History of the NFL championship
The New York Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL won the last two AFL-NFL World Championship Games, after the name Super Bowl had been officially adopted.
At its inception in 1920, the NFL had no playoff system or championship game: the champion was the team with the best record during the season as determined by winning percentage, with ties excluded.
The fourth and final disputed title was the 1925 NFL Championship controversy between the Pottsville Maroons and the Chicago Cardinals.
The Maroons had been controversially suspended by the league at the end of the 1925 NFL season for an unauthorized game against a non-NFL team, allowing the Cardinals to throw together two fairly easy matches (one against a team consisting partly of high school players, also against league rules) to pass Pottsville in the standings.
Only in 1933, when the Bidwill family (which still owns the Cardinals) bought the team, did the Cardinals reverse their decision and claim the title as their own, a decision that continues to be disputed, with the Bidwills opposing any change in the record and the two current Pennsylvania teams in favor.
The league recognized the Bidwills' claim to the title and has taken no other action on the issue, although a self-made championship trophy from the Maroons sits in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Had win–loss differential (the standard method in baseball) been used, the Decatur Staleys would have won the 1920 title by virtue of being one game ahead of Buffalo, and the 1924 title would have been won by the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who were four games ahead of actual champion Cleveland in the standings by that measure.
To determine the champion, the league, reportedly at the behest of George Preston Marshall, voted to hold the first official playoff game in Chicago at Wrigley Field.
The game was played on a modified 80-yard dirt field, and Chicago won 9–0, winning the league championship.
A number of new rule changes were instituted, many inspired by the 1932 indoor championship game: the goal posts were moved forward to the goal line, every play started from between the hash marks, and forward passes could originate from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage (instead of five yards behind).
This last occurred during the 1965 season, when the Green Bay Packers and Baltimore Colts tied for first place in the Western Conference at 10–3–1.
Green Bay won both post-season games at home, beating the injury-riddled Colts (with third-string QB Tom Matte) in overtime by a controversial field goal, and taking the title 23–12 on a very muddy field (in what turned out to be Jim Brown's final NFL game).
The NFL now classifies these contests as exhibition games and does not include the records, participants, or results in the official league playoff statistics.
The trophy was named after Ed Thorp, a noted referee, rules expert, and sporting goods dealer.
Late in the 1940 season, NFL President Carl Storck announced that sudden death periods would be authorized for any playoff game needed to decide either division title.
A coin toss would decide possession of the Ed Thorp trophy that accompanied the league title should the championship game result in a tie.
[6] Sudden death overtime was finally approved for the NFL championship game in 1946[7] and has remained in effect ever since.
The 1955 and 1960 NFL championship games were played on Monday afternoons, Christmas having fallen on a Sunday in those years.
A tiebreaker playoff game was played in 1948 to break a tie between the Baltimore Colts and Buffalo Bills (AAFC) for the Eastern Division championship.
Semifinal playoff games were held in 1949, setting up a championship final between the first-place Browns and the second-place San Francisco 49ers.
With its creation in 1960, the AFL determined its champion via a single playoff game between the winners of its two divisions, the Eastern and Western.
Pivotal to this was approval by Congress of a law (PL 89-800) that would waive jeopardy to anti-trust statutes for the merged leagues.
The playoff format was expanded from a single championship game to a four-team tournament, with the four divisional champions participating.
The first two games were convincingly won by the NFL's Packers, the last two by the AFL's New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs, leaving the leagues even at 2–2 in "Championship" competition when they subsequently merged.
With only six division winners in the newly merged league, the NFL designed an eight-team playoff tournament, with four clubs from each conference qualifying.
The first round was named the "Divisional Playoffs", the winners advancing to the "Conference Championships" (AFC & NFC).
Two weeks later, the AFC and NFC champions met in the Super Bowl, now the league's championship game.
The two wild-card teams from each conference (the fourth and fifth seeds) played each other in the first round, called the "Wild Card Playoffs.
However, only the top two division winners in each conference (the 1 and 2 seeds) received byes and automatically advanced to the Divisional Playoffs as host teams.
[17][18][19][20] Again, only the top two division winners in each conference would automatically advance to the Divisional Playoffs, while everybody else had to play in the Wild Card round.
