National Football League regular season
The National Football League regular season begins the weekend after Labor Day in early September and ends in December or early January. It consists of 256 games, where each team plays 16 games during a 17-week period. Since 2012, the NFL schedule generally has games in one of five time slots during the week. A game played on Thursday night, kicking off at 8:25 PM (ET). The majority of games are played on Sunday, with most kicking off at 1:00 PM (ET), some late afternoon games starting at 4:05 or 4:25 PM (ET) and one Sunday night game which starts at 8:30 PM (ET). A Monday night game then starts at 8:30 PM (ET). In addition to these regularly scheduled games, there are occasionally games at other times, such as a or Saturday afternoon or evening, or the annual Thanksgiving Day games. During the final week of the regular season, all games are held on Sunday.
Season (sports)
In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session. For example, in Major League Baseball, one season lasts approximately from April 1 to October 1; in football, it is generally from August until May (although in some countries, especially those in Scandinavia the season starts in the spring and finishes in the autumn, due either to weather conditions encountered during the winter or to limit conflict with locally more popular football codes).
A year can often be broken up into several distinct sections (sometimes themselves called seasons). These are: a preseason, a series of exhibition games played for training purposes; a regular season, the main period of the league's competition; the postseason, a playoff tournament played against the league's top teams to determine the league's champion; and the offseason, the time when there is no official competition.
Preseason
Most team sports have a period of training to recover fitness levels, followed by exhibition games (commonly known as friendlies outside North America) prior to the start of their regular seasons ("pre-season training" and "pre-season" games). The game results do not count in the season standings of the teams, so they serve conveniently to test player candidates and to practice teamwork under game conditions. They may be used to promote the team effectively both at home and elsewhere. For some teams a pre-season overseas tour may be profitable, even lucrative. For some leagues, overseas games may promote their sport or their league to new audiences.
Glossary of baseball (R)
R
rabbit ears
rag arm
railroad
rain delay
rainbow
rainout
rake
rally
rally cap
range
RBI
RBI situation
receiver
regular season
regulation game
relay
relief pitcher
reliever
Rembrandt
replacement-level player
replacement player
retire the batter
retire the runner
retire the side
rhubarb
ribbie, ribeye
rifle
right-handed bat
right-handed hitter
ring him up
rip
