The 1976 NFL season was the 57th regular season of the National Football League. The league expanded to 28 teams with the addition of the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This fulfilled one of the conditions agreed to in 1966 for the 1970 AFL-NFL Merger, which called for the league to expand to 28 teams by 1970 or soon thereafter.
For this season only, the Seahawks played in the NFC West while the Buccaneers played in the AFC West. (The Seahawks would return to the NFC West with the realignment prior to the 2002 NFL season.)
In addition, the Buccaneers would set a record of futility, finishing the season 0-14. The Buccaneers would go on to lose their first 26 games as a franchise before finally winning against the New Orleans Saints and St. Louis Cardinals to finish the 1977 season.
The season ended with Super Bowl XI when the Oakland Raiders defeated the Minnesota Vikings.
Read more about 1976 NFL Season: Major Rule Changes, Division Races, Final Standings, Playoffs, Awards
Famous quotes containing the word season:
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
—William Harmon (b. 1938)