Football is played in leagues of different size, age and quality, in all regions of the country.

Befitting its status as a popular sport, football is played in leagues of different size, age and quality, in all regions of the country.

The Dallas Cowboys drew the highest average home attendance in the 2023 edition of the NFL.

It consists of two four-team conferences, the XFL and the USFL, that originally were founded and played as separate eight-team leagues in 2020 and 2022 respectively before agreeing to a merger with each other.

There are several professional and semi-professional indoor American football leagues, played at hockey-sized arenas.

An attempt at reviving the Arena Football League collapsed a few weeks into its only season in 2024, with the remaining teams reorganizing to play out the season; this league abandoned the AFL brand to become Arena Football One.

The CFL allocates half of its teams' rosters for players born and raised in Canada but allows the rest of the players to be foreign born (in practice, these spots are almost always filled by Americans); the CFL also has television presence in the United States and as recently as 1995 played games in the U.S. College football is also popular throughout North America.

[13][14] Football is a major source of revenue to the athletic programs of schools, public and private, in the United States.

The Championship Subdivision, consisting mostly of smaller schools than the FBS but larger than D-II, has a multiple-round playoff system just like Divisions II and III, while the Bowl Subdivision has only a limited, and unofficial, twelve-team playoff and has historically only featured division championships and bowl games.

In practice, only major conference teams are eligible to compete for the national championship and receive significant favor in the opinion polling over mid-majors, and it was not until the addition of the BCS National Championship Game that mid-majors had a realistic chance at appearing in one of the major bowls.

With the exception of the annual Army–Navy Game, only Power Five conference teams air on national broadcast television, although mid-majors, FCS teams, D-II and D-III games can see more limited coverage on cable and local television.

At the community college level, the NJCAA oversees the sport in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, the lone exception being California, where the California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) operates outside the bounds of the NJCAA.

There also exists a club football circuit for student-run teams and colleges that choose not to compete at the varsity level.

The Michigan Wolverines drew the highest average home attendance of all college football teams in 2023.

The IFAF also fields an U-19 team composed of high school football players that has participated in the 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2016 junior world championships.

In 1970, Patricia Palinkas became the holder of the Orlando Panthers and became the first woman to play in the Atlantic Coast Football League,[49] and in 2010 Katie Hnida became the kicker for the Fort Wayne FireHawks in the Continental Indoor Football League.