National Football League

"NFL" redirects here. For other uses, see NFL (disambiguation).

NFL logo

NFL logo

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest professional American football league, consisting of thirty-two teams from American cities and regions. 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.

Prior to the 1960s, the most popular version of American football was played collegiately. After the 1958 NFL Championship Game (which went into overtime), the NFL's greatest spurt in popularity came in the 1960s and 1970s with the merger of the rival American Football League, or AFL (1960-1969).

Currently, the league's 32 teams are divided into two conferences: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Each conference is then further divided into four divisions consisting of four teams each. The divisions are labeled East, West, North, and South; the teams do not consistently follow geographic boundaries as the NFL wanted to keep certain rivalries intact.

During the league's regular season, each team plays 16 games over a 17-week period generally from September to December. At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference play in the NFL playoffs, a 12-team single-elimination tournament that culminates with the NFL championship, the Super Bowl. This game is held at a pre-selected site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team or a popular college stadium. One week later, selected all-star players from both the AFC and NFC meet in the Pro Bowl, currently held in Hawaii.

Season structure

Exhibition season

Summers see most NFL teams playing four "pre-season" exhibition games from early August through early September. Two "featured" exhibition games, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game and American Bowl, do not count toward the normal allottment of four games, so the four teams playing in those games each end up playing five exhibition games.

The exhibition games are unpopular with many season ticket holders who point out that regular-season prices are charged for meaningless games, in which teams seldom play their stars and starters for more than a quarter of each game. Such complaints have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but have failed to change the policy. A judgment in 1974^[1] stated: "No fewer than five lawsuits have been instituted from Dallas to New England, each claiming that the respective National Football League (NFL) team had violated the Sherman Act by requiring an individual who wishes to purchase a season ticket for all regular season games to buy, in addition, tickets for one or more exhibition or preseason games."

Pro football is so popular that fans pay the price of the exhibition games for the right to have a guaranteed seat during the season. The NFL publicity machine has relentlessly called the exhibition games "pre-season" games, to the point where most media have jumped on board and use the same expression. This is especially true of the television networks, which now telecast many exhibition games nationally.

Regular season

The NFL season begins 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 three weeks or so of the regular season, after the end of the college football season, the league typically schedules two or three 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 two days (Detroit at Miami on Sunday, San Francisco at Minnesota on Monday).

Currently, each team's regular season schedule is set using a pre-determined formula: ^[2]

• Each team plays every other team in their division twice: once at home, and once on the road (six games).
• Each team plays once the four teams from another division within its conference on a rotating three-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
• Each team plays once the four teams from a division in the other conference on a rotating four-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
• Each team plays two 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: one at home, and one on the road.

This formula has been regarded as very successful, rekindling old rivalries while starting new ones, as teams will play in each other's stadiums eventually, which makes for a more consistent and attractive schedule each year.

For the 2005 season, the assignments were as follows:

Intraconference

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

Interconference

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

For the 2006 season, the assignments will be:

Intraconference

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

Interconference

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

Sixteen-game schedule

In its early years after 1920, the NFL did not have a set schedule, and teams played as few as eight and as many as sixteen games, some against college or other amateur squads. From 1926 through 1946, they played from eleven to fifteen games per season, depending on the number of teams in the league. From 1947 through 1960, each NFL team played 12 games per season. In 1960, the American Football League began play and introduced a balanced schedule of 14 games per team over a fifteen week season, in which each of the eight teams played each of the other teams twice, with one bye week. Competition from the new league caused the NFL to expand and follow suit with a fourteen-game schedule in 1961. From 1961 through 1977, the NFL schedule consisted of fourteen regular season games played over fourteen weeks. Opening weekend typically was the weekend after Labor Day, or even two weekends after Labor Day. Teams played six, or even seven exhibition games. In 1978, the league changed the schedule to include sixteen regular season games and four exhibition games. From 1978-1989, the sixteen games were played over sixteen weeks.

In 1990, the NFL introduced a bye-week to the schedule. Each team would play sixteen regular season games over seventeen weeks. One week during the season, on a rotating basis, each team would have the weekend off. As a result, opening weekend was moved up to Labor Day weekend. In 1993, the league adjusted the schedule to include two bye weeks per team, and the sixteen games were played over eighteen weeks. In 1994, the schedule was changed back to seventeen weeks.

In 2001, the NFL decided to move opening week to the weekend after Labor Day. Television ratings seemed to be sagging due to the holiday, and the stadium crowds were apparently lacking due to vacationing fans and higher average temperatures of early September. In addition, it would leave the three-day holiday weekend alone to the opening weekend of college football, preventing conflicts, and maximizing exposure. In 2002, the NFL began scheduling a Thursday night special opening game, which would be nationally televised. Festivities and a pre-game concert would kick off the season.

• In 1999, the NFL moved the first week of the season one week later due to the conflict with January 1, 2000. The Year 2000 problem sparked travel concerns for the final week of the season, and playoffs. By moving the season a week later, the NFL hoped to prevent teams traveling complications.

• For most years, there has been an open weekend between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl. In the 1990 season, there was no bye, as the league was still adjusting the schedule from adding the bye week during the season. In the 1993 season, there was no bye week since the regular season consisted of eighteen weekends. In the 1999 season, the bye week was removed to accommodate the schedule being moved ahead one week. In the 2001 season, the bye week disappeared when the league moved opening weekend a week later. As a result, Super Bowl XXXVI had to be delayed after the league postponed the second week's games following the September 11 attacks. By the 2003 season, the bye week was restored. In the 1982 strike-shortened season, a postseason tournament replaced the traditional playoff format. The Super Bowl bye week was removed to accommodate the longer, expanded playoffs.

Playoffs

Main article: NFL playoffs

At the conclusion of each 16-game regular season, six teams from each conference qualify for the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament, which culminates in the Super Bowl:

• The four division champions from each conference (the team in each division with the best regular season won-lost-tied record), which are seeded one through four based on their regular season won-lost-tied record.
• Two wild card qualifiers (those non-division champions with the conference's best won-lost-tied percentages), which are seeded five and six.

The third and the sixth seeded teams, and the fourth and the fifth seeds, face each other during the first round of the playoffs, dubbed the Wild Card Playoffs. The first and the second seeds from each conference receive a bye in the first round, which entitles these teams to automatically advance to the second round, the Divisional Playoff games (even though the participants may be from different divisions) to face the Wild Card survivors. In any given playoff round, the highest surviving seed always plays the lowest surviving seed. And in any given playoff game, whoever has the higher seed gets the home field advantage (i.e. the game is held at the higher seed's home field).

The two surviving teams from the Divisional Playoff games meet in Conference Championship games, with the winners of those contests going on to face one another in the Super Bowl.

The terms "Wild Card Playoffs" and "Divisional Playoffs" originated from the playoff format that was used before 1990. During that time, three division winners and two wild card teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs. Only the wild card teams played during the first round, while all of the division winners received a bye, automatically advancing to the second round.

A major disadvantage that critics cite in the current system is that a divisional winner could host a playoff game against a wild card team that earned a better regular season record. For example, the Jacksonville Jaguars finished the 2005 regular season with a 12-4 record, but only qualified as a wild card team and thus had to face the New England Patriots, the AFC East division champions with a 10-6 record, at the Patriots' home field, Gillette Stadium.

Tiebreaking rules

The league uses a set of rules to break ties in the final season standings, i.e. teams that have the same regular season won-lost-tied record. As mentioned above, each team's order of finish in their respective divisions (first-place, second-place, etc.) determine the opponents in two of their games during the following season. The tiebreaking rules are also used to help determine playoff seedings and the order in which teams pick in the NFL draft (see below).

The process basically involves comparing a set of each team's season statistics, one record at a time, until one club has a higher value than the others. The first criterion that is always compared first is head-to-head, how the tied teams fared when they played each other during the regular season. Other data that is then compared include their record against teams in their division, their record against teams in their conference, their record against common opponents, net points scored, and net touchdowns scored. If the teams remain tied after comparing all of these statistics, then the tie is broken using a coin toss. To date, a coin toss has never been used by the league to break a tie.

League championships

The NFL's method for determining its champions has changed over the years. For the history of the process see National Football League championships.

The draft

Further information: NFL Draft

Many of the USA's college football players want to play in the NFL. There is a highly organized and formal process called the draft (currently consisting of seven rounds) that takes place over two days in April, in which all NFL teams participate. The NFL team with the worst record in the previous year gets first pick of the draft. That is, the team is the first to select a player from a pool of all eligible college players in the country. The idea is that weak teams can thereby become strengthened over time, in the specialties where they need strengthening. Draft picks continue, in the order from the weakest team to the strongest team, and once all teams have picked one player, they all pick again starting with the weakest team.

Draft picks are frequently traded in advance for players and other draft picks. For example, before the draft occurs, Team A might trade its first-round draft pick plus a certain player (who already plays for Team A) to Team B in exchange for another particular player who already plays for Team B.

Occasionally a player drafted out of college will go right into a "first-string" position as the team's primary player in that position. However, these players usually begin as second- or third-string backups, only playing games if the first-stringer is injured, or if there has been a runaway score and the coach decides to put a backup in the game for a little experience, and to ensure his first-stringer does not get injured at the end in a play that is not meaningful to the team.

Further information: List of NFL first overall draft choices

Salaries and the salary cap

The minimum salary for an NFL player is $235,000 in his first year, and rises after that based on the number of years in service. Exhibition game minimum is $10,000. These numbers are set by contract between the NFL and the players' union, the National Football League Players' Association. These numbers are of course exceeded dramatically by the best players in each position.

Years Experience	Minimum Salary
0	$230,000
1	$305,000
2	$380,000
3	$455,000
4-6	$540,000
7-9	$665,000
10+	$765,000

Escalating player salaries throughout the 1980s and the advent of free agency in 1992 led to the NFL's adoption of a salary cap in 1994, a maximum amount of money each team can pay its players in aggregate. The cap is determined via a complicated formula based on the revenue that all NFL teams receive during the previous year. For the 2004 season, the NFL's salary cap was $80.582 million, an increase of $5.5 million from 2003. The cap for the 2005 season is expected to be approximately $85.5 million.

Proponents of the salary cap note that it prevents a well-financed team in a major city from simply spending giant amounts of money to secure the very best players in every position and thus dominating the entire sport. This has been seen as a problem in American baseball, long dominated since the advent of free agency by large market teams. They point to the relative parity of competition that exists in the NFL as of 2005 compared to Major League Baseball as evidence that the NFL salary cap preserves competitive balance. They claim fans end up paying higher ticket prices to help pay for escalating player salaries. These concerns, among others, led in part to modified salary cap adoption in the National Basketball Association in 1984 and the National Hockey League in 2005.

Critics of the salary cap note that the driving reason for the cap was to maximize the profitability of the NFL teams, and limit the power of NFL players to command the high salaries they are said to deserve in exchange for bringing in large numbers of paying fans to the stadiums. They also note that the salary cap could hypothetically drive prospective athletes to other sports that do not cap the salaries of players; while NFL's large rosters lead to high total payrolls, star players earn more in baseball and basketball (it should however be noted that talent in football does not necessary translate into talent in basketball or baseball, and that star players typically make more money from endorsements than from their team salaries). Furthermore, they attribute NFL competitive parity instead to the league's extensive revenue sharing policies.

The NFL's current CBA (collective bargaining agreement) expires in 2008.

Racial policies

Main article: Black players in American professional football

Although the current NFL is well-represented at virtually every position by African-American athletes, that was not always the case. The league had a few black players until 1933, one year after entry to the league of George Preston Marshall. Marshall's policies not only excluded blacks from his Washington Redskins team but may have influenced the entire league to drop blacks until 1946, when pressure from the competing All-America Football Conference induced the NFL to be more liberal in its signing of blacks. Another theory holds that the NFL, like most of the United States during the Great Depression, simply fired black workers before white workers, but this could hardly account for the league's apparent "all-white" policy during this period. Still, Marshall refused to sign black players until threatened with civil rights legal action by the Kennedy administration in 1962, in which it was explained to him that his lease on the then-new D.C. Stadium, which was at the time controlled by the United States Department of the Interior, would be voided if he continued to refuse to sign any black players. This action, and pressure by another competing league, the more racially-liberal American Football League, slowly managed to reverse the NFL's racial quotas. The AFL's Denver Broncos were the first modern-era team to have a black starting quarterback, Marlin Briscoe, who started the fourth game of the 1968 season, and broke pro football rookie records for passing yardage and touchdowns. The next year 1969, another American Football League team, the Buffalo Bills were the first professional football team of the modern era to begin the season with a black, James Harris as their starting quarterback. The Chicago Bears had a black quarterback in 1953, Willie Thrower, who played in only one game and did not start in any games. After that, no old-line NFL team had a black starting quarterback until the Steelers' Joe Gilliam in 1972.

Even after that, for many NFL teams the door would remain closed to black quarterbacks through the 1970s. 1978 Rose Bowl MVP Warren Moon played for six seasons in the CFL before his abilities finally landed him the starting role with the Houston Oilers. It took until 1988 before a black quarterback started for a Super Bowl team, when Doug Williams won it for the Redskins. To this day, the NFL's head-coach hiring policies are questioned, and it has had to institute measures to attempt to have black head coach candidates be treated more equitably.

White skill players have become increasingly rare in the modern NFL, as most positions are filled by blacks. White running backs, defensive backs, and receivers have become less and less common over the last 25 years. In 2005, a slim majority of offensive linemen are white, while no whites are listed as Tailbacks or Cornerbacks on NFL rosters. Most quarterbacks, punters, and kickers are white, while almost all running backs, wide receivers, defensive backs, defensive linemen, safeties, punt returners, and kickoff returners are black. Increasingly, positions such as tight end, fullback, and linebacker are being filled by blacks. In the early 1980s, blacks and whites each made up roughly half of the players. Since then, the percentage of black players has increased steadily to its present 2005 level of 69%. Whites make up the majority of the remaining players, followed by Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, and Asians.

Television

Further information: NFL on television

The television rights to pro football are the most lucrative (and most expensive) rights of any sport available. In fact, it was television that brought pro football into prominence in the modern era of technology. Since then, NFL broadcasts have become among the most-watched programs on American television, and the fortunes of entire networks have rested on owning NFL broadcasting rights.

History

Further information: History of American football

Like the Amerian college football game from whch it sprung, NFL football is a descendant of the sport nowadays called soccer in the United States. English Association Football or "soccer" developed into rugby, which was imported to the U.S. from Canada in 1874, and then transformed into American college football. Professional football in the United States dates at least to 1892, when an athletic club in Pittsburgh paid William "Pudge" Heffelfinger $500 to take part in a game. Over the next few decades, while most attention was paid to football at elite colleges on the East Coast, the professional game spread widely in the Midwest.

The American Professional Football Association was founded in 1920 at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio. Legendary athlete Jim Thorpe was elected president. The group of 11 teams, all but one in the Midwest, was originally less a league than an agreement not to rob other teams' players. In the early years, APFA members continued to play non-APFA teams.

In 1921, the APFA began releasing official standings, and the following year, the group changed its name to the National Football League. However, the NFL was hardly a major league in the '20s. Teams entered and left the league frequently. Franchises included such colorful representatives as the Oorang Indians, an all-Native American outfit that also put on a performing dog show.

Yet as former college stars like Red Grange and Benny Friedman began to test the professional waters, the pro game slowly began to increase in popularity. By 1934 all of the small-town teams, with the exception of the Green Bay Packers, had moved to or been replaced by big cities. One factor in the league's rising popularity was the institution of an annual championship game in 1933.

By the end of World War II, pro football began to rival the college game for fans' attention. The spread of the T formation led to a faster-paced, higher-scoring game that attracted record numbers of fans. In 1945, the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles, becoming the first big-league sports franchise on the West Coast. In 1950, the NFL accepted three teams from the defunct All-America Football Conference, expanding to 13 clubs.

In the 1950s, pro football finally earned its place as a major sport. The NFL embraced television, giving Americans nationwide a chance to follow stars like Bobby Layne, Paul Hornung and Johnny Unitas. The 1958 NFL championship in New York -- considered by many to be the most-important game in the rise of the NFL -- drew record TV viewership and made national celebrities out of Unitas and his Baltimore Colts teammates.

The rise of professional football was so fast that by the mid-'60s, it had surpassed baseball as Americans' favorite spectator sport in some surveys. As more people wanted to cash in on this surge of popularity than the NFL could accommodate, a rival league, the American Football League (AFL), was founded in 1960.

The AFL introduced features that the NFL did not have, such as wider-open passing offenses, flashier uniforms with players' names on their jerseys, and an official clock visible to fans so that they knew the time remaining in a period (the NFL kept time by a game referee's watch, and only periodically announced the actual time). The newer league also secured itself financially after it established the precedents for gate and television revenue sharing between all of its teams, and network television broadcasts all of its games.

The AFL also forced the NFL to expand in order to compete: The Dallas Cowboys were created to drive the AFL's Dallas Texans out of business; the Minnesota Vikings were the NFL franchise given to Max Winter for abandoning the AFL; and the Atlanta Falcons franchise went to Rankin Smith to dissuade him from purchasing the AFL's Miami Dolphins. It is most likely that if the AFL had never existed, neither would have the Cowboys, the Vikings, or the Falcons.

The ensuing costly war for players between the NFL and AFL almost derailed the sport's ascent. By 1966, the leagues agreed to merge as of the 1970 season. The ten AFL teams joined three existing NFL teams to form the NFL's American Football Conference. The remaining 13 NFL teams became the National Football Conference. Another result of the merger was the creation of an AFL-NFL Championship game that for four years determined the so-called "World Championship of Professional Football". After the merger, the then-renamed Super Bowl became the NFL's championship game.

In the 1970s and '80s, the NFL solidified its dominance as America's top spectator sport and its important role in American culture. The Super Bowl became an unofficial national holiday and the top-rated TV program most years. Monday Night Football, which first aired in 1970 brought in high ratings by mixing sports and entertainment. Rules changes in the late '70s ensured a fast-paced game with lots of passing to attract the casual fan.

The founding of the United States Football League in the early '80s was the biggest challenge to the NFL in the post-merger era. The USFL was a well-financed competitor with big-name players and a national television contract. However, the USFL failed to make money and folded after three years.

In recent years, the NFL has expanded into new markets and ventures. In 1991, the league formed the World League of American Football, (now NFL Europe), a developmental league now with teams in Germany and the Netherlands. The league played a regular-season NFL game in Mexico City in 2005 and intends to play more such games in other countries. In 2003, the NFL lauched its own cable-television channel, the NFL Network.

Franchise relocations and mergers

Further information: NFL franchise moves and mergers

In the early years, the league was not stable and teams moved frequently. Franchise mergers were popular during World War II in response to the scarcity of players.

Franchise moves became far more controversial in the late 20th century when a vastly more popular NFL, free from financial instability, allowed many franchises to abandon long-held strongholds for perceived financially greener pastures. While owners invariably cited financial difficulties as the primary factor in such moves, many fans bitterly disputed these contentions, especially in Cleveland, Baltimore and St. Louis, each of which eventually received teams some years after their original franchises left.

Additionally, with the increasing suburbanization of the U.S. shifting of franchises from the central city to the suburbs became popular from the 1970s on, though at the turn of the millenium a reverse shift back to the central city became somewhat evident.

Video games

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb on the cover of Madden NFL 2006

Electronic Arts publishes an NFL video game for current video game consoles and for PCs each year, called Madden NFL, being named after former coach and current football commentator John Madden. Prior to the 2005-2006 football season, other NFL games were produced by competing video game publishers, such as 2K Games and Midway Games. However, in December 2004, Electronic Arts signed a five-year exclusive agreement with the NFL, meaning only Electronic Arts will publish games featuring NFL team and player names.

Seahawks rule, Steelers drool!

Commissioners and presidents

1. President Jim Thorpe (1920)
2. President Joseph Carr (1921-1939)
3. President Carl Storck (1939-1941)
4. Commissioner Elmer Layden (1941-1946)
5. Commissioner Bert Bell (1946-1959)
6. Interim President Austin Gunsel (1959-1960, following death of Bell)
7. Commissioner Alvin "Pete" Rozelle (1960-1989)
8. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue (1989-present)

League offices

• Canton, Ohio (1920-1921)
• Columbus, Ohio (1921-1941)
• Chicago, Illinois (1941-1946)
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1946-1960)
• New York, New York (1960-present)

Players

• List of American football players
• Current NFL players

Rules named after players

The following is a partial list of rules that were enacted largely based on a single player's exploits on the field.

• the Adam Vinatieri Rule -- the clock stops immediately after a field goal is kicked through the uprights. Enacted in 2002 after the Patriots' kicker won Super Bowl XXXVI on a last second kick that went through with three seconds remaining on the clock. The clock didn't stop and New England won.
• the Bronko Nagurski Rule -- forward passing made legal from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. Enacted in 1933. Prior to this rule change a player had to be five yards behind the line of scrimmage to throw a forward pass.
• the Deacon Jones Rule -- no head-slapping. Enacted in 1977.
• the Deion Sanders rule -- Player salary rule which correlates a contract's signing bonus with its yearly salary. Enacted after Deion Sanders signed with the Dallas Cowboys in 1995 for a minimum salary and a $13 million signing bonus. (There is also a college football rule with this nickname.)
• the Emmitt Smith Rule -- no taking your helmet off on the field of play. Enacted in 1997.
• the Erik Williams rule -- no hands to the facemask by offensive linemen.
• the Fran Tarkenton rule -- a line judge was added as the sixth official to ensure that a back was indeed behind the line of scrimmage before throwing a forward pass. Enacted in 1965.
• the Jerome Bettis rule -- the coin toss must be called before the coin is tossed. Enacted immediately after the 1998 Thanksgiving Day game between the Steelers and Lions.
• the Ken Stabler rule -- on fourth down or any down in the final two-minutes of play, if a player fumbles, only the fumbling player can recover and/or advance the ball. A Defensive player can recover and advance at any time of play.Enacted in 1979.
• the Lester Hayes rule -- no Stickum™ allowed. Enacted in 1981.
• the Lou Groza rule -- no artificial medium to assist in the execution of a kick. Enacted in 1956.
• the Mel Blount rule -- Officially known as defensive pass interference, defensive backs can only make contact with receivers within five yards of the line of scrimmage. Enacted in current form in 1978.
• the Mel Renfro rule -- allows a second player on the offense to catch a tipped ball, without a defender subsequentlly touching it. Enacted in 1978.
• the Michael Irvin rule -- no taunting. Another rule, resulting in offensive pass interference, prohibiting WRs to push off CBs, is also often called "the Michael Irvin rule."
• the Bert Emanuel rule -- the ball can touch the ground during a completed pass as long as the receiver maintains control of the ball. Enacted due to a play in the 1999 NFC Championship Game, where Emanuel, playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a catch ruled incomplete since the ball touched the ground.
• the Terrell Owens rule -- no "foreign objects" on a player's uniform (enacted in response to the 2002 "Sharpie™ incident").
• the Peyton Manning rule -- basically more emphasis on the Mel Blount rule after the New England Patriots committed several uncalled pass interference penalties in the 2003 AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.
• the Roy Williams rule -- no horse-collar tackles. Enacted in 2005 when Williams broke Terrell Owens' leg on a horse collar tackle.

See the external Professional Football Researchers Association for more "player named" rules, and background information on how these rules came about.

Awards

• Vince Lombardi Trophy
• Lamar Hunt Trophy
• George S. Halas Trophy
• Most Valuable Player
• Coach of the Year
• Offensive Player of the Year
• Defensive Player of the Year
• Offensive Rookie of the Year
• Defensive Rookie of the Year
• Super Bowl MVP
• NFL Comeback Player of the Year
• Walter Payton Man of the Year Award

Footnotes

1. ^ Examples of Exhibition Game Lawsuits
2. ^ NFL scheduling formula at NFL.com

See also

• Pro Football Hall of Fame
• Defunct NFL teams
• List of Professional Football Drafts
• Personal Seat License
• NFL Films
• NFL Network
• Glossary of American football
• NFL Nicknames
• List of Professional Football Drafts
• Madden NFL series
• NFL Street series
• NFL Blitz
• Sports league attendances
• Instant replay
• NFL franchise moves and mergers
• NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team

pre-seasons:

• American Bowl

Regular seasons:

• List of NFL seasons
• List of NFL tied games (since 1974)
• NFL Lore
• National Football League: Last to First
• Significant rivalries in the NFL

Postseasons:

• NFL playoffs
• List of NFL champions
• Super Bowl
• List of Super Bowl champions
• Pro Bowl
• Professional Football Championship Games
• List of National Football League franchise post-season droughts

Records:

• NFL Standings since AFL-NFL merger
• NFL Individual Records
• NFL Team-Oriented Records
• NFL Annual Rushing Leaders

Other related leagues:

• American Football League
• All-America Football Conference
• NFL Europe
• List of leagues of American football

References

• Official NFL website
• Official Super Bowl website
• NFL History - Champion and Award Lists
• "NFL Scores Nearly $18 Billion in TV Rights", by Stefan Fatsis and Kyle Pope, 14 January 1998, The Wall Street Journal (p. B1) [3]
• NFL Record and Fact Book (ISBN 193299436X)
• Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League (ISBN 0062701746)
• http://www.pro-football-reference.com - Large online database of NFL data and statistics
• The NFL History Network - includes a large database of historic NFL box scores
• NFL's Economic Model Shows Signs of Strain
• Professional Football Researchers Association - detailed descriptions of why many of the rules named after players were enacted.