National Football League championships: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

National Football League has used several different formats to determine their league champions since its founding in 1920.

From 1920 to 1932, the NFL champion was the team with the best record during the season. This was tricky to sort out, as teams played anywhere from eight to twenty games in a season. In 1932, Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans were tied and played a grudge match of sorts, Chicago winning 9-0. The game proved so popular that the league reorganized to make it a permanent feature.

Between 1933 and 1966, the NFL decided its champion through a single postseason playoff game. During this period, the NFL was divided into two groupings, sometimes referred to as divisions and sometimes called conferences. The first place team in each of the two groupings at the end of the regular season played a title game to determine the championship. If there was a tie for first place, an extra playoff game was played in order to determine which team would play the title game. At various times during this period, the two groupings were called Eastern Division and Western Division ( 1933-1949); American Conference and National Conference(1950-1952); Eastern Conference and Western Conference(1953-1966).

From 1960 through 1969, a week before the NFL championship game, the NFL also had a post-season game called the "Playoff Bowl", the "Bert Bell Benefit Bowl" or the "Runner-up Bowl". Vince Lombardi called it "a rinky-dink game". At the time of the games, CBS-TV advertised them as "playoff games for third place in the NFL", but today the NFL claims they were exhibition games and does not include records of the game participants or results in league playoff statistics. The games were quietly discontinued after 1969.

In 1966, the success of the American Football League (AFL), the spectre of the NFL's losing more stars to the AFL, and concern over a costly "bidding war" precipitated by the NFL's Giants' signing of Pete Gogolak, who was under contract to the AFL's Buffalo Bills, led the leagues to discuss a merger. Key to this was approval by Congress of a law (PL 89-800) that would waive anti-trust requirements for the merged leagues. The major point of the testimony given by the leagues to obtain the law was that if the merger were permitted, "Professional football operations will be preserved in the 23 cities and 25 stadiums where such operations are presently being conducted." The merger became effective in 1970, and since then, in spite of the testimony to the contrary, there have been a dozen franchise moves.

After expansion in 1967, the NFL split the Eastern Conference into the Capitol and Century Divisions and the Western Conference into Coastal and Central Divisions, and the playoff schedule was expanded from a single game between two teams to a four team tournament, with the four divisional champions participating.

After the 1966 through 1969 seasons, the NFL champion played the American Football League champion in Super Bowls I through IV, the only true inter-league championship games of professional football. The first two were won by the Packers, the last two by the AFL's New York Jets and the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs, respectively, leaving the leagues all even in World Championship competition.

After 1970, the AFL and NFL fully merged and underwent a realignment. Six divisions were allocated among two conferences. Since there is now only one league, the winner of the Super Bowl is the NFL champion. See Super Bowl for a complete list of Super Bowl winners.

In 2002, the National Football League realigned again, this time into eight divisions of four teams each. The realignment was to accommodate a 32nd team.

APFA-NFL standings champions

Year Team Wins-Losses-Ties
1920 Akron Pros 8-0-3
1921 Chicago Staleys 9-1-1
1922 Canton Bulldogs 10-0-2
1923 Canton Bulldogs 11-0-1
1924 Cleveland Bulldogs 7-1-1
1925 Chicago Cardinals 11-2-1
1926 Frankford Yellow Jackets 14-1-2
1927 New York Giants 11-1-1
1928 Providence Steam Roller 8-1-2
1929 Green Bay Packers 12-0-1
1930 Green Bay Packers 10-3-1
1931 Green Bay Packers 12-2-0
1932 Chicago Bears 7-1-6
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NFL championship games

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AFL-NFL Super Bowl Championship games

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Super Bowls NFL Championship games

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