American Football Conference

The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the top level of professional American football in the United States. The AFC and the National Football Conference (NFC) each have 16 teams split into four divisions. They were both made when the NFL and the American Football League (AFL) joined together in 1970.

Ten teams from the AFL and three from the NFL joined the new AFC. The other thirteen NFL teams formed the NFC. Since then, the league has grown and changed, leading to the current setup with 16 teams in each conference. The most recent AFC champions are the New England Patriots, who won the 2025 season's AFC Championship Game against the Denver Broncos. This was their twelfth conference title.

The AFC has one main officer, the president. This role is mostly ceremonial, such as giving out the conference championship trophy.

Teams

The American Football Conference (AFC) has 16 teams. These teams are in four groups, called divisions. The divisions are: East, North, South and West. Each division has four teams.

Season structure

Main articles: NFL regular season and NFL playoffs

In the NFL, each team plays 17 games during the regular season. Teams in the American Football Conference (AFC) play each other team in their own division twice—one home game and one away game. They also play 11 other games, which are decided by a special rule that changes each year.

At the end of the season, the top teams from each division and the next three best teams move on to the playoffs. The winner of the AFC playoffs gets to play in the Super Bowl against the winner of the other conference, the NFC. The Kansas City Chiefs were the last AFC team to win the Super Bowl, and the New England Patriots have won the most AFC championships.

History

When the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League joined together in 1970, they made two new groups for their teams. The American Football Conference, or AFC, was one of these groups. To make things fair, three older NFL teams joined the ten AFL teams to form the AFC.

Since then, the AFC has grown and changed. New teams like the Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans joined, and some teams moved to new cities. Even with these changes, the way the AFC is set up has mostly stayed the same since 2002.

Logo

The original logo for the American Football Conference (AFC) looked like the logo for the American Football League (AFL). Later, a new logo was made with a big red "A" and six red stars. In 2010, the logo changed again. Two stars were removed, leaving four stars inside the letter to show the four divisions.

The Kansas City Chiefs still wear the original AFL logo on their jerseys today.

Television

Further information: NFL on television and History of the NFL on television

After the 1970 merger finished, the league kept working with CBS and NBC. At first, CBS showed games for the NFC teams, and NBC showed games for the AFC teams. For games between the two groups, CBS showed the game if the visiting team was from the NFC, and NBC showed it if the visiting team was from the AFC. A special deal was made for ABC to show Monday Night Football (MNF), a popular game no matter which teams played. Over time, the league added more important games, like Sunday Night Football (SNF) on ESPN in 1987 and Thursday Night Football (TNF) on NFL Network in 2006.

These broadcasting packages changed over the years. The NFC games moved from CBS to Fox in 1994, and CBS took over the AFC games from NBC in 1998. In 2014, the league started "cross-flexing," allowing CBS and Fox to show some games from the other conference. ESPN first showed SNF only for the second half of the season in 1987, then TNT showed it for the first half in 1990. Later, ESPN showed all of SNF in 1998, and then NBC took over SNF in 2006. ESPN also took over MNF from ABC in 2006. TNF games were shown on different networks before Amazon Prime Video got exclusive rights in 2022.