Athletic conference
In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels.
In the NHL, since the 2013–14 season, the top 3 in each division are guaranteed to qualify and division winners are awarded the highest seeds, meaning they will have home-ice advantage in a given round, with the two best remaining teams in each conference receiving wild card spots.
Major League Soccer (MLS) also divides itself into an Eastern and Western Conference, though it does not have divisions within them; it too allocates an equal number of teams from each conference to play for its MLS Cup Playoffs (since 2019, this has been seven teams each).
An extreme example of this has occurred three times in the NFL, when the 2010 Seattle Seahawks, 2014 Carolina Panthers, 2020 Washington Football Team, and 2022 Tampa Bay Buccanneers reached the playoffs by winning their respective divisions despite losing records (7–9 for the Seahawks and Washington, 7–8–1 for the Panthers, 8–9 for the Buccanneers).
In college sports, the terms "league," "conference" and (generally at lower levels) "athletic association" can be used interchangeably to refer to a group of teams (generally eight to twelve colleges or universities, and occasionally as high as eighteen) that regularly play against each other within a national governing body, the most significant of which is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
From the creation of Super Rugby in 1996 through 2015, only Australia, New Zealand and South Africa participated; the competition added teams in the latter two countries in 2016.
With the addition of Argentina's Jaguares and Japan's Sunwolves for 2016, plus a sixth franchise for South Africa, the competition reorganised into a new four-conference system.
For 2018, Super Rugby will revert to a 15-team format, following the dropping of two teams from South Africa and one from Australia.
After the 2020–21 season, South Africa fully aligned its club rugby structure with that of Europe.
For the first season under the URC name in 2021–22, the competition reorganized into four regionally based pools, though no longer using the word "conference".
Each regional pool competes for a secondary trophy called a "shield" (Irish, Scottish/Italian, South African, Welsh), with the overall league table used to determine playoff participants.
The winner of each shield, however, is assured a place in the following year's European Rugby Champions Cup regardless of its overall league position.
