National Football League

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest professional American football league, consisting of thirty-two teams from American cities. The league was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, which adopted the name "National Football League" in 1922. The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America.

Regular season

The NFL season begins with most teams playing four "pre-season" exhibition games from early August through early September; the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game and American Bowl don't count towards the normal allottment of four games and therefore the four teams playing in those games play five exhibition games. The regular season starts the weekend after Labor Day. Each team plays 16 games during a 17-week period. Traditionally, every game is played on Sunday afternoon with the exception of one game per week being played in Sunday night, and another game being played on Monday night. In recent years, the league has started scheduling a nationally telecast regular season game on the Thursday night prior to the first Sunday of NFL games to "kickoff" the season. In addition, the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions each host a game on Thanksgiving Day. For the last 3 weeks or so of the regular season, after the end of the college football season in the US, the league typically schedules 2 or 3 nationally televised games on Saturday afternoons or evenings. In 2005, with Christmas falling on a Sunday, the NFL has flipped their normal schedule for that weekend, having the normal slate (less the Sunday night contest) of Sunday games on Saturday (Christmas Eve day), with two nationally televised games on Sunday (Christmas Day), similar to what the NFL did in 1994 with the afternoon games on Saturday, and the primetime games the following 2 days (Detroit at Miami on Sunday, San Francisco at Minnesota on Monday).

Related Topics:
Exhibition games - Pro Football Hall of Fame Game - American Bowl - Labor Day - Sunday - On Monday night - Thursday - Thanksgiving - Saturday - 1994

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Currently, each team's regular season schedule is set using a pre-determined formula: {{ref|opponents}}

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• Each team plays every other team in their division twice: once at home, and once on the road (6 games).
• Each team plays the four teams from another division within its conference on a rotating three-year cycle (4 games).
• Each team plays the four teams from a division in the other conference on a rotating four-year cycle (4 games).
• Each team plays 2 games versus two teams within its conference based on the prior year's standings. These games match a first-place team against the first-place teams in the two same-conference divisions the team is not scheduled to play that season. The second-place, third-place, and fourth-place teams in a conference are matched in the same way each year.

For the 2005 season, the assignments are the following:

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Intraconference

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• AFC East v. AFC West
• AFC North v. AFC South
• NFC East v. NFC West
• NFC North v. NFC South

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Interconference

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• AFC East v. NFC South
• AFC North v. NFC North
• AFC South v. NFC West
• AFC West v. NFC East

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For the 2006 season, the assignments will be:

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Intraconference

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• AFC East v. AFC South
• AFC North v. AFC West
• NFC East v. NFC South
• NFC North v. NFC West

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Interconference

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• AFC East v. NFC North
• AFC North v. NFC South
• AFC South v. NFC East
• AFC West v. NFC West

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