National football conference how to#

In its inaugural season, the Vikings dominated the conference, going 12-2.

Also, the Atlanta Falcons mysteriously ended up in the West Division. However, this kept the famed Cowboys-Eagles rivalry intact, while the tenderfoot Saints (formed in 1967) were at the league's whims. The NFC began play in 1970, with the following divisions:ДЄs you can see, there were some interesting problems created by these division: New Orleans was classified in the West Division, while Dallas, which is over 300 miles west of New Orleans, ended up in the East Division.

Also, despite the catchy alliterative value of the divisions within the NFL, Rozelle scrapped the names for the more commonplace West, East, and Central divisions. Since the NFL currently had 16 teams, and the AFL 10, he moved the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers to the American Football Conference. Rozelle saw fit that the two new conferences would have an equal number of teams. The 1969 NFL roster of 16 teams was divided as follows:

National football conference how to#

With the graduated merger in place between the American Football League and National Football League signed in 1965, the decision on how to divide and align the teams so that key rivalries within the old leagues remained and divisions were created with respect to geography to create regional matchups was left to the then- NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle.