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The Arena Football League (AFL) is the highest level of professional indoor American football in the United States. It is currently the third longest-running professional football league in North America, after the Canadian Football League and the National Football League. It was founded in 1987 by Jim Foster. It is played indoors on a 50-yard field, not including each eight-yard endzone (half the distance of an NFL field), resulting in a faster-paced and higher-scoring game. The sport was invented in the early 1980s and patented by Foster, a former executive of the United States Football League and the National Football League. For its 2015 season, the league consisted of 12 teams, all from the United States; however, upon the completion of the regular season, the league announced that two teams it had assumed operation of during the season would cease all operations effective immediately; a regular season game slated between the two had previously been canceled and declared a tie. Subsequently, one of the remaining teams, the Spokane Shock severed its ties with the league to join the IFL, and in November the league announced that the champion San Jose SaberCats were ceasing operations. The AFL is divided into two conferences the American Conference and National Conference. Each conference had two divisions of three teams each. The regular-season is a 20-week schedule during which each team plays 18 games and has two bye weeks. Each team, starting 2016, plays three or four games against the teams intraconference-wise, and two games (home/road) against each team interconference-wise. The season currently starts during the last week of March and runs weekly into late August. At the end of each regular season, three teams from each conference (the conference winner and two wild card teams) play in the AFL playoffs, a six-team single-elimination tournament that culminates with the championship game, known as the ArenaBowl. Conference winners get a semifinal bye. From 1987 to 2004, 2010 and 2011 and again starting in 2014, the game was played at the site of the higher seeded team. From 2005 to 2008, the games were at neutral sites, Las Vegas and New Orleans. In 2012, the league championship returned to a neutral site and ArenaBowl XXV was held at the New Orleans Arena; ArenaBowl XXVI was held in Orlando. From 2000 to 2009, the AFL had its own developmental league, the af2. The AFL played 22 seasons from 1987 to 2008; internal issues caused the league to cancel its 2009 season, though the af2 did play. Later that year both the AFL and af2 were dissolved and reorganized as a new corporation comprising teams from both leagues, and the AFL returned in 2010. The Arena Football League has its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The league's average game attendance since returning in 2010 has been approximately 8,000. ==History== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Arena Football League」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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