Regular season (NFL)

The National Football League (NFL) season begins the weekend after Labor Day. Each team plays 16 games during a 17-week period. Traditionally, the majority of each week's games are played on Sunday afternoon. Exceptions are one game each week being played on Sunday night, and another game being played on Monday night, known as "Monday Night Football". For the last few weeks of the regular season (after the NCAA football regular season has concluded), the league typically schedules one or two additional nationally-televised games on Saturday or Thursday evenings.

In addition, the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions each traditionally host a game on Thanksgiving Day. Since 2006, a third game has been scheduled for that same day in primetime.

History

In its early years after 1920, the NFL did not have a set schedule, and teams played as few as eight and as many as sixteen games, many against independent professional, college or amateur teams. From 1926 through 1946, they played from eleven to fifteen games per season, depending on the number of teams in the league. From 1947 through 1960, each NFL team played 12 games per season. In 1960, the American Football League began play and introduced a balanced schedule of 14 games per team over a fifteen week season, in which each of the eight teams played each of the other teams twice, with one bye week. Competition from the new league caused the NFL to expand and follow suit with a fourteen-game schedule in 1961. From 1961 through 1977, the NFL schedule consisted of fourteen regular season games played over fourteen weeks. Opening weekend typically was the weekend after Labor Day, or even two weekends after Labor Day. Teams played six, or even seven exhibition games. In 1978, the league changed the schedule to include sixteen regular season games and four exhibition games. From 1978-1989, the sixteen games were played over sixteen weeks.

In 1990, the NFL introduced a bye-week to the schedule. Each team played sixteen regular season games over seventeen weeks. One week during the season, on a rotating basis, each team would have the weekend off. As a result, opening weekend was moved up to Labor Day weekend. The NFL season included two bye-weeks and sixteen games in 1993, but the league returned to a seventeen week schedule the following year.

Since the 2002 season, the league has scheduled a nationally televised regular season kickoff game on the Thursday night prior to the first Sunday of NFL games to kick off the season. The first one, featuring the San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants, was held on September 5 2002 largely to celebrate New York City's resilience in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks [cite web |url=http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/recap/NFL_20020905_SF@NYG |title=Niners edge Giants on late field goal 16-13 |last=Associated Press |publisher=NFL.com |date=2002-09-05 |accessdate=2006-11-17] . Since 2004, the NFL has indicated that the opening game will normally be hosted by the defending Super Bowl champions as the official start of their title defense.

Formula

Currently, each team's 16-game regular season schedule is set using a pre-determined formula:

*Each team plays the other three teams in their division "twice": once at home, and once on the road (six games).
*Each team plays the four teams from another division within its own conference "once" on a rotating three-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
*Each team plays the four teams from a division in the other conference "once" on a rotating four-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
*Each team plays "once" against the other teams in its conference that finished in the same place in their own divisions as themselves, not counting the division they were already scheduled to play: one at home, one on the road (two games).This schedule guarantees that all teams will play each other at least once every four years, and will play in every other team's stadium at least once every eight years. Prior to 2002 (when the league expanded to 32 teams) the league used similar scheduling rubrics, though they were adjusted for the number of teams and divisions. From 1970-1994, and again from 1999-2001, the league did not have equal numbers of teams in every division, which allowed for unbalanced schedules. The only time since the merger that the league has been completely "balanced" has been from 1995-1998 (with 6 divisions of 5 teams each) and since 2002 (with 8 divisions of 4 teams each). Additionally, prior to 2002, teams always played four of the teams from a division in the "other" conference on a rotating basis, but not their own; meaning that while an AFC team would be more likely to play each NFC team on a regular basis, they could go far longer without playing every team in their own conference. For example, between 1970 (when the leagues merged) and 2002 (when the current schedule was introduced) the Denver Broncos and the Miami Dolphins played only 6 times; including a stretch (1976-1997) where they met only once in 22 seasons. [cite web|url=http://www.footballdb.com/teamvsteam.html?tm=10&opp=17|title=Denver Broncos Vs. Miami Dolphins|publisher=The Football Database|accessdate=2007-09-22] Under the current system, they are guaranteed to meet at least every third year. Also, the Buffalo Bills have never hosted the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at any point in history. Every game between the two teams has been a home game for Tampa Bay.

After the 2009 season, after all of the teams have cycled through playing against each other both home and away, a decision will be made whether to continue using this same scheduling formula or create a new one. [cite web|url=http://www.giants.com/news/press_releases/story.asp?story_id=812|title=NFL Announces 2002-2009 Schedule Rotation] |date=2001-08-22] Current Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he favors expanding the regular season schedule to 18 games per team. [ [http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-goodell-economy&prov=ap&type=lgns Goodell says NFL faces economic challenges] ]

For the 2008 season, the assignments are:

Intraconference
*AFC East vs. AFC West
*AFC North vs. AFC South
*NFC East vs. NFC West
*NFC North vs. NFC South

Interconference
*AFC East vs. NFC West
*AFC North vs. NFC East
*AFC South vs. NFC North
*AFC West vs. NFC South

For the 2009 season, the assignments will be:

Intraconference
*AFC East vs. AFC South
*AFC North vs. AFC West
*NFC East vs. NFC South
*NFC North vs. NFC West

Interconference
*AFC East vs. NFC South
*AFC North vs. NFC North
*AFC South vs. NFC West
*AFC West vs. NFC East

Regular season games played outside of the U.S.

To date, only two NFL regular season games have been played outside of the U.S. The first was the 2005 game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers, which was played in Mexico City.

In October 2006, NFL club owners approved a plan to stage up to two international regular season games per season beginning in 2007 and continuing through at least 2011. cite news | url=http://www.nfl.com/news/story/9752443 | title=Resolution approved for international games | publisher= [http://www.nfl.com/ NFL.com] | date=2006-10-24 | accessdate=2007-01-11] The New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins played at Wembley Stadium in London on October 28 2007 for the first of these games.cite news | url=http://www.nfl.com/news/story/9971024 | title=London to host 2007 regular-season game | publisher= [http://www.nfl.com/ NFL.com] | date=2007-01-16 | accessdate=2007-02-10] [ cite web
url=http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2751440
title=Dolphins will host Giants in a game in London
publisher=ESPN.com
date=2007-02-01
accessdate=2007-02-02 ]

The longterm plan is to have two international games played every year, on a 16-year rotating schedule that would guarantee that each team would get to play twice over that span: once as the home team and once as the away team.

The Buffalo Bills will play eight games through 2012 in Toronto, Ontario. The Bills will play five regular season games (one each season) and three preseason games (one every other season) through 2012 in the Rogers Centre. The Bills first of eight games in Toronto was a preseason game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on August 14, 2008. [http://www.nfl.com/preseason/story?id=09000d5d807905e5&template=without-video&confirm=true]

References

http://www.nfl.com/preseason/story?id=09000d5d807905e5&template=without-video&confirm=true