The National Football League (NFL) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) are respectively the most popular professional and amateur football organizations in the United States. The National Football League was founded in 1920 and has since become the largest and most popular sport in the United States. The NFL has the highest average attendance of any sporting league in the world, with an average attendance of 66,960 people per game during the 2011 NFL season. It is played between the champions of the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC), and its winner is awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Collegiate football ranks third in overall popularity in the United States, behind baseball and pro football. The NCAA, the largest collegiate organization, is divided into three Divisions: Division I, Division II and Division III. Division I football is further divided into two subdivisions: the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The FBS subdivision is divided even further, in effect though not formally, into the Power Five and the Group of five. The champions of Division I-FCS, Division II and Division III are determined through playoff systems, and the Division I-FBS champion was determined through the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Division I-FBS switched to a four-team playoff system in 2014.
Major rule differences
Some of the major rule differences between NFL and college football include:
Overview
The NFL consists of thirty-two clubs divided into two conferences of sixteen teams each. Each conference is divided into four divisions of four clubs each. The NFL season format consists of a four-week preseason, a seventeen-week regular season, and a twelve-team single-elimination playoff culminating in the Super Bowl, the league's championship game. College teams mostly play other similarly sized schools through the NCAA's divisional system. Division I generally consists of the major collegiate athletic powers with larger budgets, more elaborate facilities, and more athletic scholarships. Division II primarily consists of smaller public and private institutions that offer fewer scholarships than those in Division I. Division III institutions also field teams, but do not offer any scholarships. Football teams in Division I are further divided into the Bowl Subdivision (consisting of the largest programs) and the Championship Subdivision. The Bowl Subdivision (FBS) previously did not have an organized tournament to determine its champion; instead, teams competed in post-season bowl games. Up through the 2013 season, the BCS National Championship game determined the national champion. The game featured the #1 and #2 teams in the BCS rankings, a mixture of computer and human polls ranking the top teams in the country. Beginning in the 2014 season, a 4-team playoff now determines the national champion. The four teams competing in the College Football Playoff are decided by a 13-member selection committee using a complex set of selection criteria and each committee member valuing certain selection criteria differently. These criteria include strength of schedule, conference championships, win–loss record, on-field play, non-conference schedule and much more. The importance of traditional major bowl games will be preserved by using 2 of the 6 major bowls as the semi-finals of the playoff while the remaining 4 will incorporate traditional conference "tie-ins" to schedule teams in each bowl game. The Championship Subdivision utilizes a college football playoff, the NCAA Division I Football Championship. As of 2014, 24 teams are selected for the playoff. Similar to the NCAA College Basketball Tournament, each conference champion received an automatic bid to the tournament. The remaining tournament berths are awarded as "at-large" selections by a selection committee.
Metros table
Metros
Chicago
In 2002, the Soldier Field was closed and rebuilt with only the exterior wall of the stadium being preserved. It was closed on Sunday, January 20, 2002, a day after the Bears lost in the playoffs. It reopened on September 27, 2003 after a complete rebuild (the second in the stadium's history). Many fans refer to the rebuilt stadium as "New Soldier Field". During the season, the Bears played their home games at the University of Illinois' Memorial Stadium in Champaign, where they went 3–5.