The National Football League is the most popular sport in America. The league
itself makes over billions of dollars in revenue while according to a valuation
done by Forbes in September 2018, the average NFL franchise is worth
$2.57 billion dollars. With games even being played in Mexico City and in
London, England, the NFL brand has proven to be
profitable. In 2018, the TV ratings for the NFL regular season games were up
5% from 2017, averaging 15.8 million viewers. TV contracts,
ticket sales and merchandising flooding fall season, the NFL is here to stay for
a long time. Let's dive in to give you the 101 on the organization of the NFL.
Today, the NFL is made up of 32 teams that are located across the United States.
They are divided by two conferences called the American Football
Conference or AFC, and the National Football Conference or NFC. Within that
conference, the 16 teams are split evenly in four divisions each representing the
direction on a compass: North, South, East and West. The game itself is played on a
grass or turf field that is 120 yards long and 53.3 yards wide.
The field is flanked by end zones that are 10 yards long, where teams have
the ability to score. The rest of the field is marked every 5 yards with lines
and every yard with a hash mark. Behind each end zone are goal posts that are 10
feet high and 18 feet 6 inches wide. The game consists of full 60 minute run time
that is split into 15 minute four quarters. In between the second and third
quarter, a half time of 12 minutes is used to allow teams to regroup. If the
game is tied at the end of regulation, the NFL has an overtime period of 10
minutes to see if either team can win. If both teams have the same score, the game
is considered a tie.
The NFL regular season of play kicks off in the month of
September and last to the end of December. The 256 game schedule is
spread out over a span of 17 weeks where all 32 teams in the league play 16 games
each and have a rest day or what is known as a 'Bye Week'. Since each team
can't play the rest of the 31 teams in one season like other professional
sports, the NFL has devised a really cool way of how they do their scheduling.
To show you their formula in action, I'll use the Cleveland Browns as an example.
We begin with the Browns will play six games against their Divisional opponents,
one home and one away. Next up the Browns will play four games
against a different Division within the same Conference, having two home and two
away games. For this example, I'll pick the AFC West.
Then there's another four games against a different Division, but out of
Conference, same as two home and two away. I'll choose the NFC South. Finally the
last two games scheduled are against teams from the two remaining Divisions
in the same Conference. So in our case, the AFC East and the
AFC South. How these matchups are determined are by the Division rankings
from the previous season. So for example, if the Browns finished 4th last year,
then they would play the 4th team in both of those Divisions. The schedule
rotates every year, ensuring that every team will play each of the 31 teams at
least once in a four year period. Pretty cool huh?
Now at the end of the regular season, the single elimination postseason begins in
early January and ends in February when the championship game is played, known as
the Super Bowl. 12 teams are eligible to play, six from each Conference. The
bracket is made up of all four Divisional winners and two Wild-Card
teams. The Wild-Card teams are the two non-Divisional winners that have the
best overall record in the Conference. To illustrate how the postseason placement
works, let's use 2018 postseason as an example. Out of the four Divisional
winners, whoever has the better record gets the 1 to 4 ranking. The #1 and #2
get a Bye week while #3 and #4 play their
respective Wild-Card opponent. The winner of those two games will move on to the
Divisional round on where the #1 ranked team will play the lower seed
winner. Then onward to the Conference title game before the coveted Super Bowl
game. When a Super Bowl winner is crowned, it marks the end of the NFL season for
that year. As March rolls around, so does NFL Free Agency. The current
structure has been introduced since 1993 and the two main free agent categories
are Restricted Free Agent and Unrestricted Free Agent. The easy one to
understand is Unrestricted, which means that a player has completed four or more
NFL seasons of service whose contract is expired and is free to
sign with any team. Let's use an example for Restricted. We have a Running Back
for the Chicago Bears and his contract has expired
after completing three NFL seasons instead of four. He now has the
opportunity to negotiate with the other 31 teams in the league before the NFL
Draft in April. An offer is given to him by the Bears Divisional rival, the Green
Bay Packers and the Running Back accepts. Now the Bears can do one or two things
in response. One, they have the right to match the offer to keep the Running Back
and he stays, or two, the Bears choose not to match and then may receive draft
choice compensation that's dictated by the size of the qualifying offer. But
let's say the Running Back receives no offers in that time? Well the Bears
retain the rights of the player. Makes sense? Now each and every team has the
option to use what is known as a Franchise Tag. The team can offer a
franchise tag to one player only that's an Unrestricted free agent, which is a
one-year deal worth 120% of their existing salary or the average of the
top five players at the position over the previous five years, whichever is
greater. Why is this important? The team retains
the players rights but it's used to give the franchise a chance to hold on to their
best players and not lose them to bigger markets due to free agency.
Remember, it's offered to an Unrestricted free agent who can sign with whomever
they want. It also helps the team to buy time and negotiate a potential
long-term deal which both sides need to agree on by the middle of July. If a
multi-year deal isn't agreed, then the player will have to play out that
one-year deal or sit out. But with all of these multi-million dollar contracts go
into free agents left and right, isn't there a limit a team can spend? You bet.
The Salary Cap is the amount of money teams are allowed to spend on player
salaries and is enforced to all 32 teams. This gives the league as a whole a fair
level playing field when it comes to free agency. When the cap was introduced
in 1994, it was set at $34 million dollars. In 2019, the cap is set at a $188.2 million dollars.
When we get to the month of April, we
arrive at the NFL Draft. All 32 teams gets one selection per round up to seven
total rounds to choose a collegiate player that has declared for the draft
or a player three years removed from high school.
Each pick is timed and the draft itself is nationally-televised.
The order of the draft for every round is as follows and I'll use 2018 as an
example. Picks 1 through 20 are for non-playoff teams based on their
regular-season record going from worst to best.
So in 2018 the Cleveland Browns were given the #1 pick. Spots 21
through 24 are the teams who lost in the Wild-Card round ranked on their
regular-season record from worst to best. 25 through 28 are the Divisional playoff
teams who lost and spots 29 and 30 are the Conference championship
teams who lost. Finally, the Super Bowl Champs pick last. With the order laid out,
teams will negotiate by trading future picks and players on their roster to
move up to select a desired rookie in the present draft. Because of this, the
order changes for future draft rounds. A great example of this was in 2018 where
the Browns had the #1 and #4 overall pick. They were given the
#4 pick because of a trade they agreed with Houston the previous year.
The Texans traded their 2018 1st Round pick in a deal to draft Quarterback
Deshaun Watson. Because Houston finished fourth, the Browns were given that spot.
Trades like this between teams will happen even after the draft is complete
going into the regular season with the trade deadline being after the
conclusion of Week 8. So if each NFL team has a Salary Cap of $188.2 million dollars,
how is the league even making money? The NFL has three primary sources
of revenue: NFL Ventures, which handles the merchandising like jerseys and apparel;
NFL Enterprises that consists of the NFL Network and NFL Sunday Ticket broadcasts;
and Television Contracts, which is the bread and butter of the league, making
up almost two-thirds of their entire revenue. TV is the reason why the Salary
Cap has risen so much since 1994. With TV ratings increasing 5% from 2017 to 2018,
NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox all race to see who can outbid each other whenever a new
deal is negotiated. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2018, NFL games averaged 15.8 million viewers,
excluding the London broadcasts. For the prime time
games, the NFL has three nights of just one game being
broadcast nationally: Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football and
Monday Night Football. Each of those nights had an increase from 2017s
viewership. To finally put this into perspective, in Super Bowl 53, where the
New England Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams 13 to 3, a 30-second
commercial cost companies $5.25 million dollars. That's $175,000 dollars a second.
As the Super Bowl crowns a champion
and the season comes to a close, the league distributes their revenue
equally among the 32 teams regardless of performance to make it fair. In 2017, the
NFL earned a reported $14.2 billion dollars, giving each franchise
$443.75 million dollars.
Living in America, it's hard to ignore the NFL. Being the most popular sport in
the country, loyal fans of all ages rep their team at school and in the
workplace. Fantasy Football has even taken a life of its own with every new
season because of the accessibility from our mobile devices. Social media has also
allowed fans to follow their favorite players, giving them inside access that
wasn't a possibility two decades ago. The NFL structure, fairness in scheduling,
free agency and the draft order, and today's NFL Commissioner targeting a $25
billion dollars by 2027 with all of their revenue streams, it's safe to assume that
the juggernaut known as the NFL is here to stay for a very long time.
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