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Get Your Football Tickets Here.Professional football was first played soon after the demise of the Intercollegiate Football Association, around eighteen ninety-five. In nineteen twenty, the American Professional Football Association was formed; one year later it was reorganized and in nineteen twenty-two was renamed the National Football League.
Unlike the APFA, which handed out franchises far and wide with little discretion, the NFL, from nineteen forty-six to forty-nine, was limited to ten teams. The APFA, on the other hand, consisted of twenty three teams in the year between its inception and the change-over in becoming the NFL.
A merger in nineteen seventy, fifty years after the inception of the first pro football association, combined sixteen NFL teams with ten AFL teams to comprise one league with two conferences. In the nineteen eighties, further expansion was proposed and by the ninety three-ninety four NFL season, approval was given for a thirty-team league. The next step towards growth of the league would be to realign the NFL into eight different divisions, each with four teams.
Pro football, like its college counterpart, was not without its failures. Among the number of competitive leagues that have folded in failure are the All-American Football conference, nineteen forty-six to forty-nine and the World Football League, nineteen seventy-four to seventy-five.
Arena Football, an indoor league played in the spring with eight man teams, debuted in nineteen eighty-seven. It is still played, but does not enjoy the popularity or success that is found in the National Football League.
From its humble beginnings in eighteen sixty-nine, when the first intercollegiate game was played between Rutgers and Princeton, football has become a multi-billion dollar business in its professional form.
Once watched by no more than a handful of loyal sideline enthusiasts, football is now available for worldwide viewing. With the advent of cable television, dozens of high school and college games can be watched over Friday and Saturday afternoons. Pro games are televised on Sunday and Monday nights, with at least half a dozen games televised each weekend during the season. At the end of each NFL season, champs from both the National and American conferences meet in the Super Bowl to determine a national champion. This game, always played in January, has been called the most watched sporting event of all time, with a viewing audience from around the entire globe, watching and listening to the televise in dozens of languages.
Although television commercials foot a very large part of the bill, the competition between networks for the coverage rights highly inflates the value of NFL franchises. In nineteen twenty, a franchise cost one hundred dollars. By nineteen sixty, each was worth approximately two million dollars. In nineteen ninety three, when the league decided to expand, selling teams to Charlotte, North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida, the cost rose to one hundred forty millions dollars per franchise.
In the same year, the NFL signed a five-network, four year television contract, totaling almost four and a half billion dollars.