In America, the largest professional American football is the National Football League. It is made up thirty-two teams that come from American cities and regions. The league is made up of two conferences called the American Football League (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Each conference is then divided into four divisions that are made up of 4 teams and the four divisions are called East, West, North and South.



A regular NFL season is sixteen games. The season is played from September to January. Each team is allowed to one week off. When the regular season ends, six teams play in tournament called the NFL playoffs. The tournament is a single-elimination, meaning that one team only has one chance to win. If they lose that one game, they are out of the tournament and get to rest, wondering how they can make it to the championship next year. The championship is called the Super Bowl and most Americans watch it on TV. They either watch it at home with their family or friends or at bars if they are feeling lonely. The championship is one of the biggest American TV events. The game is held two weeks after the last playoff game in city that has an NFL team or a popular college stadium. One year, it was held only one week after the last playoff game. The reason was because the league had stopped to honor the people who had died in the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy. After the Super Bowl, one week later, the Pro Bowl is played between the NFC and the AFC. The Pro Bowl teams are made up of the best players in the league.

The schedule and the game in the NFL are very much controlled by TV. Nothing happens without it being documented by a TV camera. When the camera is off, there is no action in an NFL game. Game play only occurs in a game when the cameras are on. It is one of the major reasons that an NFL game is three hours long. By the clock, an NFL game should only be an hour and fifteen minutes. The game is divided into quarters that are only 15 minutes long. There is fifteen minutes for what is called a halftime. Every time there is some sort of break in the play, they go to a commercial. During the commercials, the players are not playing. The schedule is now being changed to make sure that the best teams play on Sunday night. They do not want the slaughters that usually occur on Monday nights when the weakest teams end up playing each other. Weak games mean that no will watch them. They want the strongest teams to play on Sunday night so they will do everything possible to make sure that there are good games on that night.