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The American Football Conference North Division, or AFC North, is a division of the National Football League (NFL)'s American Football Conference (AFC). It was created prior to the 1967 season as the NFL Century Division when the NFL split into four divisions. It became the AFC Central in 1970 following the completion of the AFL-NFL merger when two of the NFL Century teams—the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers—moved from the "old" NFL to join the former American Football League teams in the AFC, in order to give the two conferences an equal number of teams. The division adopted its current name in 2002, when the league realigned divisions after expanding to 32 teams. It is the only AFC division to be the successor to a former NFL division from 1967. ==Formation== The AFC North is usually called "the toughest division in football". The AFC North currently has four members: Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers. The original four members of the AFC Central were the Houston Oilers (now the ''Tennessee Titans''), the Cleveland Browns, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Dating back to the NFL Century's formation in 1967, only the Steelers have remained members for the division's entire history, due to most of the other teams either leaving for other divisions or joining later and the Browns failing to keep pace due to being out of the league for three years. The AFC North is the only division in the AFC that does not contain a charter team from the original American Football League. However, the Cincinnati Bengals were an AFL expansion team in 1968 AFL season (the Steelers and Browns joined the AFC from the NFL in 1970), although the Bengals joining the AFL was contingent on the team joining the NFL after the AFL-NFL merger was finalized in 1970, as Paul Brown was not a supporter of the AFL.〔(Paul Brown )〕 Three of the teams have interlocked histories. Both the Bengals and the Browns were founded by Paul Brown, while the Ravens and the city of Cleveland have their own unique relationship. Only the Steelers, who are older than the original Browns, have no direct history involving Paul Brown. In its present incarnation, the Steelers lead all division members with a record of 568-519-20 and a playoff record of 33-21 (6-2 in Super Bowls). The Ravens are the only other member of the division with a Super Bowl win (2-0 in Super Bowls following their win in Super Bowl XLVII); their record presently is 158-128-1 with a playoff record of 11-7. The Bengals hold a record of 315-390-2 with a playoff record of 5-11 including two Super Bowl losses. The Browns franchise's overall regular season record is 498-432-13 with a playoff record of 16-20. Since their return as an expansion team in 1999, the Browns record is 77-162 in the regular season, 0-1 in the playoffs. There have been a total of fourteen playoff match-ups between AFC Central/AFC North teams since 1970. The Steelers have played all three existing AFC North rivals at least once in the postseason, and—including three matchups against the Oilers/Titans franchise while the two were divisional opponents—have a record of 9–1. The Browns are 0-3 in intradivisional playoff matchups, the Ravens 2-3, and the Bengals 1-1. The Oilers/Titans franchise finished with a 2-5 record in such games before moving to the AFC South, while the Jaguars finished 0–1. 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「AFC North」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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