American Football Conference

The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference (NFC), each have 16 teams organized into four divisions. Both conferences were created as part of the 1970 merger between the National Football League, and the American Football League (AFL).

All ten of the AFL teams, and three NFL teams, became members of the new AFC, with the remaining thirteen NFL teams forming the NFC. Since then, the league has grown with expansions and changes in how teams are grouped, leading to the current setup of 16 teams in each conference. The most recent AFC champions are the New England Patriots, who won the 2025 season's AFC Championship Game against the Denver Broncos, marking their twelfth conference title.

Currently, the AFC has one main officer, the president, who holds an honorary role with mostly ceremonial duties, such as presenting the conference championship trophy.

Teams

The American Football Conference (AFC), like the other conference, has 16 teams. These teams are split into four groups, called divisions. The divisions are: East, North, South and West. Each division has four teams.

Season structure

Main articles: NFL regular season and NFL playoffs

In the NFL, each team plays 17 games during the regular season. Teams in the American Football Conference (AFC) play each other team in their own division twice—one home game and one away game. They also play 11 other games, which are decided by a special rule that changes each year.

At the end of the season, the top teams from each division and the next three best teams with the highest records move on to the playoffs. The winner of the AFC playoffs gets to play in the Super Bowl against the winner of the other conference, the NFC. So far, the AFC has won the Super Bowl 27 times out of 55 games. The Kansas City Chiefs were the last AFC team to win the Super Bowl, and the New England Patriots have won the most AFC championships with 12.

History

When the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL) merged in 1970, they created two new groups, or conferences, for their teams. The American Football Conference, or AFC, was one of these conferences. To balance the teams, three older NFL teams joined the ten AFL teams to form the AFC. This happened because the leagues wanted to make sure each conference had the same number of teams.

Since then, the AFC has grown and changed. New teams like the Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans joined, and some teams moved to new cities. Even with these changes, the way the AFC is set up has mostly stayed the same since 2002.

Logo

The original logo for the American Football Conference (AFC) looked much like the logo for the American Football League (AFL). Soon after, a new, bolder logo was made with a big red "A" and six red stars around it. In 2010, the AFC logo was updated again. Two stars were removed, leaving four to stand for the four divisions, and the stars were moved inside the letter.

The Kansas City Chiefs still wear the original AFL logo on their jerseys today.

Television

Further information: NFL on television and History of the NFL on television

After the 1970 merger was completed, the league kept working with CBS and NBC. Originally, CBS showed games for the NFC teams, while NBC showed games for the AFC teams. For games between the two groups, CBS showed the game if the visiting team was from the NFC, and NBC showed it if the visiting team was from the AFC. A special deal was made for ABC to show Monday Night Football (MNF), a popular game no matter which teams were playing. Over time, the league added more important games, like Sunday Night Football (SNF) on ESPN in 1987 and Thursday Night Football (TNF) on NFL Network in 2006.

These broadcasting packages changed over the years. The NFC games moved from CBS to Fox in 1994, and CBS took over the AFC games from NBC in 1998. In 2014, the league started "cross-flexing," allowing CBS and Fox to show some games from the other conference. ESPN first showed SNF only for the second half of the season in 1987, then TNT showed it for the first half in 1990. Later, ESPN showed all of SNF in 1998, and then NBC took over SNF in 2006. ESPN also took over MNF from ABC in 2006. TNF games were shown on different networks before Amazon Prime Video got exclusive rights in 2022.