Pittsburgh Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team currently belongs to the North Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). Founded in 1933, the Steelers are the oldest franchise in the AFC.

In contrast with their status as perennial also-rans in the pre-merger NFL, where they were the oldest team to never win a league championship, the Steelers of the post-merger (modern) era are one of the most successful NFL franchises. Pittsburgh has won more Super Bowl titles (6), and hosted more (11) conference championship games than any other NFL team. The Steelers share the record for most AFC championships with the New England Patriots (8), and the record for most conference championship games played in with the San Francisco 49ers (15). The Steelers share the record for most Super Bowl appearances with the Patriots and Dallas Cowboys (8). The Steelers lost their most recent championship appearance, Super Bowl XLV, on February 6, 2011.

National Football League

The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league consisting of 32 teams, divided equally between the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). The NFL is one of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, and the highest professional level of American football in the world. The NFL's 17-week regular season runs from the week after Labor Day to the week after Christmas, with each team playing sixteen games and having one bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, six teams from each conference (four division winners and two wild card teams) advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament culminating in the Super Bowl, played between the champions of the NFC and AFC.

The NFL was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) before renaming itself the National Football League for the 1923 season. The NFL agreed to merge with the American Football League (AFL) in 1966, and the first Super Bowl was held at the end of that season; the merger was completed in 1970. Today, the NFL has the highest average attendance (67,591) of any professional sports league in the world and is the most popular sports league in the United States. The Super Bowl is among the biggest club sporting events in the world and individual Super Bowl games account for many of the most watched television programs in American history, all occupying the Nielsen's Top 5 tally of the all-time most watched U.S. television broadcasts by 2015. The NFL's executive officer is the commissioner, who has broad authority in governing the league.

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional football in the United States. The game culminates a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. Normally, Roman numerals are used to identify each game, rather than the year in which it is held. For example, Super Bowl I was played on January 15, 1967, following the 1966 regular season. The single exception to this rule is Super Bowl 50, which was played on February 7, 2016, following the 2015 regular season.

The game was created as part of a merger agreement between the NFL and its then-rival league, the American Football League (AFL). It was agreed that the two leagues' champion teams would play in the AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the merger was to officially begin in 1970. After the merger, each league was redesignated as a "conference", and the game has since been played between the conference champions to determine the NFL's league champion. Currently, the National Football Conference (NFC) leads the league with 26 wins to 23 wins for the American Football Conference (AFC). The Pittsburgh Steelers have the most Super Bowl victories with six.

AFC Championship Game

The American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game (also unofficially referred to as the AFC Title Game) is one of the two semi-final playoff games of the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional American football league in the United States. The game is played on the penultimate Sunday in January and determines the champion of the American Football Conference. The winner then advances to face the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship Game in the Super Bowl.

The game was established as part of the 1970 merger between the NFL and the American Football League (AFL), with the merged league realigning into two conferences. Since 1984, each winner of the AFC Championship Game has also received the Lamar Hunt Trophy, named after the founder of the AFL and longtime leader of the Kansas City Chiefs.

History

The first AFC Championship Game was played following the 1970 regular season after the merger between the NFL and the American Football League. The game is considered the successor to the former AFL Championship, and its game results are listed with that of its predecessor in the annual NFL Record and Fact Book. Since the pre-merger NFL consisted of six more teams than the AFL, a realignment was done as part of the merger to create two conferences with an equal number of teams: The NFL's Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns, and the Pittsburgh Steelers joined the ten former AFL teams to form the AFC; while the remaining 13 pre-merger NFL clubs formed the NFC.

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh (/ˈpɪtsbərɡ/ PITS-burg) is the second largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with a population of 305,842 and the county seat of Allegheny County. The Combined Statistical Area (CSA) population of 2,659,937 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia and the 20th-largest in the U.S. Pittsburgh is known as both "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses, as well as "the City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges. The city features 30 skyscrapers, 2 inclines, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the source of the Ohio River at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers. This vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest through the mineral-rich Alleghenies made the area coveted by the French and British Empires, Virginia, Whiskey Rebels, Civil War raiders and media networks.

Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For much of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment, second to New York in bank assets and with the most U.S. stockholders per capita. America's 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters of Gulf Oil, Sunbeam, Rockwell and Westinghouse moved. This heritage left the area with renowned museums, medical centers,parks, research centers, libraries, a diverse cultural district and the most bars per capita in the U.S. In 2015, Pittsburgh was named on a list of the "eleven most livable cities in the world."