The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the four major North American professional sports leagues and the highest professional level of American football in the world.[5] Each NFL season begins with a three-week preseason in August, followed by the eighteen-week regular season which runs from early September to the end of December (or in some cases early January), with each team playing seventeen games and having one bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, seven teams from each conference (four division winners and three wild card teams) advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament that culminates in the Super Bowl, which is contested in February and is played between the AFC and NFC conference champions. The league is headquartered in New York City.
