Talk:American Football League

I'm not sure I agree with this statement: "The eight-team format led to ideal scheduling. In a fourteen-week schedule, each team played every other team exactly twice. Thus, every team had an identical schedule, and the Division Championships were well-deserved".

The problem with giving every team the same identical schedule is that it makes the divisions meaningless. A second place team in one division might have a better record than the first place team in the other one, and since both teams had an identical schedule, why should the first place team with the inferior record go into the playoffs instead of the second place team with the better record? There is no real justification for it. On the other hand, if a team tends to play teams within its own division more frequently than those outside their division, then even if a first place team has a worse record than a second-place team in another division, you can at least argue that it deserves to go into the playoffs as a divisonal representative because intradivisional play figured prominantly into its record as a first place team. So, given that, I don't actually think that it makes sense to say that the divisional championships were necessarily meaningful if every team had an identical schedule. soulpatch

Dear Soulpatch: I guess to an extent, it's a matter of background. First, regardless of whether a runner-up in one division had a better record than the leader in the other division; within each division, the AFL set-up made it strongly likely that the best team finished first. That's what I meant by "the Division Championships were well-deserved".

I'm from a time before "wild-cards", when division titles meant something in almost all sports. There was a rivalry between the East and West, the American Football League and the National Football League, etc. It was an honor to win the Eastern Division Title in football, the Campbell Conference Title in hockey, the "National League Pennant" in baseball, etc. Now only baseball's World Series retains a semblance of those rivalries. The NFL has something called "Wildcard Weekend", in which two wildcards and/or a wildcard and division champion play; and "Divisional Playoff Weekend", in which the combatants can actually be from two different divisions, or wildcards, or from the same division.

If I had my "druthers", there would be no interconference (football) or interleague (baseball) play; schedules would be heavily weighted within divisions; in the playoffs, wildcards would play the leaders of their own divisions and the winner would be the Division Champions. Division Champions would play for the League title, and League Champions would play for the World Championship. I realize that this could mean that divisional runner-ups might have better records than Champions of other divisions, but so what? Should the World Series be played between the two teams with the best records even if they're from the same league, or between the Champions of the two Leagues? RemembertheAFL

AFL dot com spaming

http://www.conigliofamily.com/AFLdotcom.htm

I think people who are associatied this website are using Wikipedia to promote their group. I just removed a para from the NFL which seems to be continously put back into the article. That para appears on this group website as a quote of what others are saying about the AFL. Basically implying that some neutral 3rd party thinks the AFL was so much better than the NFL.

Now I realize we are only talking about a couple of football leagues and not some hugely more important issue but spam is spam Smith03 13:56, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I made the above link into a text only link. The VP does not need to advertise them, either -- Chris 73 | Talk 15:20, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• The paragraph in question seems to be:

The official scoreboard clock, two-point conversion, player names on jerseys, network-televised games, gate and television revenue sharing, and imaginative offenses were all elements of pro football that the NFL adopted from the American Football League. Even its first modern expansion, into Minnesota and Dallas, would likely have taken years longer if it had not been precipitated by the emergence of the AFL as a serious competitor to the NFL.

The first sentence would appear to be an assertion of fact. Is it true, or not? It's a little tendentious but it seems to me to be OK if factual. The second sentence is a little iffier.

The website in question, AFLdotcom (http://www.conigliofamily.com/AFLdotcom.htm), looks like a reasonably rich and interesting resource, clearly an AFL fan site and clearly "pro-AFL." The site's counter contains only 10,000 hits, not an awful lot. However, the site doesn't seem to be selling anything, and the generally amateurish presentation (e.g. they haven't bothered to shell out $9 to one of the GoDaddies of the world for a real domain name) looks to me a like an authentic labor-of-love production.

It doesn't appear to me that anything at all is being sold on the AFLdotcom (http://www.conigliofamily.com/AFLdotcom.htm) site. Spam is usually defined as unsolicited commercial email. To me, this is not an issue of spam, it's an issue of whether this is a vanity site and whether it is notable. Personally, I'd leave the link in, because the site looks as if it could be moderately enjoyable for an AFL fan.

As for the paragraph it looks to me like a case for editing, rather than removal. When faced with POV material, one of the best ways to avoid edit wars is to try to edit it so that it still presents the factual point that the contributor was trying to make, while toning down the interpretation. I don't know enough about the AFL or NFL to do this myself. What is the paragraph really trying to say? Something like this?

Fans of the AFL credit the league with pioneering important elements of American football, and complain that the NFL has done little more than copy what the AFL has done. For example, the official official scoreboard clock, two-point conversion, player names on jerseys, network-televised games, gate and television revenue sharing, and imaginative offenses were all elements of pro football that the NFL adopted from the AFL.

Just my $0.02. Dpbsmith 15:23, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the link and site are information filled but if you check all additions that these users add not only to the NFL page but other football related articles, they have an agenda that sadly I believe because it is related to a sport is not being challenged by wikipedias. this comes from there website: It gives the appearence that some other source has come up with this conculsion instead they just wrote, regardless if they are selling something or not they are using wikipedia to further their cause.

Below are excerpts from several sources on the influence that the American Football League has had on modern professional football.

From Wikipedia, on-line encyclopedia:

Some innovative rules changes were also put into place, such as the two-point conversion (later adopted by the NFL in the 1990s); the use of the scoreboard clock as the official game clock (adopted by the NFL when the leagues merged--prior to this time, the official game clock was maintained by an official on the sidelines, and often did not match the scoreboard clock very closely); the use of player names on jerseys, (also adopted by the NFL); and the sharing of gate and television revenues between home and visiting teams (also adopted by the NFL). In short, the NFL adopted virtually every pioneering aspect of the American Football League, except its name.

By the way college football had adopted the two point conversion in the late 1950s, so the AFL "borrowed" that idea from them. One could argue that the talent level in the early years of the AFL was so poor that it lead to point a minute offensives because the defenses was so poor, Someone could write on the AFL page that they borrowed from the NFL the idea of divisions and a championship game, the idea of a college draft, a post season all star game, harsh marks, and seperate offensive and defense units, but that would be silly and pointless. I do believe that these users have provided a great deal of information but they have also slip in their agenda that gee the NFL really stoled everything from the AFL. I agree the AFL added a lot to modern day football but don't overstate it. Smith03 18:00, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)