American Football Conference

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The American Football Conference exists partly because of a conversation held in a hospital room. Art Modell, owner of the Cleveland Browns and then-president of the NFL, lay recovering from internal bleeding. A crucial merger negotiation was nearing its end. Two visitors arrived: Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Wellington Mara of the New York Giants. The exchange that followed would determine the shape of professional football for decades. Why would three established franchises willingly join a league their peers dismissed as an inferior circuit? And how would the conference that emerged from that deal come to claim so many of football's championships?

• 2. The Merger's Origins

  ›

  Carroll Rosenbloom of the then-Baltimore Colts was the third NFL owner to agree, completing the group. The Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Colts each received $3 million for crossing into the new conference. The formal announcement came on the 10th of May, 1969.

  NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle had clashed with team owners over which franchises would be required to change conferences. Some wanted no realignment at all. Modell had initially assumed the three newest NFL expansion clubs would make the move. He expected the Minnesota Vikings, Atlanta Falcons, and New Orleans Saints to be the ones transferred.

  The debt Modell had incurred to purchase the Browns was part of his calculation. He saw an opportunity in a rivalry. The Cincinnati Bengals had been founded by Paul Brown, the coach Modell had pushed out of Cleveland after buying the team. Both Ohio franchises in the same conference could generate a lucrative in-state competition.

  The AFL's two existing groupings, AFL East and AFL West, carried into the new conference largely intact. The NFL's Century Division, where the Browns and Steelers had competed since 1967, was redesignated as the AFC Central. The NFC's teams could not agree on their own divisional arrangement. That setup was eventually drawn from a fishbowl on the 16th of January, 1970.

  The AFL had launched only a decade earlier, starting play in 1960 with eight franchises. Two teams joined before the merger: the Miami Dolphins in 1966 and the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968. Those ten clubs combined with the three NFL transfers gave the AFC thirteen teams at its founding.

• 3. Divisions and the Playoff Road

  ›

  The Lamar Hunt Trophy, awarded each year to the AFC champion, bears the name of the AFL's founder. The Kansas City Chiefs, still owned by Hunt's descendants, continue to wear the original AFL logo on their jerseys. That detail keeps a visual thread running from the AFL's original era to the present day.

  Sixteen teams now form the AFC, in four divisions: East, North, South, and West. The conference grew from its original thirteen through a series of expansions and realignments over the decades that followed. Each team faces its three division rivals twice per season. Fourteen opponents in total appear on a seventeen-game regular-season schedule, set by a predetermined formula. Eight of the non-division games come from a rotating two-division assignment. Three more reflect where a team finished in its division the previous year.

  Seven AFC teams advance to the playoffs each season. Four are division winners; three are wild-card clubs with the strongest records among non-division finishers. Those seven compete in a bracket that culminates in the AFC Championship Game. The winner of that game represents the conference in the Super Bowl.

  As of 2025, AFC teams have won 27 of the 55 Super Bowls played. The New England Patriots lead all AFC franchises with twelve conference championships. The Pittsburgh Steelers hold eight AFC titles. Their six Super Bowl victories tie the Patriots for the most championship wins by any team in the conference. The most recent AFC Super Bowl winner was the Kansas City Chiefs, following the 2024 season.

  The original AFC logo closely resembled the old AFL design, using a bolder red letter A surrounded by six red stars. That design remained essentially unchanged from 1970 through 2009. A 2010 redesign reduced the stars to four, one for each division, and moved them inside the letter A.

• 4. The Quarterback Era

  ›

  Seventeen of the nineteen AFC champions from 2001 to 2019 started one of just three quarterbacks in the Super Bowl. Those three were Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Ben Roethlisberger. Their combined hold on the conference had no parallel in the NFC during that period. In the last twenty Super Bowls, the AFC has started seven different quarterbacks; the NFC has started sixteen.

  Between 1995 and 2022, only nine of the AFC's sixteen franchises appeared in the Super Bowl. The New England Patriots alone made ten of those appearances. The NFC sent thirteen of its sixteen teams to the game in that same window. Only three NFC franchises went without a Super Bowl appearance in that span: the Detroit Lions, Minnesota Vikings, and Washington Commanders.

  The Pittsburgh Steelers made four Super Bowl appearances in that window, as did the Denver Broncos. The Kansas City Chiefs appeared three times. The Cincinnati Bengals, Las Vegas Raiders, and Tennessee Titans each made one appearance.

  The conference's geographic footprint has changed considerably over the decades. Multiple franchises have moved to new cities more than once.

• 5. Franchise Movement

  ›

  In 1984, the Baltimore Colts relocated to Indianapolis, leaving Maryland without an NFL franchise. The story repeated itself with variation eleven years later, this time involving Cleveland.

  In 1995, the Cleveland Browns' ownership sought to move the team to Baltimore. The dispute that followed led to Modell establishing the Baltimore Ravens using the Browns' players and personnel. The Browns themselves were placed in suspended operations before the NFL reinstated them. The Ravens were treated as an expansion team. That same year, the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars joined the AFC as a new franchise.

  The Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles in 1982, returned to Oakland in 1995, and eventually settled in Las Vegas in 2020. The San Diego Chargers made the reverse journey in 2017, returning to Los Angeles after fifty-six years in their home city.

  The Houston Oilers departed for Tennessee in 1997. They played briefly as the Tennessee Oilers before adopting the name Tennessee Titans two years later. Houston gained a replacement franchise when the Texans joined the AFC in 2002.

  The Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers both joined the league in 1976. The Seahawks were placed in the NFC and the Buccaneers in the AFC, but the two switched conferences after one season. The Seahawks eventually moved to the NFC permanently in the 2002 realignment.

  The networks broadcasting AFC games have changed as often as the franchises themselves have moved cities.

• 6. Broadcasting Rights

  ›

  NBC held the AFC broadcasting package from the completion of the 1970 merger, while CBS took the NFC. ABC secured rights to Monday Night Football, a marquee slot regardless of which conferences were playing. For interconference games, the visiting team's conference determined which network broadcast the matchup.

  In 1994, the NFC package moved from CBS to Fox. CBS then picked up the AFC package from NBC in 1998. The league introduced cross-flexing in 2014, allowing CBS and Fox to broadcast select games from the conference not normally assigned to them.

  ESPN began carrying Sunday Night Football in 1987, initially covering only the second half of the season. TNT took the first half starting in 1990. ESPN absorbed the full Sunday night package in 1998, before NBC won that slot in 2006. Thursday Night Football launched on NFL Network that same year. Amazon Prime Video secured exclusive rights to the Thursday package in 2022, following years of simulcasts shared with CBS, NBC, and Fox.

  The Super Bowl rotation was established at the 1970 merger: NBC for odd-numbered games and CBS for even-numbered games. ABC joined the rotation beginning with the 1984 season. When the playoffs expanded to twelve teams in 1990, ABC was given rights to the two additional Wild Card games. NBC absorbed those postseason rights in 2006.

  As of 2025, the AFC has only one defined officer: a president whose duties are largely ceremonial. The most visible of those duties is the presentation of the conference championship trophy at the end of each season.