The New England Football League (NEFL) is a semi-professional

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 wi ...

league based in

Salisbury, Massachusetts Salisbury is a small coastal beach town and summer tourist destination in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The community is a popular summer resort beach town situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of Boston on the New Hampshire border. ...

and owned by Thomas Torrisi. It is the largest semi-professional league in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

. The NEFL was founded in 1994 and was also known as the Greater Lawrence Men's Football League. In 2022, it comprises 11 teams, down from a recent high of 32, with about 2,000 players. Since 2022, the NEFL has had single-A, and AA Conferences, with annual

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among Conferences based on game results, so that the best teams work their way toward the AA level. The league provides competitive football for adult players. It is a "working man's league", as most players have regular jobs during the week. Teams practice on weeknights and play virtually all games on weekends. Players are not paid for their participation, but they often pay $200 to be on the team's roster. The league runs from July through September, followed by single-elimination championship tournaments within each Conference. Each team can dress up to 55 players.

League history

The New England Football League was founded in 1994 by League President and Director of Marketing, Tom Torrisi, Chairman Matt Brien, Commissioner Bob Oreal, Vice-President and Treasurer John Motta and Secretary Christine Torrisi. It started its 1994 season with four teams. By 1997, the number of teams tripled to twelve; in 2002, the league had at least one team in each New England state, and started its three-conference alignment with three different skill levels, one for each conference. The 2006 was the first season with at least 30 teams, making the NEFL one of the largest semi-pro football leagues in the country. The league is unrelated to the original NEFL, which operated from 1964 to 1969.William J. Ryczek. ''Connecticut Gridiron: Football Minor Leaguers of the 1960s and 1970s'', McFarland & Company, 2014.

Game rules

The NEFL describes its rule set as "modified NCAA rules". Most rules are adopted from the NCAA rulebook, but there are also a few NFL rules and NEFL-specific rules. Games use a free-running clock until five minutes left in either half or overtime, at which time the clock stops according to NFL rules. Game time is usually kept by an official on the field, but for some games is kept on the scoreboard by a paid, uniformed official operating it.

Current teams

North Atlantic Conference (AA) (2022)

Maritime Conference (A) (2022)

League champions

External links

Official league website

References

{{Reflist Semi-professional American football American football in Massachusetts Professional sports leagues in the United States