The NFL today

The NFL today is the most watched sport in America and its easy to see why, its high octane, hard hitting, all action style appeals to the masses, and the rest of the world is starting to wake up to this great sport. England is one of these countries and thanks to the International Series we get to see the NFL on our doorsteps once a year. However, due to the lack of advertising and TV coverage in the UK many people will only get a taste of American Football when the Super Bowl is on. Today I am going to break down how the league is structured and give people more of an insight in to the sport I have grown to love.

The NFL is made up of 32 teams, These are divided equally in to two leagues, which are known as conferences. The first is the American Football Conference often abbreviated as the AFC, and the second is the National Football Conference or the NFC. The teams are then divided again in to four divisions, North, East, South and West with four teams in each. this creates the basic structure of the National Football League.

SEASON STRUCTURE


The NFL season can be broken down into segments. The NFL year starts with the Off Season, this starts a few weeks after the Super bowl finishes and mainly comprises of back office work and planning for the year ahead. Their are a number of activities associated with the Off season. The first is The NFL scouting Combine, where college players hopeful of being drafted and signed to NFL teams put there talents on show by completing drills and exercises. This usually takes place in the last week of February. The official start to the NFL year begins when Free Agency opens, this is when out of contract players can be signed to new teams and trading of players can begin, however it is not a case of acquiring all the best players as this is almost impossible. As with most sports in America there is a salary cap that all teams must adhere to. This keeps all teams on a level playing field and promotes an equal share of talent across the league. This philosophy is then carried over to the next big date in the NFL calendar, The NFL Draft.

The NFL Draft occurs every year and it's where eligible college football players are selected by teams to join the NFL. This is the main source of recruitment for the league and also one of the main highlights. The design of the draft goes in reverse order from the previous seasons winning records, so the team with the worst record gets the first pick and potentially the best player, this means the Super bowl champions would receive the last pick of each round. By doing it like that the NFL league tries to keep things competitive and avoid the same teams dominating every year. However trading these picks is common, a team with a high pick can often trade it for a veteran player or more picks in later rounds to build a stronger squad.

The next stage of the season is Training camp or mini camp, this is a compulsory training regime designed by the coaches of each team to get the players back in shape and familiar with the teams plan and playbooks for the upcoming season. After mini camp each team has four pre season games often played throughout August. It is common for coaches to use these games to try out new players and rookies (newly drafted players) to see if they will be good enough to be selected for the upcoming season. Training camp allows teams to have up to 80 players on their roster, during pre season it is then cut down to 53 for when the season starts. As you can see competition for places and roster spots can be intense and this is usually the purpose of the four pre season games, it is very rare to see established and elite players from each team participating at length in these pre season games as the coaches try to avoid any injuries.

The start of September see's the beginning of the competitive matches, this period is called the regular season and last 17 weeks. Each team will play 16 games with a one week rest period known as their 'bye week'. The schedule of each team is determined by a predetermined formula.

• Each team plays there divisional rivals twice a year. 
• Each team plays four teams from a different division but the same conference once. two at home and two away.           
• Each team plays four teams from a different division and different conference once. two at home and two away.
• Each team then plays once against other teams in the same conference who finished in the same place in their divisions the season before. (winners of each division in the NFC would all play each other the following year)

(hope I haven't lost anybody yet)

The aim of the regular season is to qualify for the play-off's. Once all the games have been played the best teams progress to the knock out stages of the NFL season. The four division champions from each conference automatically qualify, then each conference has two 'wild card' teams. These are the two non divisional champions who have the best record. 12 teams in all make the play-off's and conferences are kept separate. The teams are then seeded with the team who has the highest win percentage seeded first and so on. The team with the highest seed in each match always plays at home. The rounds go as follows:


WILD CARD ROUND

• Seed 3 vs seed 6
• Seed 2 vs seed 4
• Seeded teams 1 and 2 have a bye week and automatically progress to the next round  

DIVISIONAL ROUND

• Seed 1 vs lowest seed still in play-offs
• Seed 2 vs second lowest seed

CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP

• Two teams left in each conference play to be crowned AFC or NFC conference champions

SUPERBOWL

• The two conference champions now go head to head to see who will be crowned the Super Bowl champions!

The final event in the NFL year is the Pro Bowl, an exhibition game played between the AFC all stars and the NFC all stars. a vote is carried out during the season to determine who the best players in the NFL are and who should compete in this match up.

I Hope you have enjoyed this blog which turned out to be more of an essay so sorry, but now hopefully you have learnt a few things about the game and in the upcoming entries I will be talking about what is more current in the NFL, such as news updates, team reviews upcoming free agency and the NFL draft 2012. hope you come back soon and don't forget to leave a comment so I know what you guys think....