Overview Of The NFL: How It Works

The National Football League (NFL), the most popular sports league in America, consists of 32 teams that play annually for the Super Bowl, the biggest yearly sporting event in the world. It was established in 1920, and since then, it has evolved into the model for a prosperous modern sports league, with strong franchises across the board, national and international distribution, generous revenue sharing, and intense competition. With NFL football betting, you can predict games for lucrative winnings.

NFL Team Setup And Schedule

The NFL comprises 32 teams playing in a 16-game season. There is a “pre-season” of games that do not count as they are there for practice and to evaluate new players, and would be the equivalent of a soccer ‘friendly match’. The league has two conferences (National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC), each with 4 divisions; North, South, East, and West. Every season a team plays 2 games (home and away) against the other 3 teams in their division.

On a rotational basis, teams play all the teams in another division within their conference. They also play all the teams in a division outside their conference. That makes 14 games. The last 2 games are based on the team’s finishing place in the division in the previous season. When the regular season is over, the winners of each division plus 3 wild-card teams make the playoffs.

The Playoffs

The playoffs begin immediately after the regular season ends. NFC teams only play other NFC teams in the playoffs, and AFC teams only play AFC teams. Then, the team with the best record in each conference gets a bye in the first playoff week. The other 6 teams play, and those 3 winners move on.

The final 4 teams from each conference play the following week. The week after is the conference championship game. Then there is a week off, followed by the Super Bowl on the first Sunday in February.

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