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The National Football League (NFL) is the largest professional American football league, consisting of thirty-two teams from American cities and regions. The league's 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, labeled East, West, North, and South. During the league's regular season, each team plays sixteen games over a seventeen-week period consisting of one bye generally from September to January. At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference play in the NFL playoffs, a twelve-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. One week later, selected all-star players from both the AFC and NFC meet in the Pro Bowl, currently held in Hawaii. The NFL was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (it adopted the name National Football League in 1922. The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America.
Teams There are 32 NFL clubs. Unlike MLB, the NBA and the NHL, the league has no teams in Canada largely because of the presence of Canadian football, a similar but different code of football than the American version. There are some speculations that with the merger of Rogers Telecommunication and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the Buffalo Bills or some other team in trouble may move to Toronto.• Most major cities in the United States have one NFL franchise, with the exception of the second largest city, Los Angeles, which does not have one either in the city or its metro area. The NFL is able to utilize the possible relocation of a franchise to Los Angeles as a threat, for example when trying to persuade local governments to contribute to the cost of new stadiums for its other franchises.• The Washington Redskins are the most lucrative NFL franchise and is the most lucrative sports team of all U.S. professional sports, valued at approximately $1.3 billion.• Season structure As of 2006, The NFL season features: Exhibition season Summers see most NFL teams playing four exhibition games (referred to by the NFL as "preseason games;" the league discourages the use of the term "exhibition game") from early August through early September. Two "featured" preseason games, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game and American Bowl, do not count toward the normal allotment of four games, so the four teams playing in those games each end up playing five exhibition games. The games are useful for new players that are not used to playing in front of very large crowds. Management often uses the games to evaluate newly signed players. Veteran players will generally play only for about a quarter of each game so they can avoid injury. Still, pro football is popular enough that many fans are still willing to pay full price for exhibition games so that they may guarantee themselves a seat during the season. This is evidenced by the fact that many teams are sold out on a season ticket basis and have large waiting lists where people are willing to pay a one-time or annual fee for the privilege of remaining on the waiting list. Although several exhibition games are broadcast nationally, most are broadcast by local television stations. Exhibition games are almost exclusively played at night due to hot summer weather, and are frequently scheduled based on local convenience (e.g. games on the west coast tend to start at 7:00 p.m. PT/10:00 p.m. ET). Exhibition season controversies Currently, every NFL team requires their season ticket holders to purchase tickets at full price for two preseason games as a requirement to purchase regular season tickets. Complaints regarding this policy have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but have failed to change the policy. A judgment in 1974 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." Additionally, some players, coaches, and journalists object to the 4 week preseason schedule. Players have little incentive to play in the preseason, since they do not get paid extra for these games, and thus are essentially playing them "for free". In spite of this, the risk of injury during the preseason is just as great as during the regular season. Nearly every year, marquee players are lost for the season due to injuries in exhibition games. In spite of these objections, owners continue to endorse the four game preseason, as they are an easy source of revenue, and thus are unlikely to go away in the foreseeable future. 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 each week being played on Sunday night, and another game being played on Monday night, known as Monday Night Football. For the last few weeks of the regular season (after the NCAA football regular season has concluded), the league typically schedules two or three nationally-televised games on Saturday or Thursday evenings. In addition, the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions each traditionally host a game on Thanksgiving Day. Starting in 2006, a third game is scheduled during that same day in primetime. Currently, each team's 16-game regular season schedule is set using a pre-determined formula: This schedule guarantees that all teams will play in every other team's stadium at least once every eight years. Prior to 2002 (when the league expanded to 32 teams) the league used similar scheduling rubrics, though they were adjusted for the number of teams and divisions. From 1970-1992, and again from 1998-2001, the league did not have equal numbers of teams in every division, which allowed for unbalanced schedules. The only time since the merger that the league has been completely "balanced" has been from 1993-1997 (with 6 divisions of 5 teams each) and since 2002 (with 8 divisions of 4 teams each). Additionally, prior to 2002, teams always played an entire division in the other conference, but not their own; meaning that while an AFC team would be guaranteed to play an NFC team every three years, they could go indefinitely without playing every team in their own conference. For example, between 1970 (when the leagues merged) and 2002 (when the current schedule was introduced) the Denver Broncos and the Miami Dolphins played only 6 times; including a stretch (1976-1997) where they met only once in 22 seasons. For the 2007 season, the assignments will be: Intraconference Interconference Regular season games played outside of the U.S. To date, only one NFL regular season game has been played outside of the U.S., that being the 2005 game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers, which was played in Mexico City. In an effort to bring the game to a wider audience, the league intends to begin playing more games outside of the U.S. beginning in 2007. According to Mark Waller, senior vice president of NFL International, the league intends to schedule a single international game in 2007, though no details have been decided yet as to which teams would play, or what site they would play at. Waller has floated Germany, Mexico, and Canada as possible sites for these games. The longterm plan is to have two international games played every year, on a 16-year rotating schedule that would guarantee that each team would get to play twice over that span: once as the home team and once as the away team. Regular season history 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, many against independent professional, college or amateur teams. 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. Since the 2002 season, the league has scheduled a nationally televised regular season game on the Thursday night prior to the first Sunday of NFL games to kick off the season. The first one, featuring the San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants, was held on September 5 2002 largely to celebrate New York City's resilience in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks . Since 2004, the NFL has indicated that the opening game will normally be hosted by the defending Super Bowl champions as the official start of their title defense. Playoffs At the conclusion of the regular season, six teams from each conference qualify for the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament, which culminates in the Super Bowl: These six teams play a single-elimination tournament to determine the Conference Champions, which meet in the Super Bowl. The tournament is reseeded at each round; rather than following a set bracket, the highest remaining seed always plays the lowest remaining seed. The graphic to the right is for illustrative purposes only; it assumes that the highest seed in each game wins that game. Television schedule The television rights to the NFL are the most lucrative and expensive rights not only of any American sport, but of any American entertainment property. With the fragmentation of audiences due to the increased specialization of broadcast and cable TV networks, sports remain one of the few entertainment properties that not only can guarantee a large and diversified audience, but an audience that will watch in real time. Annually, the Super Bowl often ranks among the most watched shows of the year. Four of Neilson Media Research's top 10 programs are Super Bowls Networks have purchased a share of the broadcasting rights to the NFL as a means of raising the entire network's profile. Early on it was decided by NFL owners to sell the rights to all league games collectively, as opposed to each team selling their rights individually. Because television revenue is shared equally between the teams, the NFL can be viewed as a cooperative organization owned by its members (team owners). Under the current television contracts, which began during the 2006 season, regular season games are broadcast on 5 networks: CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, and The NFL Network. Regional games With these current contacts, the regional Sunday day-games are broadcast on CBS and FOX. CBS has broadcast rights to all regional AFC intraconference games, and FOX has all rights to regional NFC intraconference games. Interconference games are given to the network that is the normal broadcast partner for the away team, thus each network gets access to each stadium in the league. Three games are broadcast in any one market each week, with one network getting a "double header" each week (the 1:00 p.m. ET/10:00 a.m. PT and 4:15 p.m. ET/1:15 p.m. PT games) while the other network broadcasting either the 1:00 p.m. ET or the 4:00 p.m. ET game. The double-header network alternates each week for the first 16 weeks, with both networks having a double-header in week 17. Since 1973, the NFL has what is known as a "Blackout Rule" that has been part of its standard broadcast contract. Any regionally broadcast game is "blacked out" in its home market if it does not sell out within 72 hours of its air time will NOT be shown in the local market, another game will be substituted in its place. This is to encourage ticket sales at stadiums.. The rule is specifically exempted from U.S. anti-trust law (Title 15, Sec. 1292 of the U.S. Code), as it would normally not be allowed under standard laws. Sports bars and taverns in various places in the U.S. have been sued by the NFL for attempting to circumvent this rule. National Games National broadcasts of marquee matchups usually occur on Sunday and Monday nights, and later in the season (after the completion of the NCAA football season) on Thursday and Saturday nights as well. NBC has broadcast rights to Sunday Night games. These are broadcast under a special "flexible schedule" that allows Sunday games (from weeks 10-15 and week 17) to be moved from the normal start time of 1:00 p.m. ET/10:00 a.m. PT, 4:00 p.m. ET/1:00 p.m. PT, or 4:15 p.m. ET/1:15 p.m. PT. to the primetime slot, and possibly move one or more 1:00 p.m. ET slotted games to the 4:00 p.m. ET slots. This is to have the best game of each week broadcast on national over-the-air television. During the last week of the season, the league could also re-schedule games as late as six days before the contests so that all of the television networks will be able to broadcast a game that has playoff implications. Both Fox and CBS have the right to 'protect' 5 games (each) when flexible scheduling for Week 10-15, 17 are in place. This allows Fox and CBS to protect at least one marquee game to show on a national scale. Both networks are also allowed to move a 1:00pm ET slotted game to 4:00pm ET or 4:15pm ET during this time of the season. NBC also has broadcast rights to the opening Thursday Night game, which replaces a game taken away when the league omits a Sunday night game during the opening weekend of the World Series. Monday Night Football has been moved from longtime partner ABC to ESPN (though it should be noted that both are affiliates of Disney). Additionally, the recently created NFL Network will broadcast eight Thursday and Saturday night games for the league starting with a newly-created third Thanksgiving Day game. NFL Sunday Ticket Also, satellite broadcast company DirecTV offers NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription based package, that allows most Sunday daytime regional games to be watched. NFL Sunday Ticket is subject to the same blackout rules as broadcast networks. This package is exclusive to DirecTV in the USA. In Canada, NFL Sunday Ticket is availble on a per-provider distriubtion deal on both cable and satellite. Radio Schedule Each NFL team has its own radio network and employs its announcers. Nationally, the NFL is heard on the Westwood One Radio Network and on Sports USA Radio. Westwood One carries Sunday and Monday Night Football, all Thursday games, two Sunday afternoon contests and all post-season games, including the Pro Bowl. Sports USA Radio broadcasts two Sunday afternoon games every Sunday during the regular season. The NFL also has a contract with Sirius Satellite Radio, which provides news, analysis, commentary and game coverage for all games. Player contracts and compensation NFL players are all members of a union called the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). The NFLPA negotiates the general minimum contract for all players in the league. This contract is called the Collective Bargaining Agreement(CBA), and it is the central document that governs the negotiation of individual player contracts for all of the league's players. The current CBA has been in place since 1993, and amended in 1998. The NFL has not had any labor-related work stoppages since the 1987 season, which is much longer than Major League Baseball, the NBA or the NHL. The current CBA expires at the end of the 2006 season. Players are tiered into three different levels with regards to their rights to negotiate for contracts: Among the items covered in the CBA are: Salaries A players salary, as defined by the CBA, includes any "compensation in money, property, investments, loans or anything else of value to which an NFL player" excluding such benefits as insurance and pension. A salary can includes an annual pay and a one-time "signing bonus" which is paid in full when the player signs their contract. For the purposes of the salary cap (see below) the signing bonus is pro-rated over the life of the contract rather then to the year in which the signing bonus is paid. Player contracts are not guaranteed; teams are only required to pay on the contract as long as the player remains a member of the team. If the player is cut, or quits, for any reason, the balance of the contract is voided and the player receives no further compensation. Among other things, the CBA establishes a minimum salary for its players, which is pro-rated for a players years of experience. Players and their agents may negotiate with clubs for higher salaries, and frequently do. As of the 2005 NFL season, the highest paid player was Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, whose "cap value" was slightly under $8 million. The overall value of his contract is 10 years at $130 million, averaging $13 million a year, including signing bonuses and annual salary Salary cap The salary cap is defined as the maximum amount that a team may spend on player compensation, (see above) for all of its players combined. Unlike other leagues, like the NBA (which has certain exemptions) or Major League Baseball (which has a "soft cap" enforced by "luxury taxes"), the NFL has a "hard cap", that is no team, for any reason, may go over the cap. The NFL salary cap is calculated by a formula. It is defined by the current CBA to be 59.5% of the total projected league revenue for the upcoming year. This number, divided by the number of teams, determines an individual teams maximum salary cap. For 2006, this is approximately $102 million per team. For 2007, it is projected that this will rise to $109 million. Teams and players often find creative ways to fit salaries under the salary cap. Early in the salary cap era, "signing bonuses" were used to give players a large chunk of money up front, and thus not count in the salary for the bulk of the contract. This led to a rule whereby all signing bonus are pro-rated equally for each year of the contract. Thus a player who receives a $10 million dollar signing bonus for a 5 year contract would count $2 million per year for the life of the contract, even though the full $10 million was paid up front during the first year of the contract. Also, if a team cuts any player, the signing bonus ceases to be pro-rated, and the entire balance of the bonus counts against the cap in the upcomming season. This is not true of a players salary which terminates when the player is cut. Player contracts tend to be "back-loaded". This means that the contract is not divided equally among the time period it covers. Instead, the player earns progressively more and more each year. For instance, a player signing a 4-year deal worth $10 million may get paid $1 million the first year, $2 million the second year, $3 million the third year, and $4 million the fourth year. If a team cuts a player after the first year, the final 3 years do not count against the cap. However, the balance of any signing bonus still counts against the team that cut the player, and it counts in full the year after the player is cut. The NFL draft Every year during April, each NFL franchise seeks to add new players to its roster through a collegiate draft known as "the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting", which is more commonly known as the NFL Draft. Teams are ranked in inverse order based on the previous season's record, with the worst record picking first, and the second worst picking second and so on. The exceptions to this order is that the Super Bowl champion always picks 32nd, and the Super Bowl loser always picks 31st. The draft proceeds for 7 rounds. Rounds 1-3 are run on Saturday of draft weekend, rounds 4-7 are run on Sunday. Teams are given a limited amount of time to make their picks. If the pick is not made in the alloted time, the team forfeits their pick. This happened in 2003 to the Minnesota Vikings, much to their own embarassment. Teams have the option of trading away their picks to other teams for different picks, players, cash, or a combination thereof. While player-for-player trades are rare during the rest of the year (especially in comparison to the other major league sports), trades are far more common on draft day. In 1989, in argueably the most famous draft day trade ever, the Dallas Cowboys traded running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings for five veteran players and six draft picks over 3 years. The Cowboys would use these picks to leverage trades for additional draft picks and veteran players. As a direct result of this trade, they would draft many of the stars that would help them win 3 Super Bowls in the 1990's, including Emmitt Smith, Russell Maryland and Darren Woodson. The first pick in the draft is often taken to be the best overall player in the rookie class. This may or may not be true, since teams often select players more based on needs than on overall skill. Plus, comparing players at different positions is difficult to do. Still, it is considered a great honor to be a first-round pick, and a greater honor to be the first overall pick. The very last pick in the draft is known as Mr. Irrelevant, and is the subject of a dinner in his honor in Newport Beach, California. Drafted players may ONLY negotiate with the team that drafted them (or to another team if their rights were traded away). The drafting team has one year to sign the player. If they do not do so, the player may reenter the draft and can be drafted by another team. Bo Jackson famously sat out a season in this way. Free agency Free agency in the NFL began with a limited free agency system known as "Plan B Free Agency", and was in effect for four seasons between 1989 and 1992. Beginning with the 1993 season, "Plan A Free Agency" went into effect, which is the system which remains in the NFL today. History Like the American college football game from which it sprung, NFL football is a descendant of rugby football, which was imported to the United States from Canada in 1874, and then transformed into American college football after McGill University in Montreal invited Harvard University to Quebec to play a new Canadian version of "rugby 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, particularly in Ohio where in 1903 the Massillon Tigers, a strong amateur team, hired four Pittsburgh pros to play in their season-ending game against Akron. 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 eleven 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 LaRue, Ohio 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 thirteen 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, Otto Graham, and Johnny Unitas. The 1958 NFL championship in New York 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, 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: The Dallas Cowboys were created to counter the AFL's Dallas Texans. The Texans moved the franchise to Kansas City as the Chiefs in 1963; 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. 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 thirteen 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 1970s 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 1980s 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 1986, the league began holding a series of pre-season exhibition games, called American Bowls, held at international sites outside the United States. Then 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 launched its own cable-television channel, NFL Network. Franchise relocations 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, Houston and St. Louis, each of which eventually received teams some years after their original franchises left (the Browns, Ravens,Texans and the Rams respectively). However, Los Angeles, the second-largest media market in the United States, has not had an NFL team since 1994 after both the Raiders and the Rams relocated elsewhere. Additionally, with the increasing suburbanization of the U.S., the building of new stadiums and other team facilities in the suburbs instead of the central city became popular from the 1970s on, though at the turn of the millennium a reverse shift back to the central city became somewhat evident. Video games 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 be permitted to publish games featuring NFL team and player names. Commissioners and presidents Main League offices Players Coaches Uniform numbers In the NFL, players wear uniform numbers based on the position they play. The current system was instituted into the league on April 5, 1973, as a means for fans and officials (referees, linesmen) to more easily identify players on the field by their position. Players who were already in the league at that date were grandfathered, and did not have to change their uniform numbers if they didn't conform. Since that date, players are invariably assigned numbers within the following ranges, based on their primary position: Prior to 2004, wide receivers were allowed to only wear numbers 80-89. The NFL changed the rule that year to allow wide receivers to wear numbers 10-19 to allow for the increased number of players at wide receiver and tight end coming into the league. Prior to that, players were only allowed to wear non-standard numbers if their team had run out of numbers within the prescribed number range. Perhaps most familiar to fans, Keyshawn Johnson began wearing number 19 in 1996 because the New York Jets had run out of numbers in the 80s. Occasionally, players will petition the NFL to allow them to wear a number that is not in line with the numbering system. In 2006, New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush petitioned the NFL to let him keep the number 5 which he used at USC. His request was later denied. It should be noted that this NFL numbering system is based on a player's primary position. Any player wearing any number may play at any position on the field at any time (though players wearing numbers 50-79 must let the referee know that they are playing out of position by reporting as an "ineligible number in an eligible position"). It is not uncommon for running backs to line up at wide receiver on certain plays, or to have a large lineman play at fullback or tight end in short yardage situations. Also, in preseason games, when teams have expanded rosters, players may wear numbers that are outside of the above rules. When the final 53-player roster is established, they are reissued numbers within the above guidelines. Awards Discontinued awards See also Pre-seasons Regular seasons Postseasons Records American football Further information | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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