NFL Europa

NFL Europa is an American football league which operates in Europe. Backed by the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional American football league in the United States, it was founded in 1991 as the World League of American Football (WLAF) to serve as a type of spring league. In 1997 the league rebranded itself as the NFL European League or NFL Europe. In 2006 the league's name changed again, this time to NFL Europa.

There are currently six teams in the league: five based in Germany and one in the Netherlands. Players in NFL Europa are predominantly assigned by National Football League teams who want these younger, "developmental" players to get additional game experience and coaching. The expenses of these players and their coaches while living in Europe are assumed by the league.

World League of American Football (WLAF)
NFL Europa was originally founded in 1991 as the World League of American Football. The original WLAF was an American football league partially backed by the National Football League and, like the current NFL Europa, was a spring developmental league. Originally, the ancestor to NFL Europa had 10 teams playing a 10-game regular season: six teams from the United States, three European teams, and one Canadian team. The two teams emerging from the WLAF semi-final playoffs met at the end of the season in the World Bowl. The first two World Bowl games were held at predetermined locations much like the modern Super Bowl. The original WLAF was unpopular in the United States, and only marginally more popular in Europe. Total attendances at the fifty games in each season were between 1.2 and 1.3 million, giving an average attendance in the mid twenty thousands. The WLAF suspended operations in 1993 prior to the season.

NFL Europe
The National Football League still liked the idea of a spring developmental league, and after revamping itself into an exclusively European circuit, the league re-launched in 1995, consisting of the three existing European teams from the original format as well as three new teams in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf and Edinburgh (who would compete as Scotland). All six teams play in a single division and the 10-game format has been preserved. The original playoff format matched the first-half champion against the team with the best overall season record (or the runner-up, in the event the first-half champion also had the best overall record.) The first-half champion would host the championship game. This format was abandoned after the 1997 season. In subsequent years, the two teams with the best overall record after 10 games compete in the World Bowl, to be hosted at a pre-determined site. The change is largely attributed to the play of the eventual 1997 World Bowl champions, the Barcelona Dragons, who secured a World Bowl berth with a 4-1 first-half record and proceeded to rest players and play what some argued was low-intensity football in the second half, finishing with just a 5-5 record and third place overall in the league's standings.

By the end of the 1997 season, the league was growing concerned that their markets outside of Germany were not living up to their potential. Radical changes were made to the two British teams, spelling the beginning of the end for one. The London Monarchs would become the England Monarchs, switch their colours from blue, gold and red to red, white and black, and play their home games in London, Birmingham and Bristol. The league had been irreverent with the Monarchs as it was, since the pitch at their London stadium, White Hart Lane, was only 93 yards long - nowhere near enough to hold a full 100 yards and two ten-yard endzones. Also, the Scottish Claymores would divide their schedule between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Then, at a press conference in San Diego during Super Bowl XXXII weekend, the league announced it too would be changing: the league would be rebranded as the NFL Europe League.

The NFL Europe era was beset by instability. The England Monarchs were shut down after the 1998 season, being replaced by the Berlin Thunder. In 2002, the Barcelona Dragons became an official section of FC Barcelona, adopting the name FC Barcelona Dragons, but folded after the 2003 season, when Barça dropped its sponsorship and the NFL was not interested in keeping the franchise alive. A new German franchise, the Cologne Centurions, took the Dragons' place in the league in 2004. The Scottish Claymores, one of the 3 teams added to the league in 1995, were also discontinued with their replacements (Hamburg Sea Devils) being established for the 2005 season. With this change, presently five of the six teams are from Germany, with one from the Netherlands, leading some of the league's detractors to refer to it as 'NFL Deutschland' or 'NFL Germany'; even speculating that the Admirals are only still in the Netherlands because they won World Bowl XIII, and it wouldn't look good if the league moved its champions, or simply to justify its "European" identity by keeping one team outside the German borders. German teams, unsurprisingly, won all 7 World Bowl Championships between 1998 and 2004. In 2005 the total attendance at the thirty games was 568,935, and the average attendance of 18,965 was the highest since 1992. On the other hand, TV contracts were cancelled as a result of teams moving out of the countries they were based upon, such as the NFLEL deal with satellite TV platform Digital Plus in Spain after the demise of the Barcelona Dragons.

NFL Europa
On November 10, 2006 NFL Europe officially rebranded itself as NFL Europa (as in German and Dutch language). The move to NFL Europa is intended to highlight the success in and importance of the German and Dutch markets and to create stronger ties with those countries. The new logo and name also maintains very firm links with the NFL in the United States. When the league unveiled the logo for the upcoming World Bowl XV, its main element is the new NFL Europa logo symbolizing the new change that will be taking place.

Future
The league's managing director Jim Connelly has put forward plans for the league's future - with the ultimate goal of "...establishing American football as a major spectator and participation sport in Europe." Following the success in Germany, and the ultimate failure of former franchises in Spain, England, and Scotland, the logical consequence is focusing the league even more on Germany:


 * shifting the league's head office from London to Frankfurt
 * employing a top-end US coach in this relocated HQ to "...oversee a stepped-up plan to develop more German players";
 * players becoming a permanent part of their teams, even going so far as living in their host cities for PR and grass-roots development
 * aiming for an eight-team, two-division, 12-game regular season with proper playoffs in 2010

Whether the Amsterdam Admirals remain in their current city or not seems increasingly down to how well they perform, as following World Bowl XIV, Connelly said at a press conference that the NFL-E Board "...heard updates on the status of other German markets that remain interested in securing an NFLEL franchise". No indication was made whether these would be expansions or relocations. The two leading potential cities have been listed as Leipzig and Hanover - this would mean that the supposedly pan-European league would have become seven-eighths German, compared to the original single German Team in the original World League

Experimental Rules
NFL Europa is not only used to develop young players for the NFL: it is also used to test rule changes with the result that the rules of NFL Europa can be quite different from standard NFL rules. Sometimes these rules prove to be popular and go on to be adopted by the NFL. Others have remained confined to NFL Europa, something which on occasion has been a source of confusion among players. The most famous example is the 2-point conversion rule, in which the ball is passed or run into the endzone again following a touchdown instead of a kick between the uprights. This rule was tested in the World League before it was adopted by the NFL in 1994. Other minor tweaks in gameplay, such as a shorter kickoff tee, were also first used in the WLAF.

The NFL has traditionally used a sudden-death format for overtime. Regular season games have a single period of overtime during which the first team to score wins the game. If neither team scores, the game is declared a tie. In post-season games, overtime is extended indefinitely until one team scores. In NFL Europa, however, the overtime period lasts for 10 minutes with the requirement that each team must have the opportunity of possession at least once. (This gives the format some similarities with the NCAA's overtime format.) So, in NFL Europa, it is possible for one team to score in overtime then have to kick-off to the opponent and give them a chance to either equalise or win the game (still possible on just one possession each; if one team scores a TD followed by an extra point, their opponents could still win by scoring a touchdown followed by a 2-point conversion). The winner is the team with the highest score after both teams have had possession. Only two games have ever remained tied after OT in WLAF/NFL Europa history: London Monarchs vs Birmingham Fire in Week 4 of the 1992 season, and Berlin Thunder at Hamburg Sea Devils, on April 1 2006. The score of both games was 17-17.

With soccer being the traditionally popular sport in Europe and American Football being a relative newcomer, the rules were changed slightly to encourage a greater element of kicking which was intended to make the game more enjoyable for soccer and rugby fans. They did this by awarding 4 points to field goals of more than 50 yards, as opposed to 3 points in the NFL. This has the interesting side-effect that a touchdown lead (6 points) can be overcome by one regular field goal (3 points) as well as a long field goal (4 points).

Also, there is a requirement that at least one player of Non-American extraction, referred to as "national" players, participate in every down for both teams as of the 2006 season (in previous seasons one was required to play only on every down of every other series). In addition to European players a number of Mexican and Japanese players have played as national players. Up until the 2004 season kicked conversion attempts and short field goals were attempted by national players. Since there are few European players who have had the chance to compete at a level comparable to U.S. College Football and the NFL, many of the most useful European players have prior experience in soccer or rugby so become Kickers in NFL Europa. This, in conjunction with the 4-point field goal rule, meant that, while European players were a small minority of players, they still had a significant involvement in scoring points.