Originally known as the American Professional Football Association, the National Football League (NFL) started out with 11 teams in 1920.  This included the Akron Pros (the first NFL Champions), Canton Bulldogs, Chicago Tigers, Muncie Flyers, and Rochester Jeffersons.  Things were pretty informal in the beginning with several of these independent teams making an agreement to play on a similar schedule and to declare a championship team at the end of each season.

In 1922, the league changed its name to the NFL and began taking on a much more formal structure. Over the following decades, the league steadily grew, taking on more teams, including the Green Bay Packers and the Baltimore Colts (now the Indianapolis Colts).

By 1959, a rival league – the American Football League (AFL) – had formed with eight original teams.  This included the Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos, and Oakland Raiders.  The popularity of this new league forced the NFL, which had grown to 16 teams, to consider a merger.  A plan was put into motion in 1966 but was not complete until 1970.  All of the AFL teams, along with three teams from the NFL would become the newly formed American Football Conference (AFC).  All remaining teams in the NFL would become known as the National Football Conference (NFC).  The two conferences would become the new NFL.  Though there have been a few changes to the divisions, this setup exists even to this day.

The NFL is now made up of 32 franchises located throughout the United States.  They are still divided up into the two conferences with each conference being further broken down into four divisions: the AFC East, North, South, and West, and the NFC East, North, South, and West. Of the 11 teams that originally formed the league, just two remain to this day:  the Decature Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals).  Check out the individual team pages for more information on each current NFL teams.