Season Structure
Since 2002, the NFL season features the following schedule:
- a 4-game exhibition season (or preseason) running from early August to early September;
- a 16-game, 17-week regular season running from September to December or early January; and
- a 12-team single-elimination playoff beginning in January, culminating in the Super Bowl in early February.
Traditionally, American high school football games are played on Friday nights, American college football games are played on Thursday nights and Saturdays, and most NFL games are played on Sunday. Because the NFL season is longer than the college football season, the NFL schedules Saturday games and Saturday playoff games outside the college football season. The ABC Television network added Monday Night Football in 1970, and Thursday night NFL games were added in the 1980s.
Read more about this topic: National Football League
Famous quotes containing the words season and/or structure:
“When I was bound apprentice, in famous Lincolnshire,
Full well I served my master for more than seven year,
Till I took up poaching, as you shall quickly hear:
Oh, ‘tis my delight on a shining night, in the season of the year.”
—Unknown. The Lincolnshire Poacher (l. 1–4)
“Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)