Super Bowl XLVIII

Super bowl XLVIII is around the corner. This game will determine the NFL champion for this year. The National Football League, or the NFL, is the highest level of professional American football in the United States. It is considered to be the top professional American football league in the world.  

The NFL has 32 teams and are part of two conferences:
The NFC or the National Football Conference and the AFC or the American Football Conference with 16 teams each.

These teams are further divided into 4 divisions: North, South, East and West

Each of these conferences has playoffs that determine the conference champion at the end of the regular season. The NFC and the AFC champions then play against each other in the the NFL's championship game at the Super bowl.

Some fun facts about the NFL:

• The perimeter of an NFL football field is 300 feet or 100 yards long, and 160 feet or 53 1/3 yards wide, so the perimeter is 920 feet or 306 2/3 yards.
  
• Close to 600 cows are used to manufacture a full season's worth of NFL footballs. All of these footballs are manufactured at ONE factory in a town called Ada, Ohio! The Wilson Sporting Goods Company has been the official football supplier for the National Football League since 1941, and 150 workers at the plant in Ada construct 700,000 regulation-sized footballs BY HAND each year.
• When former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner dines out with his family, he always anonymously picks up the bill for one other table. 
• The longest field goal in NFL history was kicked by a man who had only half a foot! In 1970, a man named Tom Dempsey, a 22-year-old kicker for the New Orleans Saints surprised the nation with a  field goal and took team to an unlikely victory. He was born without four fingers on his right hand and only half of a foot for his right foot.  
• Deion Sanders is a natural athlete! He is the only player to play for both the MLB and NFL, hitting a home run for New York Yankees and complete a touchdown in the NFL for Atlanta Falcons all in the same week. He's also the only player to play in the MLB (Major League Baseball)  World Series and the Super Bowl.  
• The shortest player to play in the NFL since 1990 is Trindon Holliday, who at 5' 5" is a receiver and spends most of his time as a return specialist. His small frame gives him the dynamic speed and agility to elude the considerably larger players on the field.
• Drew Brees is the highest paid player in the NFL 2014. His total income is $51 million dollars. 40 million dollars is his salary and the 11 million dollars comes from endorsements. He is an American football quarterback for the New Orleans Saints.
• The American Sports industry is worth $422 billion and employs 1% of the US population! 
• The average NFL salary is approximately $2 million.
• The minimum or the starting salary for NFL rookies is $285,000
• The Arizona Cardinals was the first NFL team.
• The NFL teams with the best record are: The Pittsburgh Steelers with the most wins, and the Dallas Cowboys who have the best winning percentage.
• The coldest NFL game ever played: The NFL game between the Green Bay Packers and SF 49ers on January 3, 2014 was played at  Green Bay Packers' Lambeau Field in Wisconsin at a temperature of 4 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as minus 14 (-14) with the windchill!. It broke the NFL record for the coldest game ever played! 
  

The Super bowl this year, will be played on February 2nd, 2014 at 6:30 pm E.S.T, at the MetLife Stadium, in New Jersey. The NFC champions, the Seattle Seahawks, play against the AFC champions, The Denver Broncos. This year’s game is the first Super Bowl game to be played outdoors in a cold weather environment. It is also the first time that two U.S. states are co-hosts: NY and NJ.

Who are you rooting for?

Gem words:
conference: an association of sports teams that play each other
elude: to dodge or escape from
co-host: a joint host