What is the National Football League

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest and oldest professional football league in the United States of America.

The NFL is made up of 32 teams that are affiliated to two sports associations: the American Football Association (AAF) and the National Football Association (ANF). At the end of each season, the winning AAF team faces the winning ANF team in a Cup Winners’ Cup or Super Bowl match.

In order to reach a new, more professional level, in 1920 it was decided that football needed better organization and clear rules. To this end, a sports league was founded, which later became the National Football League. Since its inception, the league has been called the Professional American Football Association (APAM). But the sport continued to be a mess, and later that year the name was changed to the Professional American Football League (LPAM). A year later, this league included 22 teams.

With the advent of qualifying requirements and various restrictions, chaos in the league continued. In 1922, the league’s name was changed again. Now it was called the National Football League (NFL). The name it still bears today. Finally, the league has found its permanent name.

Prior to 1925, the NFL did not attract serious attention. In 1925, on Thanksgiving Day, the largest number of spectators in history gathered at the stadium to watch a professional game of American football. The Chicago Bears football team took on the Chicago Cardinals in a game where neither team scored a single point. Despite this emotional excitement, the audience was very felt and the NFL continued to gain popularity. Just days later, the Chicago Bears faced the New York Giants. It was a meeting where the number of game viewers almost doubled compared to the previous game.

In 1941, after almost 20 years of existence of the NFL, the first commissioner of the league was appointed.

They became Elmer Leyden (Elmer Layden). Ten years later, on television throughout the United States from the west coast to the east coast, the first broadcast of the match for the championship of the national football league was broadcast. Ten years later, Pete Rozelle became league commissioner. At the same time, the American Football League (AFL) appeared, which in 1969 became part of the NFL.

In 1973, the NFL heard about the emergence of a competitor – the World Football League (WFL). But all the worries about this were in vain. Two years later, the VFL ceased to exist.

In 1982, the sixteenth match of the Cup of Cups became a historic one for the CBS television channel, gathering the largest number of television viewers. The following year, the Cup of Cups became the most watched live sporting event in the last ten consecutive years. There was no doubt that the National Football League had changed television forever by making Sunday and Monday evenings and one week in January a special time for television viewers. If anyone else had any doubts about this, they were quickly dispelled when the twentieth match of the Cup Winners’ Cup became the most watched program among all television programs of all genres, gathering 120 million viewers on TV screens. It was a great game as the Chicago Bears defeated the New England Patriots 46-10.

The 1990s were a time of solid records in professional football, and at the turn of the millennium, records were broken in ticket sales for matches. In 2000, a special meeting of the legendary players of the National Football League was held, which was attended by more than a hundred famous football players.