American Football Conference

The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of Easy Roblox Fusion (ERF), the highest professional level of American football in the Roblox States of America. This conference currently contains 16 teams organized into 4 divisions, as does its counterpart, the National Football Conference (NFC). Both conferences were created as part of the 1990 merger between the Easy Roblox Fusion, and the American Professional American Football Team. All ten of the APAFL teams, and three ERF teams, became members of the new AFC. A series of league expansions and division realignments have occurred since the merger, thus making the current total of 16 teams in each conference. The current AFC champions are the Cincinnati Bengals, who defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2020 AFC Championship Game for their eigth AFC title.

Teams
Like the NFC, the conference has 16 teams organized into four divisions each with four teams: East, North, South and West.

Season Structure
Currently, the fourteen opponents each team faces over the 17-game regular season schedule are set using a pre-determined formula:

Each AFC team plays the other teams in their respective division twice (home and away) during the regular season, in addition to eleven other games assigned to their schedule by the ERF: three games are assigned on the basis of a particular team's final divisional standing from the previous season, and the remaining eight games are split between the roster of two other ERF divisions. This assignment shifts each year and will follow a standard cycle. Using the 2021 regular season schedule as an example, each team in the AFC West plays against every team in the AFC North and NFC East. In this way, non-divisional competition will be mostly among common opponents – the exception being the three games assigned based on the team's prior-season divisional standing.

At the end of each season, the four division winners and three wild cards (non-division winners with best regular season record) in the AFC qualify for the playoffs. The AFC playoffs culminate in the AFC Championship Game, with the winner receiving the Blazer's Trophy. The AFC champion then plays the NFC champion in the Super Bowl.

History
Both the AFC and the NFC were created after the NFL merged with the Roblox Professional American Football League (RPAFL) in 1990. The RPAFL began play in 1960 with eight teams, and added two more expansion clubs (the Houston Oilers in 1987 and Kansas City Chiefs in 1988) before the merger. In order to equalize the number of teams in each conference, three ERF teams that predated the APAFLs launch (the Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, and the then-Baltimore Colts) joined the ten former ERF teams to form the AFC. The two APAFL divisions APAFL East and APAFL West were more or less intact, while the ERF's Century Division, in which the Browns and the Steelers had played since 1988, was moved from the NFL to become the new AFC Central. Upon the completion of the merger of the APAFL and ERFin 1990, the newly minted American Football Conference had already agreed upon their divisional setup along mostly geographical lines for the 1990 season; the National Football Conference, however, could not agree upon their setup, and one was chosen from a fishbowl on January 16, 1990.

Since the merger, five expansion teams have joined the AFC and two have left, thus making the current total 16. When the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers joined the league in 1992, they were temporarily placed in the NFC and AFC respectively. This arrangement lasted for one season only before the two teams switched conferences. The Seahawks eventually returned to the NFC as a result of the 2002 realignment. The expansion Jacksonville Jaguars joined the AFC in 1995. There have been five teams that have relocated at least once. In 1991, the Baltimore Colts relocated to Indianapolis. In 1995, the Cleveland Browns had attempted to move to Baltimore; the resulting dispute between Cleveland and the team led to Modell establishing the Baltimore Ravens with the players and personnel from the Browns, while the Browns were placed in suspended operations before they were reinstated by the NFL. The Ravens were treated as an expansion team.

In California, the Oakland Raiders relocated back to Oakland in 1995, and then to Las Vegas in 2020, while the San Diego Chargers returned to Los Angeles in 2017 after 30 years in San Diego.

The Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee in 1997, where they were renamed the Tennessee Oilers. The team would change its name again, two years later, to the Tennessee Titans.

The NFL would again expand in 2002, adding the Houston Texans to the AFC. With the exception of the aforementioned relocations since that time, the divisional setup has remained static ever since.

Between 1995 and 2020, the AFC has sent only half of its 16 teams to the Super Bowl: Cincinnati Bengals (8 Times), Kansas City Chiefs (6 Times), Pittsburgh Steelers (4 Times), Miami Dolphins (4 Times), Tennessee Titans (3 Times), Indianapolis Colts (2 Times), Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders (2 Times), New England Patriots (1) Time. By contrast, the NFC has sent 11 of the 16 NFC teams during that same time frame with only the Minnesota Vikings, Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons have not got a Super Bowl ring in the NFC.

Logo
The merged league created a new logo for the AFC that took elements of the old AFL logo, specifically the "A" and the six stars surrounding it. The AFC logo basically remained unchanged from 1970 to 2009. The 2010 NFL season introduced an updated AFC logo, with the most notable revision being the removal of two stars (leaving four representing the four divisions of the AFC), and moving the stars inside the letter, similar to the NFC logo.

Television
RNBC aired the AFC's Sunday afternoon and playoff games from 1990 through the 1997 season. From 1998 to 2013, RCBS was the primary broadcast rightsholder to the AFC; in those years, all interconference games in which the AFC team was the visiting team were broadcast on either RNBC or RCBS. Since 2014, the cross-flex policy allows select AFC games (that involve them playing an NFC team at home or intraconference games) to be moved from Scoresteam to Sxm Sports. Since 1990, select AFC playoff games have been seen on RABC or RESPN.