History of the NFL championship

• 1. Introduction

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  The first NFL championship trophy was called the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup. It was awarded exactly once, to the Akron Pros in 1920, the league's inaugural season. The Pros went through that year undefeated and untied, and the cup was theirs. After that, no champion received it again. The National Football League had been founded in Canton, Ohio without a playoff game or a championship structure of any kind. Champions were determined by end-of-season winning percentage, with tie games excluded from the count entirely. A team could play anywhere from six to twenty league games in a season, and not all teams faced the same opponents. In those conditions, deciding who was best was less a mathematical exercise than a matter of competing arguments. The second NFL champion, the Chicago Staleys in 1921, was determined by a dispute that consumed an entire offseason.

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• 2. Contested Crowns

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  George Halas and league management insisted that a late-season game between his Chicago Staleys and the Buffalo All-Americans count in the official standings. Buffalo had called the matchup an exhibition. The game had been played later in the season than any other contest, so the league gave it extra weight. Chicago took the title. Nearly the same argument arose in 1924, when Chicago tried the same late-game tactic against the Cleveland Bulldogs. That time, the league ruled the opposite. The disputed game was declared post-season, the Bulldogs were named champions, and they claimed the first and only title in their franchise's history.

  The most entangled case was 1925. The Pottsville Maroons had outpaced the Chicago Cardinals in the standings. But the Maroons were suspended by the league at the end of that season for playing an unauthorized game against a non-NFL team. The Cardinals scheduled two additional wins to pass Pottsville. One of those games was played against a team that included high school players, a violation of league rules in itself. The Cardinals were offered the championship. They refused it. The title was vacated.

  In 1933, when the Bidwill family purchased the Cardinals, the team reversed that decision and claimed the 1925 title. The NFL recognized that claim and took no other action. In the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a self-made championship trophy from the Pottsville Maroons still stands. The win that triggered the suspension was a victory over the Notre Dame All-Stars. At the time, that game was credited with giving professional football its credibility over the college game.

  In 1972, the NFL began counting tie games as half a win and half a loss, but did not apply the change retroactively. Under that modern system, the Pottsville Maroons would have won the 1925 title outright. The New York Giants would have been recognized as the 1930 champions. Had baseball's win-loss differential been used instead, the 1924 title would have gone to the Frankford Yellow Jackets. That franchise finished four wins ahead of the recognized champion in the standings. The next championship dispute would be settled not in an executive committee room but on a dirt field inside a Chicago arena.

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• 3. The Dirt-Field Championship

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  George Preston Marshall reportedly pressed the league to hold its first official playoff game at the end of the 1932 season. The Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans had finished that year tied with identical winning percentages of .857. League officials voted to hold the game at Wrigley Field. Severe winter weather forced a change of plans. Fearing low turnout in the cold, the league moved the game indoors to Chicago Stadium. The field was shortened to 80 yards and covered in dirt. The Bears won 9-0. The Green Bay Packers finished the regular season at 10-3-1 but ended up in third place in the final standings. Under most alternative counting systems, their record would have won them a fourth consecutive title.

  Three rule changes grew out of that improvised afternoon inside Chicago Stadium. Goal posts were repositioned to the goal line. Every play had to begin from between the hash marks. Forward passes became legal from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage, rather than five yards back. These adjustments were born of necessity in a cramped indoor arena. The league adopted all three permanently.

  Starting in 1933, the NFL divided into two divisions. The divisional winners met each year in a scheduled championship game. Home field for the 1933 title game went to the Western Division's Chicago Bears. Their 10-2-1 record outpaced the Eastern Division's New York Giants at 11-3-0. From 1934 onward, the two sides alternated hosting the championship game, the Eastern conference in even years and the Western in odd years. Starting with that 1934 game, the winning team received the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy. Thorp was a referee, a rules expert, and a sporting goods dealer who died that year.

  NFL President Carl Storck authorized sudden death overtime for division-deciding playoff games in the 1940 season, but explicitly excluded the championship game itself. Commissioner Elmer Layden approved a similar arrangement for 1941. Sudden death was finally permitted for the championship game in 1946. The first championship game that actually required overtime was the 1958 title game, between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants.

  The NFL also staged a consolation game during this era, called the Playoff Bowl or the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl. Held every January in Miami's Orange Bowl, these games matched the second-place finishers from each conference. CBS advertised them as playoff games for third place. All ten editions were played at the Orange Bowl. The NFL later reclassified all of them as exhibition games, and their results do not appear in official playoff records. The final Playoff Bowl was played in January 1970.

  Green Bay and Baltimore tied for first place in the Western Conference at 10-3-1 at the end of the 1965 season. A playoff to break the tie was held on the 26th of December. The Colts, depleted by injuries, started third-string quarterback Tom Matte. Green Bay won in overtime on a field goal the Colts disputed as no good. The championship game followed on the 2nd of January 1966, the first time the NFL had crowned its champion in January. Green Bay defeated the Cleveland Browns 23-12 on a muddy Lambeau Field. For Cleveland running back Jim Brown, it was the final NFL game of his career. The Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy would be awarded for the last time in 1969, as a rival league was already pressing the NFL for supremacy.

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• 4. Rival Leagues

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  The All-America Football Conference was created in June 1944 to compete directly with the NFL. For most of its existence, the league's championship race was not much of a race at all. The Cleveland Browns, led by quarterback Otto Graham, won all four of the conference's championship games. In 1948, the Browns completed a season of 14 wins, no losses, and no ties. They were the first professional football team in history to do so. The 1972 Miami Dolphins would match that feat in the NFL 24 years later. The Browns' undefeated season is not recognized in NFL record books.

  When the AAFC folded after 1949, the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers joined the NFL. AAFC Championship Games and records were not included in NFL record books until 2025. Individual player statistics from the conference are preserved in Pro Football Hall of Fame records.

  The American Football League began play in 1960 and determined its champion through a single playoff game between its Eastern and Western division winners. The 1962 AFL championship game between the Dallas Texans and the defending champion Houston Oilers went to double overtime. At the time, it was the longest professional football championship game ever played. The AFL added the Miami Dolphins to its Eastern Division in 1966 and the Cincinnati Bengals to its Western Division in 1968. That brought the league to ten teams. In its final season, 1969, the AFL adopted a four-team playoff for the first time to determine its champion.

  By 1966, the AFL had drawn enough talent and television revenue to force the NFL into merger talks. The triggering event was a player signing, not a game.

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• 5. Merger and the Super Bowl

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  In 1966, the NFL's New York Giants signed Pete Gogolak, who was already under contract with the AFL's Buffalo Bills. The move raised the threat of a costly bidding war for players. Both leagues sought a congressional solution. Congress passed Public Law 89-800, waiving anti-trust jeopardy for the merged leagues. In testimony supporting the law, both sides committed to preserving professional football operations in 23 cities and 25 stadiums where it already existed. The merger was announced on the 8th of June 1966 and became fully effective in 1970.

  For the 1966 through 1969 seasons, the NFL and AFL champions played each other in a true inter-league title game. The first two were called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The name Super Bowl was not officially adopted until 1968. The third inter-league game was therefore called Super Bowl III from the start. The first two were retroactively named Super Bowls I and II. Green Bay won those first two convincingly. The AFL's New York Jets took Super Bowl III, and the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl IV. When the two leagues formally merged, they were even at 2-2 in inter-league championship competition.

  Three of the four league champions who lost one of those first four Super Bowls would eventually win at least one. The exception was the Minnesota Vikings. They lost Super Bowl IV as the NFL champion and went on to lose three additional Super Bowls without ever winning one.

  After Super Bowl IV and the full merger in 1970, three former NFL teams were transferred to the new AFC. The Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Colts, and the Pittsburgh Steelers crossed over to balance both conferences at 13 teams each. Super Bowl V, played in January 1971, was the first Super Bowl contested as the actual NFL championship game. Baltimore defeated Dallas 16-13, giving the Colts their third overall championship. The newly merged league's first task was deciding how many teams would compete for each subsequent title.

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• 6. Reshaping the Playoffs

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  With 26 teams spread across two conferences after the merger, the NFL designed an eight-team playoff tournament. Three division winners per conference joined one wild card team, giving each conference four playoff spots. The wild card was the second-place finisher with the best overall record in each conference. Home field in each round was still assigned by yearly divisional rotation rather than regular-season performance. In the 1972 playoffs, this rotation produced an unusual result. The undefeated Miami Dolphins were assigned to play the AFC Championship away at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. The Steelers had gone unbeaten at home all season.

  The league later replaced the rotation with a seeding system. Three division champions per conference were seeded first through third based on their regular-season records. The top seed in each conference earned home-field advantage for every playoff round until the neutral-site Super Bowl.

  Successive rounds of expansion pushed the playoff field from eight teams to ten, then to twelve, and eventually to fourteen. In the fourteen-team format, only the top seed in each conference earns a first-round bye. The 1982 season, cut to nine games by a players' strike, used a temporary format in which 16 teams competed regardless of divisional standing. The format returned to the previous structure the following year.

  Across all eras and formats, the Green Bay Packers hold the most NFL championship titles with 13. Nine came from the pre-Super Bowl era and four from Super Bowls. The Chicago Bears hold the second most with nine, and the New York Giants are third with eight. Super Bowl LX, the most recent entry in this record, was played at Levi's Stadium before 70,823 fans. The Seattle Seahawks defeated the New England Patriots 29-13.

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