| Q: Does the NFL decide its championship with the NFL Championship Game anymore? A: No. Why is it so hard to accept that the Super Bowl is what matters in the NFL? I'm not the kind of person who ignores history and only thinks that modern events are relevant, but NFL and AFL Championships are irrelevant to the modern NFL, because, even though the name of the league is the same, the merger drastically changed things. The NFL-AFL merger is very dissimilar to the situation with the NBA and ABA and the NHL and WHA. With the latter two, the one dominant league basically absorbed only parts of the weaker league, while the NFL-AFL merger was more equal. All AFL and NFL teams were retained, and they set up the AFC and NFC, which consisted of mostly AFL and NFL teams, respectively. The NBA and NHL mergers amounted to one league adding a few teams, while the NFL merger was more like two leagues becoming one. And even though that one new league has the same name as one of the old ones, it really is essentially a different league. Counting NFL and AFL championships is like counting American League and National League championships before they started playing the World Series. |