Arena Football - A guide to AFL & AFL Playoffs

When NBC started airing arena football games on a regular basis, many viewers erroneously thought that they were discovering a brand new sport. In fact, although the sport is relatively new, it has been in existence for close to 20 years, starting in 1987. Over the years, the rules have been changed and tweaked but nevertheless remain practically identical to those implemented when the league was created.

How different is Arena Football League (AFL) from the NFL? Both games follow very similar rules. The first obvious difference lies in the playing field. In addition to being indoors, Arena Football is played on a much smaller field. In fact, measuring a mere 50 yards in length, an arena football field is exactly half the size of a field in the NFL. This smaller size also affects the width of the goal posts, which only measure nine feet wide and 15 feet high.

One of the games other major differences comes from the fact that arena football has very few stops to its action. As opposed to the NFL, where balls that go out of bounds end the play, AFL players that catch a ball that has rebounded off the wall or the rear nets can continue playing. The ball is considered live until it is downed or the player carrying it is tackled. This results in much higher scoring games and an extremely fast pace--two things that fans of the sport seem to be drawn to.

Similarly to the NFL's Superbowl, the two top teams in the AFL meet at the end of the season in a big head-to-head match up known as the Arena Bowl. The 16 teams in the league are divided into two main conferences: the American and the National. The two conferences split the four divisions: Eastern, Western, Southern and Central. The top three teams from each division make it to the playoffs where they face off in an elimination tournament until a champion is crowned.