National Football Conference

• 1. Introduction

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  The National Football Conference was born out of a deal struck on the 16th of January, 1970, when NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle's secretary, Thelma Elkjer, reached into a glass bowl and pulled out an envelope. Inside was one of five competing plans for how to split thirteen legacy NFL teams into a new conference. That single draw settled a question team owners had failed to resolve themselves. The NFC came into existence not through careful negotiation but through a lottery.

  Today the NFC sits alongside its counterpart, the American Football Conference, as one of two wings of the NFL. Each has 16 teams. Each sends its champion to the Super Bowl. But the NFC carries a particular history: its teams trace back to the original NFL, predating the rival American Football League that forced the merger in the first place. How did those original clubs become what the NFC is now? What kept the conference's structure from ever being agreed by committee? And what does a glass bowl drawn by a secretary have to do with where the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys play their games today?

• 2. The 1970 Merger

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  When the AFL began play in 1960, it had eight teams; the NFL at that point had 13 clubs. By 1969, the AFL had grown to ten teams and the NFL to 16. The merger combined all 26 clubs into one league, but balance required a split. Ten former AFL teams moved into the new AFC, taking three NFL clubs with them: the Cleveland Browns, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Baltimore Colts. The remaining 13 NFL teams formed the NFC.

  The AFC settled its divisional alignment quickly, drawing lines along mostly geographic logic. The NFC could not. Five separate plans circulated among owners, each proposing different groupings of cities. They narrowed the options to five finalists, sealed each in its own envelope, and then handed the final decision to chance. Thelma Elkjer drew Plan 3 from a glass bowl. That plan placed Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington in the Eastern division; Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, and Minnesota in the Central; and Atlanta, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and San Francisco in the West.

  Plan 3 was not obviously superior to its rivals. Plan 1, for instance, would have put Atlanta in the Eastern division and Dallas in the Western. The accident of the draw locked in a geography that has shaped rivalries and travel schedules ever since.

• 3. Expansion and Realignment

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  Three expansion teams have joined the NFC since 1970, each arriving at a different moment and under different circumstances. When the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers both joined the league in 1976, each was temporarily placed in a conference for a single season before they switched. The Seahawks landed in the NFC for that first year, then moved to the AFC. Tampa Bay did the reverse.

  The Carolina Panthers joined the NFC in 1995, and the Seahawks finally came home to the NFC again as part of the major 2002 realignment. That realignment also reshuffled the divisional structure across the whole league. The old three-division model, Eastern, Central, and Western, gave way to four divisions in each conference: East, North, South, and West. Every conference team is now grouped into one of those four.

  Team movements have also remapped the NFC's geography over the years. The St. Louis Cardinals, one of the original NFC clubs, moved in 1988 to the Phoenix suburb of Tempe and then again in 2006 to Glendale, Arizona. The Los Angeles Rams left for St. Louis in 1995 and returned to Los Angeles in 2016. None of the expansion teams added after 1970 have relocated.

• 4. How Schedules Are Built

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  Every NFC team faces 14 different opponents across a 17-game regular season, and the formula that determines those matchups follows a predictable cycle. Each team plays its three division rivals twice each, home and away. That accounts for six games. The remaining eleven games come from a predetermined rotation: eight games split between two other NFL divisions, plus three games assigned based on where a team finished in its own division the previous season.

  The 2024 season standings illustrate how this works in practice. The Philadelphia Eagles finished first in the NFC East that year. In 2025, the Eagles played two games against each division rival, one game against every team in the NFC North and AFC West, and single games against the first-place finishers in the NFC South, NFC West, and AFC East. A team's prior-season finish directly shapes who it sees on the schedule the following year.

  At season's end, seven NFC teams advance to the playoffs: the four division winners plus three wild card teams, the non-division winners with the best records. Those seven teams compete through the NFC bracket until two remain for the NFC Championship Game. The winner receives the George S. Halas Trophy and advances to the Super Bowl.

• 5. Parity and Records

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  Parity runs deeper inside the NFC than across the AFC. Since the 2002 realignment, NFC teams have sent 12 different franchises to the Super Bowl. The only exceptions are the Detroit Lions, the Minnesota Vikings, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Washington Commanders. By contrast, the AFC has sent just eight different teams in that same span.

  The Detroit Lions hold the unwanted distinction of being the only NFC team that has never appeared in a Super Bowl at all. The Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers share the record for the most NFC conference championships at eight each, and both teams are tied for the most Super Bowl wins by any NFC member with five apiece.

  As of 2026, NFC representatives have won 29 of the 55 Super Bowls played, with the Philadelphia Eagles claiming the most recent title in 2025. The Seattle Seahawks are the only NFC team since 2002 to appear in back-to-back Super Bowls. The Seahawks also won the 2025 NFC Championship Game, defeating the Los Angeles Rams for their fourth conference title in franchise history.

• 6. Broadcasters and Rights

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  After the 1970 merger, CBS and NBC kept their existing NFL and AFL broadcast deals. CBS took every NFC game; NBC handled every AFC game. For games between conferences, the visiting team determined which network aired it. ABC came on board for Monday Night Football, a weekly marquee game regardless of conference.

  That arrangement held for years before the packages began to shift. The NFC package moved from CBS to Fox in 1994. CBS then picked up the AFC package from NBC in 1998. Sunday Night Football on ESPN launched in 1987 and went through several broadcasters, including TNT, before NBC acquired the full package in 2006. Thursday Night Football on NFL Network began in 2006 and eventually landed exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in 2022. ESPN took over Monday Night Football from ABC in 2006, and starting in 2020 allowed its sister network to air select games.

  The playoff broadcast structure followed its own evolution alongside those deals. Originally in 1970, conference packages determined who aired each conference's postseason games, and the Super Bowl rotated between NBC and CBS. ABC joined that Super Bowl rotation in the 1984 season. In 2014, ESPN acquired rights to one Wild Card game, and the 2020 playoff expansion to a 14-team format opened additional games for short-term broadcast deals.

• 7. The Logo's Hidden Math

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  From 1970 through 2009, the NFC logo showed a blue letter N set against three stars. Those stars were not decorative. Each one stood for one of the three original NFC divisions, Eastern, Central, and Western, that structured the conference from the merger through 2001.

  When the 2002 realignment split the conference into four divisions, the logo eventually caught up. Starting with the 2010 NFL season, the NFC updated its mark to include a fourth star, representing the four divisions now in use. The AFC logo received a parallel update at the same time. The change is easy to miss on a quick glance at the shield, but for anyone who knows the count, the number of stars on the NFC logo tells the entire story of the conference's structural history in a single image.

  As of 2026, the NFC has one defined officer, a president, whose role is largely ceremonial. The main duty attached to the position is awarding the George S. Halas Trophy to the NFC champion each year.