Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What does a perfect season in football mean?
A true perfect season (no losses and no ties through the regular season and playoffs) has never been achieved in professional Canadian football. Only one team, the 1948 Calgary Stampeders, has completed a perfect regular season.
In American football, each quarter of a game is measured with a 15-minute game clock, or 12-minute clock in many high school football codes and the German Football League. A team in possession of the lead and the ball will attempt to use up as much of the game clock as possible in order to bring the game to an end more quickly, thus denying the opposition another chance on offense.
In American football each team has 11 players on the field at one time. The specific role that a player takes on the field is called their "position". Under the modern rules of American football, teams are allowed unlimited substitutions; that is, teams may change any number of players after any play. This has resulted in the development of three "platoons" of players: the offense (the team with the ball, which is trying to score), the defense (the team trying to prevent the other team from scoring, and to take the ball from them), and the special teams (who play in kicking situations). Within those platoons, various specific positions exist depending on what each player's main job is.
Florida State's victory earned it the 1999 BCS national championship and brought the Seminoles' season to an end with an undefeated 12–0 record. By beginning the season at No. 1 and ending it in the same position, Florida State became the first college football team to stay ranked No. 1 for every week of the season after being ranked No. 1 in the preseason poll. Virginia Tech's loss brought it to a final record of 11–1, but the Hokies still completed their first 11-win season in school history. The 75 total points scored in the 2000 Sugar Bowl were a Sugar Bowl record at that point in the game's history.
Fantasy football (less commonly referred to as fantasy association football worldwide but known as fantasy soccer in the United States) is a game in which participants assemble an imaginary team of real life footballers and score points based on those players' actual statistical performance or their perceived contribution on the field of play. Usually players are selected from one specific division in a particular country, although there are many variations. The original game was created in England by Bernie Donnelly on Saturday 14 August 1971 and is still going strong 45 years later. Fantasy football has evolved in recent years from a simple recreational activity into a significant business due to exposure via the internet.
The regular season is 21 weeks long, with games beginning in mid-June and finishing by early November. The CFL's nine current teams are divided into two divisions: the East Division with four teams and the West Division, with five teams. Each team plays two games against each of the other eight teams, plus two divisional games with opponents rotating each season. With 18 regular season games being played, each team gets three bye weeks.
There have been proposals to expand the regular season schedule to 17 or 18 games per team. Current Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he favors expanding it to 18 games. However, a longer regular season proposal was defeated in the 2011 labor negotiations between the owners and the players association. One of the proposals for the 17th and 18th games is to have every team play at least one game abroad every year. Another idea being put forth by Houston Texans owner Bob McNair is to move the traditional regional rivalries that are currently played in the preseason (such as the Governor's Cups) into a permanent annual part of each NFL team's schedule. The NFL Players' Association opposes extending the season, largely because of injury concerns, and extending the season would require that such an extension be included in the next collective bargaining agreement. The collective bargaining agreement signed in 2011 maintained the sixteen game regular season schedule.
English football has a league system which incorporates thousands of clubs, and is topped by four fully professional divisions. The elite Premier League has 20 teams and is the richest football league in the world. The other three fully professional divisions are the run by the English Football League, the oldest league in the world, and include another 72 clubs. Annual promotion and relegation operates between these four divisions and also between the lowest of them and lower level or "non-League" football. There are a small number of fully professional clubs outside the top four divisions, and many more semi-professional clubs. Thus England has over a hundred fully professional clubs in total, which is considerably more than any other country in Europe.
The season ended when the Green Bay Packers defeated the New York Giants in the NFL Championship Game.Though both the Giants and the Packers finished a game ahead of their closest division rivals, both clinched their divisions on December 3, the final day of the 11-game regular season. The New York Giants and Washington Redskins had played to a 0–0 tie earlier in the season, and both had 8–1–1 records when they met at New York's Polo Grounds before a crowd of 62,404. The Giants did not reach the end zone, but three field goals were enough for a 9–7 win and the division title.
At all adult levels of the game, a game is 60 timed minutes in length, split into four 15-minute quarters. (High school football uses 12-minute quarters, and the general rule is that the younger the players, the shorter the quarters typically are.) Because of the halftime, quarter breaks, time-outs, the minute warnings (two minutes before the end of a half in the NFL, three minutes in Canadian football), and frequent stoppages of the game clock (the clock stops, for example, after every incomplete pass and any time a ball goes out of bounds), the actual time it takes for a football game to be completed is typically over three hours.
The 1985 NFL season was the 66th regular season of the National Football League. The season ended with Super Bowl XX when the Chicago Bears defeated the New England Patriots 46–10 at the Louisiana Superdome. The Bears became the second team in NFL history (after the previous season's San Francisco 49ers) to win 15 games in the regular season and 18 including the playoffs."W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, PCT = Winning Percentage, PF= Points For, PA = Points Against"The following players set all-time records during the season:
Fantasy football is a fantasy sport in which competitors score points based on the performance of players in the Australian Football League. The two biggest competitions are the Herald Sun's Supercoach competition and the AFL's Dream Team competition. Both games are designed and run by Vapormedia.
Game play in American football consists of a series of "downs", individual plays of short duration, outside of which the ball is "dead" or not in play. These can be plays from scrimmage – passes, runs, punts, or field goal attempts (from either a place kick or a drop kick) – or free kicks such as kickoffs and fair catch kicks. Substitutions can be made between downs, which allows for a great deal of specialization as coaches choose the players best suited for each particular situation. During a play, each team should have no more than 11 players on the field, and each of them has specific tasks assigned for that specific play.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 and Public Law 89-800, which govern the antitrust exemptions given to the National Football League, prohibit the broadcasting of NFL games within 75 miles of any high school football game on Friday nights between September and early December. Because most populated areas of the United States have at least one high school football game within a 75-mile radius, and because broadcasting is an integral part of the NFL's business model (roughly half of the league's revenue comes from television contracts), this effectively prohibits the playing of NFL games in competition with high school football. (These rules do not apply during preseason, when Friday night games are common, nor does it apply at the end of the season, though the only time regular season games are played on Friday in the NFL is on Christmas.) Only recently have national sports television channels fully capitalized on this rule; since 2005, the ESPN family of networks (usually the sub-networks ESPN2, ESPNU and online broadcaster ESPN3, although the main channel also shows occasional games) has aired regular season matchups between nationally ranked teams under the "High School Showcase" banner. Fox Sports 1 also included high school football in its lineup when it launched in 2013.
In its early years after , the NFL did not have a set schedule, and teams played as few as eight and as many as sixteen games, many against independent professional, college, or amateur teams. From through , they played from eleven to fourteen games per season, depending on the number of teams in the league. From through , each NFL team played 12 games per season. The American Football League began play in 1960 and introduced a balanced schedule of 14 games per team over a fifteen-week season, in which each of the eight teams played each of the other teams twice, with one bye week. Competition from the new league caused the NFL to expand and follow suit with a fourteen-game schedule in .
The season ended when the Buffalo Bills defeated the San Diego Chargers in the AFL Championship game. Two years later, the AFL would join the NFL to form the AFL-NFL World Championship game, known today as the Super Bowl.
The regular season is eight to nine weeks long, depending on the conference. Teams play between 12 and 16 regular season games, depending on conference or division, with teams typically playing a home and home series with every other team in their conference or division. All regular season games are in-conference. Following the conclusion of the regular season, the Joe Johnson Memorial Trophy is awarded annually to the Player of the Year in U Sports men's soccer.
Teams do not play a given conference opponent from outside their division more than once during the regular season. However, they may meet again for a second time in the playoffs. The NFL schedules divisions to play against each other on a rotating basis, so that every team from one division will play every team from another division, for a total of four games per team. Each team will also play one team from each of the remaining two divisions within the conference that finished in the same divisional standing position in the prior year—for a grand total of 20 conference games. Conference games are often important, as a team's record in common games, as well as its overall record against its conference, is sometimes used as a tiebreaker for playoff seeding at the end of the regular season. Also, many regular season opponents have met again in the playoffs, and the result of a regular season game can affect where the playoff game will be played. Conference rivals will play each other at least once every three years in the regular season, and as frequently as once every year depending on record, and can play each other in the preseason.
The regular season is eight to nine weeks long, depending on the conference. Teams play between 12 and 16 regular season games, depending on conference or division, with teams typically playing a home and home series with every other team in their conference or division. All regular season games are in-conference. Following the conclusion of the regular season, the Chantal Navert Memorial award is awarded annually to the Player of the Year in U Sports women's soccer.
Football games last for a total of 60 minutes in professional and college play and are divided into two-halves of 30 minutes and four-quarters of 15 minutes. High school football games are 48 minutes in length with two-halves of 24 minutes and four-quarters of 12 minutes. The two-halves are separated by a halftime period, and the first and third quarters are also followed by a short break. Prior to the start of the game, the referee and team captains for each team meet at midfield for a coin toss. The visiting team is allowed to call 'heads' or 'tails'; the winner of the toss is allowed to decide between choosing whether to receive or kick off the ball or choosing which goal they want to defend, but they can also defer their choice until the second half. The losing team, unless the winning team decides to defer, is allowed to choose the option the winning team did not select, and receives the option to receive, kick, or select a goal to defend to begin the second half. Most teams choose to receive or defer, because choosing to kick the ball to start the game would allow the other team to choose which goal to defend. Teams switch goals following the first and third quarters. If a down is in progress when a quarter ends, play continues until the down is completed.
Each AFC team plays the other teams in their respective division twice (home and away) during the regular season, in addition to 10 other games assigned to their schedule by the NFL. Two of these games are assigned on the basis of a particular team's final divisional standing from the previous season. The remaining 8 games are split between the roster of two other NFL divisions. This assignment shifts each year and will follow a standard cycle. Using the 2012 regular season schedule as an example, each team in the AFC West plays against every team in the AFC North and NFC South. In this way, non-divisional competition will be mostly among common opponents – the exception being the two games assigned based on the team's prior-season divisional standing.
The VFL began in 1897. Based entirely in the state of Victoria, before it expanded through the 1980s, and 1990s to become the top level national league (AFL) in the sport of Australian rules football. The length of a complete season (including finals matches) has typically been between 18 and 26 games. Throughout the history of the league, no team has ever completed a perfect season. One team, in 1929, completed a perfect home-and-away season, finishing with a record of 18–0; the club won the premiership, but did not complete a perfect season after losing the second semi-final against .
In winning all of their regular season games and the AAFC championship, the Browns recorded the first perfect season in professional football since the advent of NFL championships in 1933. The feat has been duplicated only once since, by the Miami Dolphins in 1972. When the AAFC faltered and dissolved after the 1949 season and the NFL absorbed the Browns, their new league did not recognize AAFC statistics, including the perfect season. The Pro Football Hall of Fame, however, recognizes it as a perfect season. In 2008, United States Senator Sherrod Brown, who represents Ohio in the United States Congress, sent a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell asking the league to recognize AAFC championships and team records including the perfect season. At the time, the New England Patriots were undefeated as they prepared for the Super Bowl against the New York Giants, a game they went on to lose. Dante Lavelli also advocated for the NFL to adopt AAFC records.
The lyrics of "Perfect Circle" are purposely opaque. Members of the band agree that the song has an emotional theme that can be interpreted in many ways. For guitarist Peter Buck, the song elicits images of children playing football one evening in Trenton, New Jersey. Singer Michael Stipe interprets the song as being about longing in a relationship. He also has stated that other interpretations are equally valid: "It was an intensely personal song to me. I really like that it can mean two different things. ... It's the exact same feeling, but the details are different." "A perfect circle of acquaintances and friends"...a theme in the song is a beautiful representation of what the song can be about.
In 2007, Belichick led the Patriots to the first perfect regular season since the introduction of the 16-game regular season schedule in 1978, only the fourth team to do so in National Football League history after the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears and 1972 Miami Dolphins. However, the Patriots were upset in Super Bowl XLII by the New York Giants. The Patriots' failure to attain a "perfect season" (undefeated and untied, including playoffs) preserved the Miami Dolphins as the sole team to do so, having finished their 1972 regular season at 14–0 and having won three games in the playoffs. Only two other teams in professional football have recorded a perfect season—the 1948 Cleveland Browns (14–0) of the then All-America Football Conference and the 1948 Calgary Stampeders (12–0) of the Canadian Football League. No team in the former American Football League had a perfect season.