History
In 1920, representatives of several professional American football leagues and independent teams met in Canton, Ohio, and founded the American Professional Football Conference, soon renamed the National Football League. The first official championship game was held in 1933; before then, there was no playoff system, and instead the team that finished with the best regular season record was awarded the league title. By 1958, after which that season's NFL championship game became known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played", Professional Football was on its way to becoming one of the most popular sports in the United States. A new league, the American Football League, began play in 1960, and its expanded market and offense-oriented style of play had the result that by 1965, Professional Football supplanted Major League Baseball as the most popular televised sport in America. The NFL's merger with the American Football League, agreed to in 1966 and completed in 1970, further expanded the sport and created the Super Bowl, which has become one of the most watched sporting events in the world, and is second to association football (soccer)'s UEFA Champions League final as the most watched annual sporting event worldwide.
Read more about this topic: National Football League
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)