
led to peaceful relations between the two entities for over a decade. This was helped by new
television contracts: in 1994,
Fox Broadcasting Company
The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with master control operations an ...
set the tone for broadcast rights to the NFL when it outbid CBS for the right to air NFC games with an unheard-of bid of US$395,000,000. This brought total broadcast rights fees for the league to over US$1,000,000,000. In 1998, when CBS outbid NBC for the rights to the AFC, the total rights fees doubled to over US$2,000,000,000. This is in addition to the rights fee for
NFL Sunday Ticket
NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package that broadcasts National Football League (NFL) regular season games unavailable on local affiliates. It carries all regional Sunday afternoon games produced by Fox and CBS. The ideal custome ...
, a package offered exclusively to the
DirecTV
DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...
satellite television service, that began in the mid-1990s.
Several short-lived professional leagues arose in the wake of the
dot-com boom
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...
in the late 1990s. The
Regional Football League
The Regional Football League (RFL) was an american football minor league formed to be the self-styled "major league of spring football." Established in 1997, the league played a single season, 1999, and then ceased operations.
History
The RFL se ...
played one season in 1999, and the
Spring Football League
The Spring Football League (SFL) was a short lived professional american football minor league that existed for only one season in 2000.
Spring football
Founded by several ex-NFL players such as Eric Dickerson, Drew Pearson, Bo Jackson, an ...
played only two weeks in 2000. The short-lived, highly publicized and widely derided
XFL
XFL may refer to:
Sports
* XFL (2001), a defunct American football league that played its only season in 2001
* XFL (2020), a professional American football league
Vehicles
* Bell XFL Airabonita, a 1940 U.S. Navy experimental interceptor aircra ...
played one season in the winter of 2001.
National Football League: 2002–present
The
Houston Texans
The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC South, South division, and play their home ga ...
were added to the league in 2002 to replace the Oilers, bringing the league to an even 32 teams.
Roger Goodell took over as commissioner from the retiring Paul Tagliabue in 2006.
Also during this era, the league began expanding its influence overseas.
Fútbol Americano
"Fútbol Americano" was the marketing name used for the first National Football League (NFL) regular season game held outside the United States. Played on October 2, 2005, at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the Arizona Cardinals defeated the San ...
, a one-off game in Mexico City, was the first regular-season game held outside the United States in 2005; it was followed by the
NFL International Series
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 2017, the series has two sub-series: the NFL London Games in the Uni ...
, an annual game held in London in the last week of October since 2007. In an unrelated move, the
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. ...
began their
Bills Toronto Series
The Bills Toronto Series was a series of National Football League (NFL) games featuring the Buffalo Bills played at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The original series began in the 2008 season and ran through 2012. The Bills were orig ...
, playing an annual December game in Canada, in 2008. The Toronto series will run through 2012.
In 2003, the NFL launched its own in-house network,
NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and NF ...
. Beginning in 2006, at the end of the previous broadcast contract, the NFL launched an
eight-game late-season package specifically for the network. The 2006 television contract expanded total annual broadcast rights to over US$3,000,000,000, and the 2011 renewal of those rights pushed the annual total to nearly US$5,000,000,000. Between 2006 and 2022, the networks will have paid the NFL nearly US$70,000,000,000—a total greater than the resale value of all thirty-two NFL teams combined.
The labor peace in the NFL came to a halt in 2010, when a group of NFL owners invoked an out clause in the league's collective bargaining agreement with the players' union, subsequently imposing a lockout in 2011. The players' association responded by disbanding and having its players sue the league for antitrust violations. The two sides came to an agreement in late July 2011, after one preseason game, that year's
Pro Football Hall of Fame Game
The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game is an annual National Football League (NFL) exhibition game in Canton, Ohio, held the weekend of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's induction ceremonies. The game is played at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, part ...
, was lost due to the lockout. The current collective bargaining agreement, which has no opt-outs, lasts through 2021.
Alternate leagues: 2009–2015, 2019–future
The
United Football League began play in 2009 with an abbreviated "Premiere Season" that featured four teams, two on each coast, in a six-week schedule. The UFL, which mostly featured former NFL players, marked the first professional fall league other than 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 ...
to play in the United States since the
World Football League
The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest t ...
in the mid-1970s. All UFL games aired on
Versus and
HDnet; every game was also
webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, web ...
. The league returned in 2010 with a new expansion team in Omaha, Nebraska and an eight-game, ten-week schedule. From there, however, the UFL collapsed, cutting both its 2011 and 2012 seasons short after four weeks of play and failing to pay most of its bills in a timely manner.
The
Stars Football League
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth mak ...
began play as a four-team league on June 30, 2011, with an eight-week schedule, and played three abbreviated seasons. The
Fall Experimental Football League
The Fall Experimental Football League (FXFL) was a professional football minor league that played two seasons in 2014 and 2015. This league's stated goal was to become a professional feeder-system for the National Football League (NFL).
The lea ...
, an explicitly minor league operating on a sort of "extended
preseason
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 Se ...
" approach, played two seasons before being replaced with
The Spring League
The Spring League was an American football developmental league and scouting event (pro showcase) that played from 2017 to 2021 and was founded by Brian Woods. Aimed at professional athletes but not paying a salary or expenses, the league's go ...
, which is non-professional. Numerous other professional leagues attempted to launch in the late 2000s and early 2010s but never materialized, including the
All American Football League
The All American Football League (AAFL) was a proposed professional american football minor league. The league, which was to combine a professional pay structure with the requirement that all players be college graduates, had originally been sch ...
, the
United National Gridiron League
The United National Gridiron League (UNGL) was a proposed professional american football minor league. The league was formed in August 2007 and was originally called the ''United National Football League''.
The league's inaugural draft took plac ...
and
A-11 Football League.
In 2018, the two leading figures behind the original XFL announced their re-entry into the professional football market with rival leagues: former NBC head
Dick Ebersol attached to the
Alliance of American Football
The Alliance of American Football (AAF) was a professional American football minor league. The AAF consisted of eight centrally owned and operated teams in the southern and western United States, seven of which were located in metropolitan are ...
to begin play in 2019; it collapsed amid financial shortfalls and disputes partway through its lone season.
Vince McMahon
Vincent Kennedy McMahon (; born August 24, 1945) is an American media proprietor and retired professional wrestling promoter, executive, and performer. From 1982 to 2022, he served as the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of WWE, the w ...
reacquired the XFL intellectual property rights and launched a
second version of the XFL in 2020 to somewhat greater success and reception before a massive
coronavirus pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
wiped out most sporting activity in the United States in March 2020, cutting the XFL's season short halfway through, which eventually led to the league filing for bankruptcy and selling to a consortium led by
Dany Garcia
Dany Garcia (born November 29, 1968) is an American businesswoman, film producer, and IFBB professional bodybuilder. Garcia is the founder of GSTQ, and the CEO and chair of The Garcia Companies and TGC Management, overseeing a portfolio of bra ...
and
Dwayne Johnson
Dwayne Douglas Johnson (born May 2, 1972), also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor and former professional wrestler. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he was integral to the developm ...
. The Spring League then rebranded itself as a second incarnation of the
United States Football League
The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...
in the 2022 offseason, returning to a professional format.
Canadian professional football history
Canadian football had similar origins to its American counterparts. Several Canadian professional teams are older than the oldest existing American teams, because they began as amateur rugby organizations. The Canadian game evolved parallel to the American game, but several years behind: the
Burnside Rules
The Burnside rules were a set of rules that transformed Canadian football from a rugby-style game to the gridiron-style game it has remained ever since. The rules were first adopted by the Ontario Rugby Football Union in 1903, and were named after ...
were adopted in 1905, and the
forward pass
In several forms of football, a forward pass is the throwing of the ball in the direction in which the offensive team is trying to move, towards the defensive team's goal line. The forward pass is one of the main distinguishers between gridiron ...
(in place on the American side of the border since 1906) was adopted in 1929 after significant pressure from American coaches. The touchdown remained worth five points until 1956 (it changed mainly due to Canadian pro football holding an American TV contract), whereas it had increased to six points in 1912 in the United States. Several relics of the old rules of the game, including goal posts on the goal line, a 110-yard field, more liberal rules for use of the
drop kick
A drop kick is a type of kick in various codes of football. It involves a player dropping the ball and then kicking it as it touches the ground.
Drop kicks are used as a method of restarting play and scoring points in rugby union and rugby league ...
, and only three downs, remain in the Canadian game.
Canadian football was, prior to the 1950s, dominated by three amateur organizations: the
Ontario Rugby Football Union
The Ontario Rugby Football Union (ORFU) was an early amateur Canadian football league comprising teams in the Canadian province of Ontario. The ORFU was founded on Saturday, January 6, 1883 and in 1903 became the first major competition to adopt th ...
(ORFU), the
Interprovincial Rugby Football Union
The East Division is one of the two regional divisions of the Canadian Football League, its counterpart being the West Division. Although the CFL was not founded until 1958, the East Division and its clubs are descended from earlier leagues.
T ...
(IRFU, or "Big Four"), and the
Western Interprovincial Football Union
The West Division is one of the two regional divisions of the Canadian Football League (CFL), its counterpart being the East Division. Although the CFL was not founded until 1958, the West Division and its clubs are descended from earlier leagu ...
(WIFU). By 1954, the IRFU and WIFU had gone professional (in part thanks to an American television contract from NBC that paid the Big Four more than the one DuMont was offering the NFL), and in that year the ORFU dropped out of competition for the decades-old
Grey Cup
The Grey Cup (french: Coupe Grey) is both the championship game of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the trophy awarded to the victorious team playing in the namesake championship of professional Canadian football. The game is contested be ...
, the championship of Canadian football. This is generally recognized as the moment that began the modern era of Canadian professional football. The WIFU and IRFU incrementally merged into one league over the next several years: the two created the Canadian Football Council in 1956, jointly separated from the Canadian Rugby Union (Canada's governing body for football, now known as
Football Canada
Football Canada is the governing body for amateur gridiron football in Canada headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Football Canada focuses primarily its own Canadian form of the sport, and is currently the world's only national governing body for ...
) in 1958, and began inter-union play in 1961. The CFL currently recognizes the
1958 season, its first separate from Football Canada, as its starting point. (The ORFU eventually faded out of existence in the 1970s.)
The CFL has been, at various times in its history, competitive with the NFL in terms of being able to acquire talent, though the league's self-imposed rule changes have hampered that in recent years (for instance, the marquee player exemption to the salary cap that once allowed CFL teams to sign one top-level player is no longer there, and the league has banned signing suspended NFL players). It has not been competitive on a team level with the NFL, as evidenced by the fact that in a series of interleague matchups between the IRFU and the NFL in the 1950s and 1960s, the NFL won all six matches. (The Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the best team in the IRFU at the time, ''did'' win one game against an American pro team in 1961, but it was an American Football League team, not an NFL team.)
The league attempted an
American expansion in 1993. Initially starting with the
Sacramento Gold Miners
The Sacramento Gold Miners were a Canadian football team based in Sacramento, California. The franchise was the first American team in the Canadian Football League. The Gold Miners inherited a home stadium, front office staff and much of the rost ...
(who jumped more or less intact from the WLAF and would become the
San Antonio Texans
The San Antonio Texans were a Canadian Football League (CFL) team that played in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1995 CFL season. They had relocated from Sacramento, California, where the team had been called the Sacramento Gold Miners ...
in 1995), by 1995 the CFL had five U.S. teams, mostly based in the southern and western United States. The league itself was suffering from financial problems at the time, and the general suspicion was that the addition of American teams was mainly a gambit to net expansion revenue for the eight remaining Canadian franchises. The league did lure credible and stable owners for most of the American teams (a contrast from other efforts at U.S. pro football outside the NFL), but lack of respect from the established Canadian teams, poor attendance in most markets, a handful of particularly problematic owners on both the American and Canadian sides of the border, and an inability to secure a television contract because of the league's avoidance of major U.S. markets all led to tens of millions of dollars in financial losses and the end of the American experiment after the 1995 season.
The two teams based in
Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
and
Montréal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-p ...
have been in flux for the past three decades. The original Alouettes folded in 1982; a
Montreal Concordes
The Montreal Alouettes ( French: Les Alouettes de Montréal) are a professional Canadian football team based in Montreal, Quebec. Founded in 1946, the team has folded and been revived twice. The Alouettes compete in the East Division of the Cana ...
team was founded the same year to replace them, but the Concordes (which renamed themselves the Alouettes in 1986) folded prior to 1987. The current Alouettes arrived in Montréal in 1996, absorbing the two previous Montréal teams' histories but disowning that of the team that formed its basis, the
Baltimore Stallions
The Baltimore Stallions (known officially as the "Baltimore Football Club" and previously as the "Baltimore CFL Colts" in its inaugural season) were a Canadian Football League team based in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States, which played ...
; the Stallions were the only American team to be both an on-field and off-field success and are the only U.S.-based team to ever win the Grey Cup. The Alouettes' situation was largely stable for the first two decades after relaunch before a sudden collapse in the team's finances forced its owner to return the franchise to the league in 2019. The
Ottawa Rough Riders
The Ottawa Rough Riders were a Canadian Football League team based in Ottawa, Ontario, founded in 1876. Formerly one of the oldest and longest-lived professional sports teams in North America, the Rough Riders won the Grey Cup championship nine ...
folded in 1996; the
Ottawa Renegades
The Ottawa Renegades were a Canadian Football League franchise based in Ottawa, Ontario founded in 2002, six years after the storied Ottawa Rough Riders folded. After four seasons, the Renegades franchise was suspended indefinitely by the league ...
were named as Ottawa's next CFL team from 2002 to 2005, but that team also folded. In both the Rough Riders and Renegades cases, the team failures came during, or shortly after,
Bernard Glieberman
Bernard "Bernie" Glieberman is an American real estate mogul and the president of Crosswinds Communities. Despite having made his fortune in real estate, Glieberman was perhaps best known for, with his son Lonie, making several unsuccessful and co ...
had purchased the respective team. In 2014, the new
Ottawa Redblacks
The Ottawa Redblacks (officially stylized as REDBLACKS) ( French: Le Rouge et Noir d'Ottawa) are a professional Canadian football team based in Ottawa, Ontario. The team plays in the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL).
Startin ...
(owned by
Jeff Hunt
Jeff Hunt is a Canadian businessman who is an owner of the Ottawa Redblacks football club of the Canadian Football League and the Ottawa 67's hockey club of the Ontario Hockey League. He started a carpet-cleaning firm called Canway. His firm wa ...
) began play at a drastically refurbished
Frank Clair Stadium
TD Place Stadium (originally Lansdowne Park and formerly Frank Clair Stadium) is an outdoor stadium in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is located at Lansdowne Park, on the southern edge of The Glebe neighbourhood, where Bank Street crosses the ...
, thus becoming the third Ottawa CFL team and returning the league back to the traditional nine teams. Although Hunt owns the rights to the former Ottawa Rough Riders, Rough Riders intellectual property and based the Redblacks' logo and colors on those of the Rough Riders, he chose the name RedBlacks in June 2013, mainly to avoid a trademark dispute with the similarly named Saskatchewan Roughriders. The revived Ottawa franchise has also been a success.
In the long term, the CFL has shown significantly more stability than the American leagues. The league has, for all but three years of its history, had either eight or nine teams, all based in the same nine markets. The league has resisted expanding beyond its current nine teams and has, to date, never moved a Canadian team from one city to another. One particular market that has been a persistent topic of discussion has been the maritime provinces. The CFL approved an Atlantic franchise for Halifax Regional Municipality, Halifax known as the Atlantic Schooners in 1984 provided a stadium with sufficient capacity was built by then; however, no such stadium was ever built (the only outdoor stadium in Halifax, Huskies Stadium, only seated less than half of what CFL rules mandate and has since been demolished). The Touchdown Atlantic series is a series of one-off games that are played in Atlantic region stadiums; the first, a preseason game, was held at Huskies Stadium in 2003. A follow-up game was scheduled for the same venue for 2006, but was canceled due to the Ottawa Renegades (who were to play in the game) folding. The series was revived as a regular season game in 2010, but instead at New Moncton Stadium in Moncton, which is much closer to the CFL's capacity guidelines; three games were played in the regular season series, with a fourth slated for 2019 as Schooners Sports and Entertainment, another Atlantic Schooners proposal is seeking to join the league.
Canada has historically been sheltered from the rival leagues that the NFL faced for most of its first century of existence. John F. Bassett, a Canadian multimedia heir, was at the center of two attempts to bring the rival leagues to Canada, first with the Toronto Northmen in the WFL, then with a USFL team in Hamilton, Ontario. In both cases, Canadian Parliament threatened to pass the Canadian Football Act, a proposed law that would have codified the CFL's monopoly on football and outlawed any other professional league from playing in the dominion. (In each case, Bassett instead backed a U.S.-based team, the
Memphis Southmen
The Memphis Southmen, also known as the Memphis Grizzlies, were an American football team based in Memphis, Tennessee. They played in the World Football League (WFL), which operated in 1974 and 1975. They played their home games at Liberty Bowl M ...
and
Tampa Bay Bandits
The Tampa Bay Bandits were a professional American football team in the United States Football League (USFL) which was based in Tampa, Florida. The Bandits were a charter member of the USFL and was the only franchise to have the same principal o ...
, respectively). The Act was never passed or made law.
Professional football has yet to be played in two provinces: Prince Edward Island (which is likely too small to accommodate any professional game) and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Injuries
According to 2017 study on brains of deceased gridiron football players, 99% of tested brains of NFL players, 88% of CFL players, 64% of semi-professional players, 91% of
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
players, and 21% of
high school football
High school football (french: football au lycée) is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both countries, but its popularity is declining, part ...
players had various stages of Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE.
Other common injuries include, injuries of legs, arms and lower back.
See also
*List of American and Canadian football leagues
*List of professional sports leagues
Further reading
*Harry March, March, Harry. ''Pro Football: Its Ups and Downs''. J. B. Lyon Co. 1934.
References
External links
Professional Football Researchers Association
{{American football concepts
History of American football
History of Canadian football
Professional sports by sport, Gridiron football