The NFL

Hello everyone,
today I'm going to present the National Football League (NFL).

The NFL is the most important and the most prestigious professional American football league.
To understand how important this championship is in the United States, you have to know that it has the world's most important attendance in stadiums. Actually, during 2006 season, the NFL had an average attendance of 67,738! It means that, in average, every game of every week was watched by 67,738 people in the stadium.
To make a comparaison, at the same time, the French soccer championship called the "Ligue 1 Orange" had an average attendance of 21,817 and the French rugby championship called the "Top 14" had 10,549.

A game night at Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans.



The NFL is composed of 32 teams, which are "franchises" bought by the city of the team. Every year, the NFL teams are the same, there is no promotion/relegation system like in Europe.

NFL teams are separated in the two conferences of 16 teams: the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC).
Both of these conferences are divided in the four divisions: North, South, East and West.


There are two different parts during this championship: the regular season and the playoffs.

The Regular Season

From September to the end of the year, the regular season is composed of 17 football weeks. Each of the 32 teams plays 16 games and has a "bye week" (week without game). The organisation of the games is a little bit complicated to know but I'll try to explain it to you.
A team plays the three other teams of its division twice which involves 6 games. In a conference, every division is connected to another one and a team plays each team of this division once which involves 4 games. Every division is also connected to another division in the other conference and a team plays each team in this division once which involves 4 games. The two final games are played by a team against the teams of the two same-conference division remaining that finished in the same position during the previous season.
After that, in the beginning of January, the playoffs begin.

The Playoffs

The playoffs are a 12 team tournament, including 6 teams of each conference, to determine the NFL champion. In each conference, the four division-champions and the two best other teams ( they get a wild card) play the playoffs. The first round of the playoffs, called the "Wild card round" is played by every team except the two best division-champions. In each conference, the third division-champion plays the worst wild card team and the fourth division-champion plays the best Wild card team. After this round, the two winners play the two first division-champions, and after these two games, with only two teams still running in each conference, they go to the Conference championship of their conference. Then, the two conference-champions play each other in the biggest game of the year in a neutral stadium, the SUPERBOWL.



You should know that the Superbowl is watched on television by more than 50% of the American population (141 million in 2006) and it's broadcast in more than 200 countries. It's the second most important sport game in the world, just after the soccer World Cup final.

In 2006, the Indianapolis Colts won the Superbowl against the Chicago Bears thanks to their magical Quarterback: Peyton Manning.
































Peyton Manning was elected "MVP" ( Most Valuable Player) of this game!




If you want to follow the NFL, there is one site you need to go: www.nfl.com
On this great site you can see the videos of every game, the highlights of the best players, results, photos, everything about NFL.

Bye
Clément