|
Playoffs
The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a Single-elimination tournament, single-elimination system or one of several other playoff format, different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament. In team sports in the U.S. and Canada, the vast distances and consequent burdens on cross-country travel have led to regional divisions of teams. Generally, during the regular season, teams play more games in their division than outside it, but the league's best teams might not play against each other in the regular season. Therefore, in the postseason a playoff series is organized. Any group-winning team is eligible to participate, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wild Card (sports)
A wild card (also wildcard or wild-card and also known as an at-large berth or at-large bid) is an invitation to a tournament or a playoff berth awarded to a team or individual that does not qualify via an automatic bid. In some events, wildcards are chosen freely by the organizers. Other events have fixed rules. Some North American professional sports leagues compare the records of teams which did not qualify directly by winning a division or conference. International sports In international sports, the term is perhaps best known in reference to two sporting traditions: team wildcards distributed among countries at the Olympic Games and individual wildcards given to some tennis players at every professional tournament (both smaller events and the major ones such as Wimbledon). Tennis players may even ask for a wildcard and get one if they want to enter a tournament on short notice. For Summer Olympic Games, some National Olympic Committees, whose nations are underrepresented ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playoff Format
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the ''single elimination'', the ''best-of-'' series, the ''total points series'' more commonly known as ''on aggregate'', and the '' round-robin tournament''. Single elimination A single-elimination ("knockout") playoff pits the participants in one-game matches, with the loser being dropped from the competition. Single-elimination tournaments are often used in individual sports like tennis. In most tennis tournaments, the players are seeded against each other, and the winner of each match continues to the next round, all the way to the final. When a playoff of this type involves the top four teams, it is sometimes known as the Shaughnessy playoff system, after Frank Shaughnessy, who first developed it for the International League of minor league baseball. Variations of the Shaughnessy system also exist, such as in the promotion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regular Season
In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of September. In other team sports, like association football or basketball, it is generally from August or September to May although in some countries – such as Northern Europe, North America or East Asia – the season for oudoor summer sports starts in the spring and finishes in autumn, mainly due to weather conditions encountered during the winter. A year can often be broken up into several distinct sections (sometimes themselves called seasons). These are: a preseason, usually a series of exhibition games played for training purposes; a regular season, the main period of the league's competition; the postseason, a playoff tournament played against the league's top teams to determine the league's champion; and the offseason, the time w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houston Texans
The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC South, South division. The team plays its home games at NRG Stadium. The Texans were founded in 1999, replacing the city's previous NFL franchise, the History of the Houston Oilers, Houston Oilers, who played from 1960 to 1996 before moving to Nashville and eventually becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Texans began play as an expansion team in , making them the youngest franchise currently competing in the NFL. While the Texans suffered from growing pains in the 2000s, their fortunes would take a turn for the better in the 2010s when they won their first division championship in 2011 Houston Texans season, 2011, clinching their first playoff berth. The Texans have gone on to win seven more AFC South division championships in 2012 Houston Texans season, 2012, 2015 Houston Texans season, 2015, 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual History of the NFL championship, league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966 NFL season, 1966 (with the exception of the Pro Bowl between the 1967 and 2009 seasons), superseding the History of the National Football League championship, NFL Championship Game. Since Super Bowl LVI, 2022, the game has been played on the second Sunday in February. Prior Super Bowls were played on Sundays in early to mid-January from 1967 to 1978, late January from 1979 to 2003, and the first Sunday of February from 2004 to 2021. Winning teams are awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the legendary Vince Lombardi, Packers coach who won the first two Super Bowls. Because the NFL restricts the use of its "Super Bowl" trademark, it is frequently referred to as the "big game" or other generic terms by non-sponsoring corporations. The day the game is held is common ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sports League
A sports league is a group of individual athletes, sports teams or clubs who form a league to compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete periodically, at its most complex, it can be an international professional league making large amounts of money and involving dozens of teams and thousands of players. Terminology Misuse of term Many uses of the term league in sports and for sports organizations are misnomers as the term league relates specifically to the form of organization, requiring persons or bodies to be in league together. A sport competition owned and controlled other than by its participant players, teams or clubs is not a league. Synonyms In many cases, organizations that function as leagues are described using a different term, such as association, conference, division, leaderboard, or series. This is especially common in individual sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins annually with a NFL preseason, three-week preseason in August, followed by the NFL regular season, 18-week regular season, which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one Bye (sports), bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, seven teams from each conference, including the four division winners and three Wild card (sports), wild card teams, advance to the NFL playoffs, playoffs, a single-elimination tournament, which culminates in the Super Bowl, played in early February ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
All-America Football Conference
The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a major professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the nation's best players, and introduced many lasting innovations to the game. However, the AAFC was ultimately unable to sustain itself in competition with the NFL. After it folded, three of its teams were admitted to the NFL: the San Francisco 49ers, the Cleveland Browns and the original Baltimore Colts (not to be confused with the later Baltimore Colts team, now the Indianapolis Colts). The AAFC was the second American professional football league (the first being the third American Football League of 1940–1941) to have its teams play in a double round robin format in the regular season: each team had a home game and an away game with each of the other AAFC teams. The Cleveland Browns were the AAFC's most successful club, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tournament
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval. # A competition involving a number of matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match. These two senses are distinct. All golf tournaments meet the first definition, but while match play tournaments meet the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Football League
The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, AFL–NFL merger, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. The upstart AFL operated in direct competition with the more established NFL throughout its existence. It was more successful than earlier rivals to the NFL, including not only the organizations founded in American Football League (1926), 1926, American Football League (1936), 1936, and American Football League (1940), 1940, respectively, under the AFL name, but also the later All-America Football Conference, which existed between 1944 and 1950, but conducted operations only between 1946 and 1949. This fourth version of the AFL was the most successful, created by a number of owners who had been refused NFL expansion franchises or had minor shares of NFL franchises. The AFL's original lineup consisted of an Eastern division ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bowl Game
In North America, a bowl game, or simply bowl, is one of a number of postseason college football games primarily played by NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams. For most of its history, the FBS did not use a playoff tournament to determine an annual national champion, instead relying on a vote by sportswriters or coaches. In place of such a playoff, cities developed regional festivals featuring bowls. Prior to 2002, bowl game statistics were not included in players' career totals. Despite moves to establish a permanent system to determine the FBS national champion on the field such as the Bowl Coalition from 1992 to 1994, the Bowl Alliance from 1995 to 1997, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) from 1998 to 2013, and the College Football Playoff (CFP) from 2014 through the present some bowls are still held. Historically, the four "major" bowl games, originally played on New Year's Day, were the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Cotton Bowl. Bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
College Football
College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football American football in the United States, first gained popularity in the United States. Like gridiron football generally, college football is most popular in the United States and Canada. While no single governing body exists for college football in the United States, most schools, especially those at the highest levels of play, are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA. In Canada, collegiate football competition is governed by U Sports for universities. The Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (for colleges) governs soccer and other sports but not gridiron football. Other countries, such as Organización Nacional Estudiantil de Fútbol Americano, Mexico, American football in Japan, Japan and Korea American Football Association, South Korea, also host colle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
