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David Dunbar Buick
David Dunbar Buick was a Scottish-born American Detroit-based inventor.
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17 September 2024

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The NFL is founded17.9.1920

Wikipedia (13 Sep 2013, 15:15)

The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league composed of 32 teams divided equally between the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). The highest level of professional football in the world, the NFL runs a 17-week regular season from the week after Labor Day to the week after Christmas, with each team playing sixteen games and having one bye week. Out of the league's 32 teams, six (four division winners and two wild-card teams) from each conference compete in the NFL playoffs, a single-elimination tournament culminating in the Super Bowl, played between the champions of the NFC and AFC. The champions of the Super Bowl are awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy; various other awards exist to recognize individual players and coaches. Most games are played on Sunday afternoons; some games are also played on Mondays and Thursdays during the regular season. There are games on Saturdays during the last few weeks of the regular season and the first two playoff weekends.

The NFL was formed on August 20, 1920, as the American Professional Football Conference; the league changed its name to the American Professional Football Association (APFA) on September 17, 1920, and changed its name to the National Football League on June 24, 1922, after spending the 1920 and 1921 seasons as the APFA. In 1966, the NFL agreed to merge with the rival American Football League (AFL), effective 1970; the first Super Bowl was held at the end of that same season in January 1967. Today, the NFL has the highest average attendance (67,591) of any professional sports league in the world and is the most popular sports league in the United States. The Super Bowl is among the biggest club sporting events in the world and individual Super Bowl games account for many of the most-watched programs in American history. At the corporate level, the NFL is an nonprofit 501(c)(6) association. The NFL's executive officer is the commissioner, who has broad authority in governing the league.

Each team is allowed to have up to 53 players during the regular season, but only 46 can be active (eligible to play) on game days. Teams are given exclusive rights to sign free agents that have three or fewer seasons in the league, but free agents that have been in the league at least four years can sign with any team. Each team is subject to a salary cap. The champions of the most recent season, the 2012 season, are the Baltimore Ravens, who defeated the San Francisco 49ers by a score of 34-31 in Super Bowl XLVII. The team with the most championships is the Green Bay Packers, who have won 13 championships. The team with the most Super Bowls is the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have won six Super Bowls.


Founding and history

On August 20, 1920, a meeting was held by representatives of the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles at the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, Ohio. This meeting resulted in the formation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), a group who, according to the Canton Evening Repository, intended to "raise the standard of professional football in every way possible, to eliminate bidding for players between rival clubs and to secure cooperation in the formation of schedules". Another meeting held on September 17, 1920 resulted in the renaming of the league to the American Professional Football Association (APFA). The league hired Jim Thorpe as their first president, and consisted of 14 teams. Only two of these teams, the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), remain.

Although the league did not maintain official standings for their 1920 inaugural season and teams played schedules that included non-league opponents, the APFA awarded the Akron Pros the championship by virtue of their 8–0–3 (8 wins, 0 losses, and 3 ties) record. The following season resulted in the Chicago Staleys controversially winning the title over the Buffalo All-Americans. In 1922, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League (NFL). The Canton Bulldogs managed to win the next two titles before the Cleveland Bulldogs won the next one.

In 1932, the season ended with the Chicago Bears (6-1-6) and the Portsmouth Spartans (6-1-4) tied for first in the league standings. At the time, teams were ranked on a single table and the team with the highest win-loss record (not including ties, which were not counted towards the standings) at the end of the season was declared the champion. This method has been used since the league's creation in 1920, but no situation had been encountered where two teams were tied for first. The league determined that a playoff game was needed to decide the champion. The teams were originally scheduled to play the playoff game (officially a regular season game that would count towards the regular season standings) at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois, but a combination of heavy snow and extreme cold forced the game to be moved indoors to Chicago Stadium, which didn't even have a regulation-size field. Playing with altered rules to accommodate the smaller playing field, the Bears won the game 9-0 and thus won the championship. Fan interest in the de facto championship game led the NFL, beginning in 1933, to split into two divisions with a championship game to be played between the division champions. The 1933 season also marked the first of 13 seasons in which African Americans were prohibited from playing in the league. The ban was rescinded in 1947, following public pressure and the removal of a similar ban in Major League Baseball.

Although the NFL was the dominant professional football league and faced little competition from other leagues (including three separate American Football Leagues and the All-America Football Conference, none of which lasted for more than four seasons), a new professional league, the fourth American Football League (AFL), began play in 1960. The upstart AFL began to challenge the established NFL in popularity, gaining lucrative television contracts and engaging in a bidding war with the NFL for free agents and draft picks. The two leagues announced a merger on June 8, 1966, to take full effect in 1970. In the meantime, the leagues would hold a common draft and championship game. The game, the Super Bowl, was held four times before the merger, with the NFL winning the first two and the AFL winning the last two.

Today, the NFL is considered the most popular sporting league in North America; much of its growth is attributed to former Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who led the league from 1960 to 1989. Overall annual attendance increased from three million at the beginning of his tenure to seventeen million by the end of his tenure, and 400 million viewers watched 1989's Super Bowl XXIII. The NFL established NFL Properties in 1963. The league's licensing wing, NFL Properties earns the league billions of dollars annually; Rozelle's tenure also marked the creation of NFL Charities and a national partnership with United Way. Paul Tagliabue was elected as commissioner to succeed Rozelle; his seventeen-year tenure, which ended in 2006, was marked by large increases in television contracts and the addition of four expansion teams, as well as the introduction of league initiatives to increase the number of minorities in league and team management roles.
   
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