title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: The romantic comedy "America's Sweethearts" was Zeta-Jones's sole film release of 2001. She starred as a shrewd movie star, opposite Julia Roberts who featured as her character's under-confident sibling. The critic Roger Ebert compared the film unfavourably to the musical "Singin' in the Rain" (1952), but thought that Zeta-Jones was aptly "chilly and manipulative" in her part. The following year, she starred alongside Renée Zellweger as the murderous nightclub singer Velma Kelly in "Chicago" (2002), a film adaptation of the stage musical of the same name from the director Rob Marshall. She based her character's look and mannerisms on the actress Louise Brooks, and as the script did not provide a backstory to Kelly, she worked to convey her character's "flamboyance" and "desperation" through "little looks and nuances". The film and her performance received widespread critical acclaim. William Arnold of the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" believed that Zeta-Jones had made "a wonderfully statuesque and bitchy saloon goddess", and David Edelstein of "Slate" wrote that she has "a smoldering confidence that takes your mind off her not-always-fluid dancingalthough she's a perfectly fine hoofer, with majestic limbs and a commanding cleavage" and particularly praised her rendition of the song "All That Jazz". "Chicago" grossed $306 million worldwide, and was the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture. For her performance, she won the Academy Award, SAG Award, and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress, among other awards and nominations.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Following the success of "Chicago", Zeta-Jones voiced the part of Princess Marina in "" (2003), an animated film featuring Brad Pitt as the voice of Sinbad the Sailor. She was drawn to the project to give her then-young children an opportunity to "hear [her] and get a sense of [her] on film", but the film proved to be a box office bomb. Also in 2003, Zeta-Jones starred alongside George Clooney in the Coen brothers black comedy "Intolerable Cruelty". A commercial success, the film saw her play the role of a serial divorcée who is drawn towards a divorce lawyer (Clooney). Writing for "Empire", the critic Damon Wise labelled the film a "dazzling screwball comedy" and felt that Zeta-Jones had shown "an admirable facility for old-school quickfire patter". Other reviewers praised her onscreen chemistry with Clooney.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: In 2004, Spielberg approached her to play an insecure air hostess in his comedy "The Terminal", a film about a man (Tom Hanks) who is trapped at the JFK International Airport when he is denied entry into the United States. Spielberg was intent on her playing against type as a strong-willed woman, with a vulnerability in her character, but the critic A. O. Scott felt that it came across as using her for "her looks rather than for the arch, self-mocking wit that is her secret weapon as a comic actress". Commercially, "The Terminal" performed well. She next worked with Soderbergh to film "Ocean's Twelve", a sequel to his heist film "Ocean's Eleven" (2001), which also reunited her with stars Clooney, Pitt, and Roberts. The production, which was filmed in several European countries, saw Zeta-Jones play Isabel Lahiri, a Europol agent, and the love interest of Pitt's character. Paul Clinton of CNN noted that her sex appeal benefited the film. Conversely, Ken Tucker of "New York" magazine argued that her character was redundant to the film's plot. Despite dividing critics, the sequel grossed over $360 million globally.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: "The Legend of Zorro" (2005), a sequel to "The Mask of Zorro", saw her reprise the role of Eléna opposite Banderas. Set ten years after the first film, the sequel follows Eléna struggling with married life. Unlike the original, the film was disliked by critics and was a commercial disappointment. She did not have any film releases in 2006. A biopic of Harry Houdini, titled "Death Defying Acts" (2007), starring Guy Pearce as the escapologist Houdini, featured Zeta-Jones as a Scottish con artist who claims psychic powers. The unsuccessful production was given only a limited theatrical release.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: In 2007, Zeta-Jones starred alongside Aaron Eckhart and Abigail Breslin in the romantic comedy "No Reservations", a remake of the German film "Mostly Martha" (2001). "No Reservations" tells the story of an ambitious chef (Zeta-Jones) whose life changes for the better when she takes in her young niece (Breslin) after her sister's death. In preparation for her part, Zeta-Jones worked in the kitchen and waited on tables at New York's Fiamma Osteria restaurant. Claudia Puig of "USA Today" wrote that Zeta-Jones "shines as a character that finely balances off-putting reserve with sympathetic appeal", and Roger Ebert, despite disliking the film, did find her to be "convincing" in her role. With a global gross of $92 million, the film marked her final commercial success of the decade.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: After "No Reservations", Zeta-Jones significantly decreased her workload in the following five years. She instead chose to focus on her family and health, having been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, and her infrequent acting appearances were in smaller-scale and less successful productions. She took on the role of a forty-year-old mother attracted to a younger man (Justin Bartha) in the romantic comedy "The Rebound". The production was released theatrically in markets outside of the United States in 2009–10, but due to financial troubles of its distributor, The Film Development, the film failed to release theatrically in America.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Zeta-Jones returned to the stage in 2009 with a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical "A Little Night Music", which marked her Broadway debut. Set in Sweden during the early twentieth century, the musical follows the relationships between three people (Zeta-Jones, Angela Lansbury and Alexander Hanson) during the course of a summer. She played Desirée Armfeldt, an ageing actress, and was particularly drawn to the complexities of the piece, explaining: "There's no jazzy hands, no high kicks, no fishnet stockings, ... It's not one of those shows where you can dig about three inches and come out the other end. You can keep digging and digging and digging". She did not listen to past recordings of the songs in the musical so she could bring her own interpretation to them. The critic Claire Prentice of "The Daily Telegraph" wrote that Zeta-Jones brought in a "quiet, reflective poignancy" in her rendition of the song "Send In the Clowns", but Emma Brockes of "The Guardian" was more critical, remarking that "with her pretty voice, head wresting this way and that, [she] seems to be auditioning for stage school". For her performance, Zeta-Jones won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: After a three-year sabbatical from acting, she made her screen comeback in "Lay the Favorite" (2012), a comedy co-starring Bruce Willis and Rebecca Hall, in which she played the jealous wife of a gambler (Willis). Reviews of the film were negative, and Betsy Sharkey of the "Los Angeles Times" found Zeta-Jones to be "far too shrill to amuse". In the ensemble musical comedy "Rock of Ages", co-starring Tom Cruise and Bryan Cranston, Zeta-Jones played the part of a religiously conservative wife of a mayor. She was attracted to the idea of playing a "nightmare of a woman" and based the role on the politician Michele Bachmann; the film received mixed reviews and failed commercially. Her final release of 2012 was "Playing for Keeps", a romantic comedy with Gerard Butler, which proved to be her third box office failure of the year.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: In 2013, Zeta-Jones took on a leading role in the crime thriller "Broken City", co-starring Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe. The film tells the story of a private detective (Wahlberg) who is hired by the mayor of New York City (Crowe) to spy on his wife (Zeta-Jones). The critic Todd McCarthy thought that Zeta-Jones "looks like class itself and nicely underplays", and Liam Lacey of "The Globe and Mail" observed that the actress "does a fair, if incongruous, impersonation of a forties vamp". However, as with her previous few projects, the film was not widely seen, and received poor reviews. This changed when Zeta-Jones collaborated with Soderbergh for the third time to film the critically acclaimed thriller "Side Effects" (2013). Co-starring Channing Tatum, Jude Law and Rooney Mara, the film saw her play a mysterious psychiatrist who recommends an antidepressant drug with serious side effects. Peter Travers, writing for "Rolling Stone", called the film a "hell of a thriller, twisty, terrific and packed with surprises" and found Zeta-Jones to be "dynamite" in it.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: In the action comedy "Red 2" (2013), which served as a sequel to the 2010 film "Red", Zeta-Jones played a seductive Russian double agent, alongside Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, and Mary-Louise Parker. She was drawn to the project, which follows the comic adventures of retired spies, for "the action, the humour, [and] the tongue-in-cheek quality of it". Writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", Justin Lowe stated that Zeta-Jones "nicely pulls off Russian spy Katja's mix of allure and menace", and with a worldwide gross of $148 million, "Red 2" emerged as her most widely seen film since "No Reservations".


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Following "Red 2", Zeta-Jones took another sabbatical from acting, saying: "If I'm going to leave my family for any length of time it had better be for a role that I haven't played before, [otherwise] I would prefer to stay at home". She found the role opposite Bill Nighy and Toby Jones in the British war comedy film "Dad's Army" (2016), based on the television sitcom of the same name. She was cast as a glamorous journalist reporting on a British Home Guard platoon based in Walmington-on-Sea. Catherine Bray of "Variety" found the film to be an "amiable but creaky resurrection" of the sitcom, and thought that while Zeta-Jones "hits the required single note with some spirit" she was "generally underused" in it.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Zeta-Jones returned to television in 2017, portraying actress Olivia de Havilland in the first season of Ryan Murphy's anthology drama series "Feud" about the rivalry between the actresses Joan Crawford and Bette Davis (played by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon, respectively). Dominic Patten of "Deadline Hollywood" found Zeta-Jones to be "wonderfully cast" and Sonia Saraiya of "Variety" credited her for providing "the best turn in the show". Displeased with an "unauthorized use of her name and identity" in the series, de Havilland, at 101 years old, sued the network and producers of "Feud" for invasion of privacy and other personality rights. The lawsuit was later dismissed by a California appellate court.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: In 2018, Zeta-Jones starred as the drug lord Griselda Blanco in the Lifetime television film "Cocaine Godmother". Despite her character's misdeeds, she was drawn to her character's fortitude and ability to stand out in a male-dominated business. Writing for IndieWire, Hanh Nguyen criticised the decision to cast Zeta-Jones in the part of a Latino woman, adding that "she's not just unconvincing; she's outlandish". She next played the lead role of Vicki Ellis, an unrelenting pageant coach, in the Facebook Watch comedy-drama series "Queen America". To play a character who has bulimia, she drew on her teenage experiences of interacting with dancers who had eating disorders. In a positive review, Jen Chaney of "Vulture" wrote that "Zeta-Jones is always at her best when she's fiery, and this part gives her plenty of opportunities to shift into beast mode".


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: In 2021, Zeta-Jones appeared in a recurring role in the second season of the Fox drama series "Prodigal Son". She played Dr. Vivian Capshaw, a doctor, opposite Michael Sheen. The series was cancelled after its second season. She next took on a guest role as Morticia Addams in two episodes of the Netflix fantasy series "Wednesday" (2022). Dave Nemetz of TVLine found her "exquisitely well-cast" in her small part. She subsequently played the main antagonist of the Disney+ adventure series "". Joshua Alston of "Variety" found Zeta-Jones to be the "best thing" about the show, adding that "her snarling villainy veers so close to camp that it sounds at times like she’s workshopping a comedic impression of her own voice".


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Aside from acting, Zeta-Jones supports various charities and causes. She is a patron of Swansea's Longfields Day Centre for the disabled, and has made sizeable donations to the centre. In 2001, she auctioned an outfit she wore in "The Mask of Zorro" (1998) to raise funds for AIDS patients in Africa. In 2005, she became the ambassador of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children charity, and launched the Full Stop appeal in Wales to raise awareness on child abuse. She has also given her support to other charitable organisations for children such as the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children and the Noah's Ark Appeal, among others. Zeta-Jones is also the founding host for "A Fine Romance", an annual charitable program that helps raise funds for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, and is one of the members of the Cinema for Peace Foundation.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Zeta-Jones briefly dabbled with a singing career in the early 1990s. In 1992, she provided her voice to the character of actress Jean Simmons in Jeff Wayne's musical retelling of "Spartacus", entitled "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of Spartacus". Three years later, she released her first single, "In the Arms of Love", on Wayne's Wow! Records. She later sang "True Love Ways", a duet with David Essex in 1994.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Zeta-Jones has featured as an advertising spokeswoman for several brands and products. She was named the global ambassador for the cosmetics company Elizabeth Arden, Inc. in 2002. Also that year, she was signed on by the phone company T-Mobile for an estimated $10 million per year, making her the highest-paid celebrity endorser at the time. In 2017, Zeta-Jones launched her own line of home decoration products named Casa Zeta-Jones. Also that year, she featured in a theatrical production of "The Children's Monologues", in which she performed a monologue as a mathematically inclined young girl. The event raised funds for Dramatic Need, a charity that helps African children pursue a career in the arts.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Zeta-Jones's beauty and sex appeal have been picked up by various media outlets, including "People" magazine, which placed her at number one on their "Most Beautiful People" listing in 1998. She continued to feature on the list from 2000 to 2004. In 2003, "Esquire" labelled her "the most beautiful woman on the planet". In 2011, she was named the most beautiful British woman by a poll conducted by the television network QVC. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the Monarchy of the United Kingdom in 2010 for her film and charity work. In 2019, she was honoured with the Freedom of the City of Swansea.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: The journalist Sheila Johnston of "The Daily Telegraph", in 2010, described Zeta-Jones as "the ultimate self-made success" who "constantly made bold decisions, and scrubbed up very nicely into a luscious star who radiates a classic […] brand of big-screen glamour." Guy Adams of "The Independent" considers her personality to be "self-effacing and energetic" but takes note of her "steely core" in her off-screen persona. Zeta-Jones's success in her early Hollywood films "The Mask of Zorro" (1998) and "Entrapment" (1999) relied predominantly on her sex appeal, but she was later appreciated for her versatility.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Zeta-Jones's career graph and marriage to Douglas have been a subject of satire. A 2006 episode of the satirical British television show "Star Stories" (2006–2008) was entitled "Catherine Zeta-Jones—Her Quest to Prove Herself ... And Also Find Love", about a fictitious life story of Zeta-Jones. Addressing her perceived media image, she remarked in a 2004 interview with "USA Weekend": "The biggest misconception of me is that I'm some die-hard, ambitious, do-anything-to-get-anything kind of person, I'm not. I'm very shy socially." Zeta-Jones is protective of her public image, and the use of her likeness is carefully controlled. As well as taking legal action against "Hello!" magazine, she sued a Nevada-based topless club for including her image on their advertising. In 2003, the celebrity biographer Cliff Goodwin wrote an unauthorised biography of the actress, entitled "Catherine Zeta Jones: The Biography", but the publication was indefinitely postponed after her lawyers issued threats of legal action against both Goodwin and his publisher.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: The success of "The Darling Buds of May" (1991–93) made Zeta-Jones a celebrity in Britain, and her personal life has since been chronicled by the media. Her relationships in the early 1990s with television personality John Leslie, singer David Essex, and pop star Mick Hucknall were widely reported by the British press. In the mid-1990s, she was briefly engaged to Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen. In a 1995 interview with the "Daily Mirror", she described her lifestyle thus: "I drink, I swear, I like sex".


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: Zeta-Jones met American actor Michael Douglas, with whom she shares her birthday and who is 25 years her senior, at the Deauville American Film Festival in France in August 1998, after being introduced by Danny DeVito. They became engaged on 31 December 1999, and were married at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on 18 November 2000 after Douglas's divorce was finalised. The high-profile ceremony, which cost an estimated £1.5 million, was labelled the "wedding of the year" by the BBC. They signed a £1 million deal with "OK!" magazine to release photographs of the event, and the rest of the press were not permitted to enter. Despite that, journalists for "Hello!" magazine surreptitiously took pictures of the ceremony, and the couple successfully sued the magazine for invasion of privacy. Zeta-Jones and Douglas have two children: a son, Dylan Michael (born August 2000), and a daughter, Carys Zeta (born April 2003). The family lived in Bermuda until 2009, and , live in rural New York state. The family has a coastal estate near Valldemossa, Mallorca.


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: In 2010, Douglas was diagnosed with tongue cancer, and Zeta-Jones faced an emotionally turbulent time; she said, "When you get sideswiped like that [with the illness] it's an obvious trigger for your balance to be a little bit off – not sleeping, worry, stress." This trigger led to Zeta-Jones suffering from depression, and despite initial apprehension, she spoke publicly about having bipolar II disorder. She sought treatment by checking herself into hospital in 2011, and again in 2013. Owing to the stress of both their illnesses, the couple decided to live separately in 2013, though without taking legal action towards separation or divorce. They reconciled in 2014, with Douglas saying they were "stronger than ever".


title: Catherine Zeta-Jones

text: For her role in "Chicago" (2002), Zeta-Jones was awarded the Academy Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has received two Golden Globe Award nominations: Best Supporting Actress for "Traffic" (2000) and Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for "Chicago" (2002). For her leading role in Broadway's 2009 revival of "A Little Night Music", Zeta-Jones was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.


title: National Football League

text: The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins with a three-week preseason in August, followed by the 18-week regular season which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, seven teams from each conference (four division winners and three wild card teams) advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament that culminates in the Super Bowl, which is contested in February and is played between the AFC and NFC conference champions. The league is headquartered in New York City.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) before renaming itself the National Football League for the 1922 season. After initially determining champions through end-of-season standings, a playoff system was implemented in 1933 that culminated with the until 1966. Following an agreement to merge the NFL with the rival American Football League (AFL), the Super Bowl was first held in 1967 to determine a champion between the best teams from the two leagues and has remained as the final game of each NFL season since the merger was completed in 1970. 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 also among the biggest club sporting events in the world, with the individual games accounting for many of the most watched television programs in American history and all occupying the Nielsen's Top 5 tally of the all-time most watched U.S. television broadcasts by 2015. The NFL is the wealthiest professional sports league by revenue and the sports league with the most valuable teams.


title: National Football League

text: The Green Bay Packers hold the most combined NFL championships with thirteen, winning nine titles before the Super Bowl era and four Super Bowls afterwards. Since the creation of the Super Bowl, the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers are tied for the most Super Bowl victories at six each. The Los Angeles Rams are the reigning league champions, as they defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23–20 in Super Bowl LVI on February 13, 2022, to mark the end of the 2021 season.


title: National Football League

text: On August 20, 1920, a meeting was held by representatives of the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles at the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, Ohio. This meeting resulted in the formation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), a group who, according to the "Canton Evening Repository", intended to "raise the standard of professional football in every way possible, to eliminate bidding for players between rival clubs and to secure cooperation in the formation of schedules".


title: National Football League

text: Another meeting was held on September 17, 1920, with representatives from teams from four states: Akron, Canton, Cleveland, and Dayton from Ohio; the Hammond Pros and Muncie Flyers from Indiana; the Rochester Jeffersons from New York; and the Rock Island Independents, Decatur Staleys, and Racine (Chicago) Cardinals from Illinois. The league was renamed to the American Professional Football Association (APFA). The league elected Jim Thorpe as its first president, and consisted of 14 teams (the Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers, Columbus Panhandles and Detroit Heralds joined the league during the year). The Massillon Tigers from Massillon, Ohio was also at the September 17 meeting, but did not field a team in 1920. Only two of these teams, the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), remain in the NFL.


title: National Football League

text: Although the league did not maintain official standings for its 1920 inaugural season and teams played schedules that included non-league opponents, the APFA awarded the Akron Pros the championship by virtue of their record. The first event occurred on September 26, 1920, when the Rock Island Independents defeated the non-league St. Paul Ideals 48–0 at Douglas Park. On October 3, 1920, the first full week of league play occurred.


title: National Football League

text: The following season resulted in the Chicago Staleys controversially winning the title over the Buffalo All-Americans. On June 24, 1922, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League (NFL).


title: National Football League

text: In 1932, the season ended with the Chicago Bears () and the Portsmouth Spartans () tied for first in the league standings. At the time, teams were ranked on a single table and the team with the highest winning percentage (not including ties, which were not counted towards the standings) at the end of the season was declared the champion; the only tiebreaker was that in the event of a tie if two teams played twice in a season, the result of the second game determined the title (the source of the 1921 controversy). This method had been used since the league's creation in 1920, but no situation had been encountered where two teams were tied for first. The league quickly determined that a playoff game between Chicago and Portsmouth was needed to decide the league's champion. The teams were originally scheduled to play the playoff game, officially a regular-season game that would count towards the regular season standings, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, but a combination of heavy snow and extreme cold forced the game to be moved indoors to Chicago Stadium, which did not have a regulation-size football field. Playing with altered rules to accommodate the smaller playing field, the Bears won the game 9–0 and thus won the championship. Fan interest in the "de facto" championship game led the NFL, beginning in 1933, to split into two divisions with a championship game to be played between the division champions. The 1934 season also marked the first of twelve seasons in which African Americans were absent from the league. The "de facto" ban was rescinded in 1946, following public pressure and coinciding with the removal of a similar ban in Major League Baseball.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL was always the largest professional football league in the United States; it nevertheless faced numerous rival professional leagues through the 1930s and 1940s. Rival leagues included at least three separate American Football Leagues and the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), on top of various regional leagues of varying caliber. Three NFL teams trace their histories to these rival leagues; the Los Angeles Rams who came from a 1936 iteration of the American Football League, and the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, both from the AAFC. By the 1950s, the NFL had an effective monopoly on professional football in the United States; its only competition in North America was the professional Canadian football circuit, which formally became the Canadian Football League (CFL) in 1958. With Canadian football being a different football code than the American game, the CFL established a niche market in Canada and still survives as an independent league.


title: National Football League

text: A new professional league, the fourth American Football League (AFL), began to play in 1960. The upstart AFL began to challenge the established NFL in popularity, gaining lucrative television contracts and engaging in a bidding war with the NFL for free agents and draft picks. The two leagues announced a merger on June 8, 1966, to take full effect in 1970. In the meantime, the leagues would hold a common draft and championship game. The game, the Super Bowl, was held four times before the merger, with the NFL winning Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II, and the AFL winning Super Bowl III and Super Bowl IV. After the league merged, it was reorganized into two conferences: the National Football Conference (NFC), consisting of most of the pre-merger NFL teams, and the American Football Conference (AFC), consisting of all of the AFL teams as well as three pre-merger NFL teams.


title: National Football League

text: Today, the NFL is the most popular sports league in North America - with much of the league's growth and popularity attributable to former Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who led the league from 1960 to 1989. Overall annual attendance increased from 3 million at the beginning of his tenure to 17 million by the end of his tenure, and 400 million global viewers watched 1989's Super Bowl XXIII. The NFL established NFL Properties in 1963. The league's licensing wing, NFL Properties earns the league billions of dollars annually; Rozelle's tenure also marked the creation of NFL Charities and a national partnership with United Way. Paul Tagliabue was elected as commissioner to succeed Rozelle; his 17-year tenure, which ended in 2006, was marked by large increases in television contracts and the addition of four expansion teams, as well as the introduction of league initiatives to increase the number of minorities in league and team management roles. The league's current Commissioner, Roger Goodell, has focused on reducing the number of illegal hits and making the sport safer, mainly through fining or suspending players who break rules. These actions are among many the NFL is taking to reduce concussions and improve player safety. Prior to 2021, the NFL had utilized race-based adjustments of dementia claims in the $1 billion settlement of concussion claims, which had been criticized by critics before the NFL decided to end what was called "race-norming".


title: National Football League

text: From 1920 to 1934, the NFL did not have a set number of games for teams to play, instead setting a minimum. The league mandated a twelve-game regular season for each team beginning in 1935, later shortening this to eleven games in 1937 and ten games in 1943, mainly due to World War II. After the war ended, the number of games returned to eleven games in 1946, and later back to twelve in 1947. The NFL went to a 14-game schedule in 1961, which it retained until switching to a 16-game schedule in 1978. In March 2021, the NFL officially adopted a 17-game schedule after gaining the agreement of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA).


title: National Football League

text: Having an odd number of games in the schedule will give half the teams nine games as the home team, while half the teams have only eight home games. To minimize the perceived benefit on competition of having more home games, the extra home game will be rotated between the two conferences each year. This is because playoff berths are allocated at the conference level, so all teams within the conference will have played the same number of home games.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL operated in a two-conference system from 1933 to 1966, where the champions of each conference would meet in the . If two teams tied for the conference lead, they would meet in a one-game playoff to determine the conference champion. In 1967, the NFL expanded from 15 teams to 16 teams. Instead of just evening out the conferences by adding the expansion New Orleans Saints to the seven-member Western Conference, the NFL realigned the conferences and split each into two four-team divisions. The four division champions would meet in the NFL playoffs, a two-round playoff. The NFL also operated the Playoff Bowl (officially the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl) from 1960 to 1969. Effectively, a third-place game, pitting the two conference runners-up against each other, the league considers Playoff Bowls to have been exhibitions rather than playoff games. The league discontinued the Playoff Bowl in 1970 due to its perception as a game for losers.


title: National Football League

text: Following the addition of the former AFL teams into the NFL in 1970, the NFL split into two conferences with three divisions each. The expanded league, now with twenty-six teams, would also feature an expanded eight-team playoff, the participants being the three division champions from each conference as well as one 'wild card' team (the team with the best win percentage) from each conference. In 1978, the league added a second wild card team from each conference, bringing the total number of playoff teams to ten, and a further two wild card teams were added in 1990 to bring the total to twelve. When the NFL expanded to 32 teams in 2002, the league realigned, changing the division structure from three divisions in each conference to four divisions in each conference. As each division champion gets a playoff bid, the number of wild card teams from each conference dropped from three to two. The playoffs expanded again in 2020, adding two more wild card teams to bring the total to 14 playoff teams.


title: National Football League

text: At the corporate level, the National Football League considers itself a trade association made up of and financed by its 32 member teams.<ref name="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/sports/football/12nfltax.html"></ref> Up until 2015, the league was an unincorporated nonprofit 501(c)(6) association. Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code provides an exemption from federal income taxation for "Business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, boards of trade, or professional football leagues (whether or not administering a pension fund for football players), not organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual." In contrast, each individual team (except the non-profit Green Bay Packers) is subject to tax because they make a profit.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL gave up the tax-exempt status in 2015 following public criticism; in a letter to the club owners, Commissioner Roger Goodell labeled it a "distraction", saying "the effects of the tax-exempt status of the league office have been mischaracterized repeatedly in recent years… Every dollar of income generated through television rights fees, licensing agreements, sponsorships, ticket sales, and other means is earned by the 32 clubs and is taxable there. This will remain the case even when the league office and Management Council file returns as taxable entities, and the change in filing status will make no material difference to our business." As a result, the league office might owe around US$10 million in income taxes, but it is no longer required to disclose the salaries of its executive officers.


title: National Football League

text: The league has three defined officers: the commissioner, secretary, and treasurer. Each conference has one defined officer, the president, which is essentially an honorary position with few powers and mostly ceremonial duties, including awarding the conference championship trophy.


title: National Football League

text: The commissioner is elected by the affirmative vote of two-thirds or eighteen (whichever is greater) of the members of the league, while the president of each conference is elected by an affirmative vote of three-fourths or 10 of the conference members. The commissioner appoints the secretary and treasurer and has broad authority in disputes between clubs, players, coaches, and employees. He is the "principal executive officer" of the NFL and also has authority in hiring league employees, negotiating television contracts, disciplining individuals that own part or all of an NFL team, clubs, or employed individuals of an NFL club if they have violated league by-laws or committed "conduct detrimental to the welfare of the League or professional football". The commissioner can, in the event of misconduct by a party associated with the league, suspend individuals, hand down a fine of up to US$500,000, cancel contracts with the league, and award or strip teams of draft picks.


title: National Football League

text: In extreme cases, the commissioner can offer recommendations to the NFL's executive committee, up to and including the "cancellation or forfeiture" of a club's franchise or any other action, he deems necessary. The commissioner can also issue sanctions up to and including a lifetime ban from the league if an individual connected to the NFL has bet on games or failed to notify the league of conspiracies or plans to bet on or fix games. The current Commissioner of the National Football League is Roger Goodell, who was elected in 2006 after Paul Tagliabue, the previous commissioner, retired.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL consists of 32 clubs divided into two conferences of 16 teams each. Each conference is divided into four divisions of four clubs each. During the regular season, each team is allowed a maximum of 55 players on its roster; only 48 of these may be active (eligible to play) on game days. Each team can also have a twelve-player practice squad separate from its main roster.


title: National Football League

text: Each NFL club is granted a franchise, the league's authorization for the team to operate in its home city. This franchise covers 'Home Territory' (the 75 miles surrounding the city limits, or, if the team is within 100 miles of another league city, half the distance between the two cities) and 'Home Marketing Area' (Home Territory plus the rest of the state the club operates in, as well as the area the team operates its training camp in for the duration of the camp). Each NFL member has the exclusive right to host professional football games inside its Home Territory and the exclusive right to advertise, promote, and host events in its Home Marketing Area. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule, mostly relating to teams with close proximity to each other: teams that operate in the same city (e.g. New York City and Los Angeles) or the same state (e.g. California, Florida, and Texas) share the rights to the city's Home Territory and the state's Home Marketing Area, respectively.


title: National Football League

text: Every NFL team is based in the contiguous United States. Although no team is based in a foreign country, the Jacksonville Jaguars began playing one home game a year at Wembley Stadium in London, England, in 2013 as part of the NFL International Series. The Jaguars' agreement with Wembley was originally set to expire in 2016 but was extended through 2020 prior to travel restrictions relating to the coronavirus. The Las Vegas Raiders (then in Oakland) played one game each in the 2018 and 2019 seasons in London, while each of the Los Angeles teams (Rams, Chargers) played a game there from 2016 to 2019.


title: National Football League

text: The Buffalo Bills played one home game every season at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as part of the Bills Toronto Series from to . Mexico also hosted an NFL regular-season game, a 2005 game between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals known as "Fútbol Americano", and 39 international preseason games were played from 1986 to 2005 as part of the American Bowl series. Three additional games have since been played in Mexico.


title: National Football League

text: According to "Forbes", the Dallas Cowboys, at approximately US$5 billion, are the most valuable NFL franchise and the most valuable sports team in the world. Also, 26 of the 32 NFL teams rank among the Top 50 most valuable sports teams in the world; and 16 of the NFL's owners are listed on the Forbes 400, the most of any sports league or organization.


title: National Football League

text: The 32 teams are organized into eight geographic divisions of four teams each. These divisions are further organized into two conferences, the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference. The two-conference structure has its origins in a time when major American professional football was organized into two independent leagues, the National Football League and its younger rival, the American Football League. The leagues merged 1970, adopting the older league's name and reorganizing slightly to ensure the same number of teams in both conferences.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL season format consists of a three-week preseason, an 18-week regular season (each team plays 17 games), and a 14-team single-elimination playoff culminating in the Super Bowl, the league's championship game.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL preseason begins with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, played at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton.<ref name="NFL/Hall of Fame Game"></ref> Each NFL team is required to schedule three preseason games. NFC teams must play at least two of these at home in odd numbered years and AFC teams must play at least two at home in even numbered years. However, the teams involved in the Hall of Fame game, as well as any team that played in an American Bowl game, play four preseason games. Preseason games are exhibition matches and do not count towards regular-season totals. Because the preseason does not count towards standings, teams generally do not focus on winning games; instead, they are used by coaches to evaluate their teams and by players to show their performance, both to their current team and to other teams if they get cut. The quality of preseason games has been criticized by some fans, who dislike having to pay full price for exhibition games, as well as by some players and coaches, who dislike the risk of injury the games have, while others have felt the preseason is a necessary part of the NFL season.


title: National Football League

text: Currently, the 14 opponents each team faces over the 17-game regular season schedule are set using a pre-determined formula: The league runs an 18-week, 272-game regular season. Since 2021, the season has begun the week after Labor Day (the first Monday in September) and concluded the week after New Year. The opening game of the season is normally a home game on a Thursday for the league's defending champion.


title: National Football League

text: Most NFL games are played on Sundays, with a Monday night game typically held at least once a week and Thursday night games occurring on most weeks as well. NFL games are not normally played on Fridays or Saturdays until late in the regular season, as federal law prohibits professional football leagues from competing with college or high school football. Because high school and college teams typically play games on Friday and Saturday, respectively, the NFL cannot hold games on those days until the Friday before the third Saturday in December. While Saturday games late in the season are common, the league rarely holds Friday games, the most recent one being on Christmas Day in 2020. NFL games are rarely scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday, and those days have only been used three times since 1948: in 2010, when a Sunday game was rescheduled to Tuesday due to a blizzard; in 2012, when the Kickoff game was moved from Thursday to Wednesday to avoid conflict with the Democratic National Convention; and in 2020, when a game was postponed from Sunday to Tuesday due to players testing positive for COVID-19.


title: National Football League

text: NFL regular season matchups are determined according to a scheduling formula. Within a division, all four teams play 14 out of their 17 games against common opponents or each other– two games (home and away) are played against the other three teams in the division, while one game is held against all the members of a division from the NFC and a division from the AFC as determined by a rotating cycle (three years for the conference the team is in, and four years in the conference they are not in). Two of the other games are intraconference games, determined by the standings of the previous year – for example, if a team finishes first in its division, it will play two other first-place teams in its conference, while a team that finishes last would play two other last-place teams in the conference. The final game is an inter-conference based on a rotating cycle and determined by previous season's standings. In total, each team plays 17 games and has one bye week, where it does not play a game.


title: National Football League

text: Although a team's home and away opponents are known by the end of the previous year's regular season, the exact dates and times for NFL games are not determined until much later because the league has to account for, among other things, the Major League Baseball postseason and local events that could pose a scheduling conflict with NFL games. During the 2010 season, over 500,000 potential schedules were created by computers, 5,000 of which were considered "playable schedules" and were reviewed by the NFL's scheduling team. After arriving at what they felt was the best schedule out of the group, nearly 50 more potential schedules were developed to try to ensure that the chosen schedule would be the best possible one.


title: National Football League

text: Following the conclusion of the regular season, the NFL Playoffs, a 14-team single-elimination tournament, is then held. Seven teams are selected from each conference: the winners of each of the four divisions as well as three wild card teams (the three remaining teams with the best overall record, with tiebreakers in the event of two or more teams having the same record). These teams are seeded according to overall record and tiebreakers, with the division champions always ranking higher than the wild card teams. The top team (seeded one) from each conference are awarded a bye week, while the remaining six teams (seeded 2–7) from each conference compete in the first round of the playoffs, the Wild Card round, with the 2-seed competing against the 7-seed, the 3-seed competing against the 6-seed and the 4-seed competing against the 5-seed. The winners of the Wild Card round advance to the Divisional Round, which matches the lower seeded team against the 1-seed and the two remaining teams against each other. The winners of those games then compete in the Conference Championships, with the higher remaining seed hosting the lower remaining seed. The AFC and NFC champions then compete in the Super Bowl to determine the league champion.


title: National Football League

text: The only other postseason event hosted by the NFL is the Pro Bowl, the league's all-star game. Since 2009, the Pro Bowl has been held the week before the Super Bowl; in previous years, the game was held the week following the Super Bowl, but in an effort to boost ratings, the game was moved to the week before. Because of this, players from the teams participating in the Super Bowl are exempt from participating in the game. The Pro Bowl is not considered as competitive as a regular-season game because the biggest concern of teams is to avoid injuries to the players.


title: National Football League

text: The National Football League has used three different trophies to honor its champion over its existence. The first trophy, the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup, was donated to the NFL (then APFA) in 1920 by the Brunswick-Balke Collender Corporation. The trophy, the appearance of which is only known by its description as a "silver loving cup", was intended to be a traveling trophy and not to become permanent until a team had won at least three titles. The league awarded it to the Akron Pros, champions of the inaugural 1920 season; however, the trophy was discontinued and its current whereabouts are unknown.


title: National Football League

text: A second trophy, the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy, was issued by the NFL from 1934 to 1967. The trophy's namesake, Ed Thorp, was a referee in the league and a friend to many early league owners; upon his death in 1934, the league created the trophy to honor him. In addition to the main trophy, which would be in the possession of the current league champion, the league issued a smaller replica trophy to each champion, who would maintain permanent control over it. The current location of the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy, long thought to be lost, is believed to be possessed by the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame.


title: National Football League

text: The current trophy of the NFL is the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Super Bowl trophy was officially renamed in 1970 after Vince Lombardi, who as head coach led the Green Bay Packers to victories in the first two Super Bowls. Unlike the previous trophies, a new Vince Lombardi Trophy is issued to each year's champion, who maintains permanent control of it. Lombardi Trophies are made by Tiffany & Co. out of sterling silver and are worth anywhere from US$25,000 to US$300,000. Additionally, each player on the winning team as well as coaches and personnel are awarded Super Bowl rings to commemorate their victory. The winning team chooses the company that makes the rings; each ring design varies, with the NFL mandating certain ring specifications (which have a degree of room for deviation), in addition to requiring the Super Bowl logo be on at least one side of the ring. The losing team are also awarded rings, which must be no more than half as valuable as the winners' rings, but those are almost never worn.


title: National Football League

text: The conference champions receive trophies for their achievement. The champions of the NFC receive the George Halas Trophy, named after Chicago Bears founder George Halas, who is also considered one of the co-founders of the NFL. The AFC champions receive the Lamar Hunt Trophy, named after Lamar Hunt, the founder of the Kansas City Chiefs and the principal founder of the American Football League. Players on the winning team also receive a conference championship ring.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL recognizes a number of awards for its players and coaches at its annual NFL Honors presentation. The most prestigious award is the AP Most Valuable Player (MVP) award. Other major awards include the AP Offensive Player of the Year, AP Defensive Player of the Year, AP Comeback Player of the Year, and the AP Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year awards. Another prestigious award is the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes a player's off-field work in addition to his on-field performance. The NFL Coach of the Year award is the highest coaching award. The NFL also gives out weekly awards such as the FedEx Air & Ground NFL Players of the Week and the Pepsi MAX NFL Rookie of the Week awards.


title: National Football League

text: In the United States, the National Football League has television contracts with five networks: ABC, CBS, ESPN, Fox, and NBC. Collectively, these contracts cover every regular season and postseason game. In general, CBS televises afternoon games in which the away team is an AFC team, and Fox carries afternoon games in which the away team belongs to the NFC. These afternoon games are not carried on all affiliates, as multiple games are being played at once; each network affiliate is assigned one game per time slot, according to a complicated set of rules. Since 2011, the league has reserved the right to give Sunday games that, under the contract, would normally air on one network to the other network (known as "flexible scheduling"). The only way to legally watch a regionally televised game not being carried on the local network affiliates is to purchase NFL Sunday Ticket, the league's out-of-market sports package, which is only available to subscribers to the DirecTV satellite service. The league also provides RedZone, an omnibus telecast that cuts to the most relevant plays in each game, live as they happen.


title: National Football League

text: In addition to the regional games, the league also has packages of telecasts, mostly in prime time, that are carried nationwide. NBC broadcasts the primetime "Sunday Night Football" package', which includes the Thursday NFL Kickoff game that starts the regular season and a primetime Thanksgiving Day game. ESPN carries all Monday Night Football games. The NFL's own network, NFL Network, broadcasts a series titled "Thursday Night Football", which was originally exclusive to the network, but which in recent years has had several games simulcast on CBS (since 2014) and NBC (since 2016) (except the Thanksgiving and kickoff games, which remain exclusive to NBC). For the 2017 season, the NFL Network will broadcast 18 regular season games under its "Thursday Night Football" brand, 16 Thursday evening contests (10 of which are simulcast on either NBC or CBS) as well as one of the NFL International Series games on a Sunday morning and one of the 2017 Christmas afternoon games. In addition, 10 of the Thursday night games will be streamed live on Amazon Prime. In 2017, the NFL games occupied the top three rates for a 30-second advertisement: $699,602 for Sunday Night Football, $550,709 for Thursday Night Football (NBC), and $549,791 for Thursday Night Football (CBS).


title: National Football League

text: The Super Bowl television rights are rotated on a three-year basis between CBS, Fox, and NBC. In 2011, all four stations signed new nine-year contracts with the NFL, each running until 2022; CBS, Fox, and NBC are estimated by "Forbes" to pay a combined total of US$3 billion a year, while ESPN will pay US$1.9 billion a year. The league also has deals with Spanish-language broadcasters NBC Universo, Fox Deportes, and ESPN Deportes, which air Spanish language dubs of their respective English-language sister networks' games. The league's contracts do not cover preseason games, which individual teams are free to sell to local stations directly; a minority of preseason games are distributed among the league's national television partners.


title: National Football League

text: Through the 2014 season, the NFL had a blackout policy in which games were 'blacked out' on local television in the home team's area if the home stadium was not sold out. Clubs could elect to set this requirement at only 85%, but they would have to give more ticket revenue to the visiting team; teams could also request a specific exemption from the NFL for the game. The vast majority of NFL games were not blacked out; only 6% of games were blacked out during the 2011 season, and only two games were blacked out in and none in . The NFL announced in March 2015 that it would suspend its blackout policy for at least the 2015 season. According to Nielsen, the NFL regular season since 2012 was watched by at least 200 million individuals, accounting for 80% of all television households in the United States and 69% of all potential viewers in the United States. NFL regular season games accounted for 31 out of the top 32 most-watched programs in the fall season and an NFL game ranked as the most-watched television show in all 17 weeks of the regular season. At the local level, NFL games were the highest-ranked shows in NFL markets 92% of the time. Super Bowls account for the 22 most-watched programs (based on total audience) in US history, including a record 167 million people that watched Super Bowl XLVIII, the conclusion to the 2013 season.


title: National Football League

text: In addition to radio networks run by each NFL team, select NFL games are broadcast nationally by Westwood One (known as Dial Global for the 2012 season). These games are broadcast on over 500 networks, giving all NFL markets access to each primetime game. The NFL's deal with Westwood One was extended in 2012 and continued through 2017. Other NFL games are nationally distributed by Compass Media Networks and Sports USA Radio Network under contracts with individual teams.


title: National Football League

text: Some broadcasting innovations have either been introduced or popularized during NFL telecasts. Among them, the Skycam camera system was used for the first time in a live telecast, at a 1984 preseason NFL game in San Diego between the Chargers and 49ers, and televised by CBS. Commentator John Madden famously used a telestrator during games between the early 1980s to the mid-2000s, boosting the device's popularity.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL, as a one-time experiment, distributed the October 25, 2015, International Series game from Wembley Stadium in London between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars. The game was live streamed on the Internet exclusively via Yahoo!, except for over-the-air broadcasts on the local CBS-TV affiliates in the Buffalo and Jacksonville markets.


title: National Football League

text: In 2015, the NFL began sponsoring a series of public service announcements to bring attention to domestic abuse and sexual assault in response to what was seen as poor handling of incidents of violence by players.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL finished the new contract negotiation for the media rights deal worth over $110 billion on March 18, 2021. In this contract, ABC would be eligible to broadcast the Super Bowl on U.S. television for the first time since it broadcast Super Bowl XL after the end of the 2005 NFL season. Also in current agreement, Amazon would be the new home for "Thursday Night Football" starting in 2023.


title: National Football League

text: On August 25, 2021, the NFL sent a memo to all 32 teams that only fully vaccinated personnel, with a maximum of 50 people, will have access to locker rooms while players are present on game days. The memo also stated that non-club-affiliated media are not permitted in the locker room.


title: National Football League

text: On February 9, 2022, as part of efforts to increase the sport's international reach, the NFL announced that Munich will host its first regular-season game in Germany in 2022.


title: National Football League

text: Each April (excluding 2014 when it took place in May), the NFL holds a draft of college players. The draft consists of seven rounds, with each of the 32 clubs getting one pick in each round. The draft order for non-playoff teams is determined by regular-season record; among playoff teams, teams are first ranked by the furthest round of the playoffs they reached, and then are ranked by regular-season record. For example, any team that reached the divisional round will be given a higher pick than any team that reached the conference championships, but will be given a lower pick than any team that did not make the divisional round. The Super Bowl champion always drafts last, and the losing team from the Super Bowl always drafts next-to-last. All potential draftees must be at least three years removed from high school in order to be eligible for the draft. Underclassmen that have met that criterion to be eligible for the draft must write an application to the NFL by January 15 renouncing their remaining college eligibility. Clubs can trade away picks for future draft picks, but cannot trade the rights to players they have selected in previous drafts.


title: National Football League

text: Aside from the seven picks each club gets, compensatory draft picks are given to teams that have lost more compensatory free agents than they have gained. These are spread out from rounds 3 to 7, and a total of 32 are given. Clubs are required to make their selection within a certain period of time, the exact time depending on which round the pick is made in. If they fail to do so on time, the clubs behind them can begin to select their players in order, but they do not lose the pick outright. This happened in the 2003 draft, when the Minnesota Vikings failed to make their selection on time. The Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers were able to make their picks before the Vikings were able to use theirs. Selected players are only allowed to negotiate contracts with the team that picked them, but if they choose not to sign they become eligible for the next year's draft. Under the current collective bargaining contract, all contracts to drafted players must be four-year deals with a club option for a fifth. Contracts themselves are limited to a certain amount of money, depending on the exact draft pick the player was selected with. Players who were draft eligible but not picked in the draft are free to sign with any club.


title: National Football League

text: The NFL operates several other drafts in addition to the NFL draft. The league holds a supplemental draft annually. Clubs submit emails to the league stating the player they wish to select and the round they will do so, and the team with the highest bid wins the rights to that player. The exact order is determined by a lottery held before the draft, and a successful bid for a player will result in the team forfeiting the rights to its pick in the equivalent round of the next NFL draft. Players are only eligible for the supplemental draft after being granted a petition for special eligibility. The league holds expansion drafts, the most recent happening in 2002 when the Houston Texans began play as an expansion team. Other drafts held by the league include an allocation draft in 1950 to allocate players from several teams that played in the dissolved All-America Football Conference and a supplemental draft in 1984 to give NFL teams the rights to players who had been eligible for the main draft but had not been drafted because they had signed contracts with the United States Football League or Canadian Football League.


title: National Football League

text: Like the other major sports leagues in the United States, the NFL maintains protocol for a disaster draft. In the event of a 'near disaster' (less than 15 players killed or disabled) that caused the club to lose a quarterback, they could draft one from a team with at least three quarterbacks. In the event of a 'disaster' (15 or more players killed or disabled) that results in a club's season being canceled, a restocking draft would be held. Neither of these protocols has ever had to be implemented.


title: National Football League

text: Free agents in the National Football League are divided into restricted free agents, who have three accrued seasons and whose current contract has expired, and unrestricted free agents, who have four or more accrued seasons and whose contract has expired. An accrued season is defined as "six or more regular-season games on a club's active/inactive, reserved/injured or reserve/physically unable to perform lists". Restricted free agents are allowed to negotiate with other clubs besides their former club, but the former club has the right to match any offer. If they choose not to, they are compensated with draft picks. Unrestricted free agents are free to sign with any club, and no compensation is owed if they sign with a different club.


title: National Football League

text: Clubs are given one franchise tag to offer to any unrestricted free agent. The franchise tag is a one-year deal that pays the player 120% of his previous contract or no less than the average of the five highest-paid players at his position, whichever is greater. There are two types of franchise tags: exclusive tags, which do not allow the player to negotiate with other clubs, and non-exclusive tags, which allow the player to negotiate with other clubs but gives his former club the right to match any offer and two first-round draft picks if they decline to match it.


title: National Football League

text: Clubs also have the option to use a transition tag, which is similar to the non-exclusive franchise tag but offers no compensation if the former club refuses to match the offer. Due to that stipulation, the transition tag is rarely used, even with the removal of the "poison pill" strategy (offering a contract with stipulations that the former club would be unable to match) that essentially ended the usage of the tag league-wide. Each club is subject to a salary cap, which is set at US$188.2 million for the 2019 season, US$11 million more than that of 2018.


title: National Football League

text: Members of clubs' practice squads, despite being paid by and working for their respective clubs, are also simultaneously a kind of free agent and are able to sign to any other club's active roster (provided their new club is not their previous club's next opponent within a set number of days) without compensation to their previous club; practice squad players cannot be signed to other clubs' practice squads, however, unless released by their original club first.


title: Ivy League

text: The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term "Ivy League" is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools as a group of elite colleges with connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. Its members are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.


title: Ivy League

text: While the term was in use as early as 1933, it became official only after the formation of the athletic conference in 1954. All of the "Ivies" except Cornell were founded during the colonial period; they thus account for seven of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The other two colonial colleges, Rutgers University and the College of William & Mary, became public institutions.


title: Ivy League

text: Ivy League schools are viewed as some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 18 of the 2023 "U.S. News & World Report" National Universities ranking, including three Ivies in the top five (Yale, Harvard, and Princeton). "U.S. News" has named a member of the Ivy League as the best national university every year since 2001: , Princeton eleven times, Harvard twice, and the two schools tied for first five times. In the 2021 "U.S. News & World Report" Best Global University Ranking, two Ivies rank in the top 10 internationally (Harvard first and Columbia sixth). All eight Ivy League schools are members of the Association of American Universities, the most prestigious alliance of American research universities.


title: Ivy League

text: Undergraduate enrollments range from about 4,500 to about 15,000, larger than most liberal arts colleges and smaller than most state universities. Total enrollment, which includes graduate students, ranges from approximately 6,600 at Dartmouth to over 20,000 at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn. Ivy League financial endowments range from Brown's $6.9 billion to Harvard's $53.2 billion, the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world.


title: Ivy League

text: The Ivy League is similar to other groups of universities in other countries such as, the Grande Ecoles in France, Oxbridge in the United Kingdom, the C9 League in China, the Imperial Universities in Japan, and the Group of Eight in Australia.


title: Ivy League

text: Ivy League universities have some of the largest university financial endowments in the world, allowing the universities to provide abundant resources for their academic programs, financial aid, and research endeavors. As of 2021, Harvard University had an endowment of $53.2 billion, the largest of any educational institution. Each university attracts millions of dollars in annual research funding from both the federal government and private sources.


title: Ivy League

text: "Planting the ivy" was a customary class day ceremony at many colleges in the 1800s. In 1893, an alumnus told "The Harvard Crimson", "In 1850, class day was placed upon the University Calendar. ... the custom of planting the ivy, while the ivy oration was delivered, arose about this time." At Penn, graduating seniors started the custom of planting ivy at a university building each spring in 1873 and that practice was formally designated as "Ivy Day" in 1874. Ivy planting ceremonies are recorded at Yale, Simmons College, and Bryn Mawr College among other schools. Princeton's "Ivy Club" was founded in 1879.


title: Ivy League

text: The first usage of "Ivy" in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895–1965).


title: Ivy League

text: The first known instance of the term "Ivy League" appeared in "The Christian Science Monitor" on February 7, 1935. Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era, together with the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy, and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. At this time, however, none of these institutions made efforts to form an athletic league.


title: Ivy League

text: A common folk etymology attributes the name to the Roman numeral for four (IV), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" helped to perpetuate this belief. The supposed "IV League" was formed over a century ago and consisted of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a fourth school that varies depending on who is telling the story. However, it is clear that Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Yale met on November 23, 1876, at the so-called Massasoit Convention to decide on uniform rules for the emerging game of American football, which rapidly spread.


title: Ivy League

text: Seven out of the eight Ivy League schools are Colonial Colleges: institutions of higher education founded prior to the American Revolution. Cornell, the exception to this commonality, was founded immediately after the American Civil War. These seven colleges served as the primary institutions of higher learning in British America's Northern and Middle Colonies. During the colonial era, the school's faculties and founding boards were largely drawn from other Ivy League institutions. Also represented were British graduates from the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of St. Andrews, the University of Edinburgh.


title: Ivy League

text: The influence of these institutions on the founding of other colleges and universities is notable. This included the Southern public college movement which blossomed in the decades surrounding the turn of the 19th century when Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia established what became the flagship universities of their respective states. In 1801, a majority of the first board of trustees for what became the University of South Carolina were Princeton alumni. They appointed Jonathan Maxcy, a Brown graduate, as the university's first president. Thomas Cooper, an Oxford alumnus and University of Pennsylvania faculty member, became the second president of the South Carolina college. The founders of the University of California came from Yale, hence Berkeley's colors are Yale Blue and California Gold. Cornell served as a model for Stanford University and, in 1891, provided Stanford with its first president.


title: Ivy League

text: A plurality of the Ivy League schools have identifiable Protestant roots. Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth all held early associations with the Congregationalists. Princeton was financed by New Light Presbyterians, though originally led by a Congregationalist. Brown was founded by Baptists, though the university's charter stipulated that students should enjoy "full liberty of conscience." Columbia was founded by Anglicans, who composed 10 of the college's first 15 presidents. Penn and Cornell were officially nonsectarian, though Protestants were well represented in their respective founding. In the early nineteenth century, the specific purpose of training Calvinist ministers was handed off to theological seminaries, but a denominational tone and religious traditions including compulsory chapel often lasted well into the twentieth century.


title: Ivy League

text: "Ivy League" is sometimes used as a way of referring to an elite class, even though institutions such as Cornell University were among the first in the United States to reject racial and gender discrimination in their admissions policies. This dates back to at least 1935. Novels and memoirs attest this sense, as a social elite; to some degree independent of the actual schools.


title: Ivy League

text: Ivy League institutions have a long and complicated history of racial segregation, and, eventually, integration. All of the universities in the Ivy League, excluding Cornell University, were chartered during the American era of slavery. In 2003, Brown University was the first of all the Ivies to take accountability for their historic ties to slavery and the .


title: Ivy League

text: Following Brown, other universities in the Ivy League created committees to examine their own ties to slavery. Their reports have since found various economic and social ties to slavery. Yale University for example, used profits from slave traders and owners to fund its first scholarships, libraries, and faculty members. To date, some of Yale’s residential colleges are also named after slave traders and supporters.


title: Ivy League

text: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania’s investigations all found that, in the century following their charters, enslaved Black people lived on campus to care for students, professors, and/or the university’s presidents. Notably, Princeton’s first nine presidents were slave owners, and in 1766, a slave auction reportedly took place on Princeton’s campus.


title: Ivy League

text: While the Ivy League has a history of slavery, a small number of Black people did attend Ivy League institutions as students during their early years, which paved the way for more students of color to attend in the future.


title: Ivy League

text: Ivy League universities admitted few students of color in their early years. Each university in the League had different policies regarding the admission of Black students- Dartmouth for example had their first Black graduate in 1828, while Princeton would not admit their first Black student until well into the 1900s.


title: Ivy League

text: Early Black admits to Ivy League universities were controversial, and faced backlash from students and administrators alike. Dartmouth's first Black graduate, Edward Mitchell, was initially denied admission out of fear of "offend[ing] students." Dartmouth students protested this decision, leading to Mitchell's admission in 1824. Harvard admitted its first Black student, Beverly Garnett Williams, in 1847. News of this incited protests by Harvard students and faculty. Unfortunately, Williams died before the academic year had begun and was never able to attend the prestigious university. It would not be not until 1870 when Richard Theodore Greener became the first African American to receive a degree from Harvard.


title: Ivy League

text: Although there were no official policies that could prohibit the Ivy League from admitting students of color, most Ivies would accept greater numbers of Black students in the later decades of the 19th century. Due to the lack of official policy, it was left to university administrations to determine their own rates of integration. Princeton University, often referred to as the “Southernmost Ivy,” was the last to integrate from the eight, and was responsible for revoking a Black student's admittance when his race was revealed in the 1930’s.


title: Ivy League

text: At the time of its charter, Cornell seemed to be the most progressive of the Ivy League institutions, with an inclusive admissions policy accepting students “regardless of race or gender.” Cornell University also had the highest Black student population compared to other Ivy League universities at that time. Despite this, however, Black students still faced legal and social segregation in the town of Ithaca, New York. In 1905, Black students reported being denied housing while attending Cornell.


title: Ivy League

text: Similarly, between the years 1890 and 1940, an average of three Black men enrolled at Harvard per year. In 1923, Harvard’s Board of Overseers overruled University President, Abbot Lawrence’s ban on Black students living in dorms, announcing that all freshmen would be permitted to live in the dorms, regardless of race. This, however, did not end segregation at Harvard. The Board of Overseers upheld that although Black students were able to live in the dorms, “men of the white and colored races shall not be compelled to live and eat together."


title: Ivy League

text: Early on, the few Black students admitted to Ivy League universities were mostly from wealthy Caribbean families. Barriers preventing African American students from attending Ivy League universities included their location in the Northeast, the cost of tuition, and the lack of quality secondary education opportunities in a racially segregated country. As a result, there was a fairly small number of Black students attending and graduating from the eight Ivy League institutions. In fact, more Black students were attending the elite Ivy League graduate and professional schools compared to their undergraduate programs.


title: Ivy League

text: By the middle of the 20th century, only 54 Black men and women had graduated with a Bachelor degree from Ivy League universities. All eight Ivy League institutions remained exclusive at this point.


title: Ivy League

text: The middle of the 1900s marked a turning point for racial integration on Ivy League campuses, with many schools responding to World War II era programs and pushes from the ongoing Civil Rights Movement.


title: Ivy League

text: After the introduction of the V-12 Navy College Training Program in 1942, all eight Ivy institutions saw increased numbers of Black student enrollment. For Princeton University, which had one of the more conservative policies regarding Black student admission, this program marked the first time Black students were able to receive bachelor’s degrees from Princeton. While a small number of Black students were recorded taking courses at Princeton as early as 1774, none received degrees until the introduction of the V-12 Program.


title: Ivy League

text: With no universal goal for integration by the institutions as a collective, each school experienced increased racial diversity at different rates, with Dartmouth having 120 Black undergraduates in the class of 1945 and Princeton having a cumulative total of less than 100 Black undergraduates by 1967.


title: Ivy League

text: Despite the 1954 Supreme Court decision in "Brown v. Board of Education", private universities like those making up the Ivy League were not legally required to abide by the ruling. It wasn't until the 1976 decision in "Runyon v. McCrary" that private institutions became legally prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race. But, by the early 1960s, admissions offices across the Ivy League began to make concentrated efforts to increase the number of Black applicants to their universities, rolling out initiatives that actively sought Black talent from high schools. Efforts for racial integration at Ivy League institutions relied on the support of student organizations and faculty-led initiatives to seek prospective Black students, such as the work of the Citizenship Council at Columbia University, which sought to show Black students that they would be welcome on campus. These efforts also prompted internal University action, such as the creation of Cornell's Committee on Special Educational Projects (COSEP), an organization aimed to recruit and support Black students. By 1965, however, Black students would still only make up 2% of admitted students across all the Ivies.


title: Ivy League

text: Prior to the 1960s, the majority of Ivy League universities explicitly prohibited the admission of women, instead forming partnerships with nearby women's colleges. As such, Black women were not able to attend Ivy League universities until they changed their policies to accept women. Lillian Lincoln Lambert was the first Black woman to receive a degree from an Ivy League university after graduating with a master's degree from Harvard Business School in 1969. Lincoln Lambert was also a founding member of Harvard's African American Student Union, which according to her, actively recruited Black students and created "a space where Black students could find not only support but resources for everything from barber shops that cut Black hair to churches."


title: Ivy League

text: As Black student populations began to increase at Ivy League schools, on campus activism saw an increase in the wake of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement. Black students at each Ivy League institution took their own avenues to making change. In 1969, students in Cornell's Afro-American Society led an armed occupation of Willard Straight Hall to protest the university’s racist policies and “its slow progress in establishing a Black studies program.” In the same year, students associated with Yale’s New Left organization, Students for a Democratic Society worked closely with the New Haven Black Panthers to lead sit-ins and protests that advocated for the admission of more students of color and the establishment of an African American studies department.


title: Ivy League

text: At Brown University, identity based student organizations such as the United African People and the African American Society called for an increase to the number of Black faculty and increased attention to the needs of Black students. Likewise, demonstrations at Harvard and Columbia took the form of occupations and non-violent sit-ins that were often subject to forceful removal by local police, whom administrators would call. Activism at Dartmouth took a different shape during this time period, as students would use demonstrations that were happening at other Ivies, and colleges around the country, to effectively position their demands for progress within the prospect of taking actions similar to those happening elsewhere.


title: Ivy League

text: Similar to the late 20th century, the number of Black students on Ivy League campuses also increased in the 21st century. From 2006 to 2018, there was an approximated 50% increase in the admission of Black students into the entering class, growing from 1,110 to 1,663. As of 2018, the universities comprising the Ivy League unanimously support Harvard University’s “race-conscious admissions” model. This form of affirmative action was described by Harvard University representatives as one of the factors increasing campus diversity.


title: Ivy League

text: In recent years, there have been counters to this admissions model, as others have interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment, the basis on which Harvard’s “race-conscious admissions” model is set, as forbidding the consideration of race in higher education admissions. Institutions in favor of Harvard's model argue that in addition to academic excellence they also aim to form a diverse student body ,while individuals that argue against the model statiethat it is discriminatory against certain applicants.


title: Ivy League

text: The addition of more Black students to Ivy League universities in the early 2000s was also accompanied by an increase in the number of Black faculty at these institutions. However, the increase in Black faculty has not been as strong as the increase in Black students. In 2005, 588– or about 3.9%– of the Ivy’s 14,831 full time faculty members were Black. This proportion decreased to 3.4% in 2015. Notably, in 2001, Ruth J. Simmons became the president of Brown University, making her the first and only African American to lead an Ivy League institution.


title: Ivy League

text: The 21st century saw the continuation of demonstrations by Ivy League students revolving around race. Many of these demonstrations have sought to continue the work of their 20th century predecessors by advocating for increased admission and support of Black students. In light of the "Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College" Supreme Court case, students from Yale and Harvard joined other universities in protesting in defense of race-conscious admissions policies.


title: Ivy League

text: Likewise, Black students from Ivy League institutions continue to protest for the betterment of Black students' lives on campus and beyond. Following Michael Brown's death in 2014, students across the Ivies formed the Black Ivy Coalition, which included members from all eight institutions and aimed to combat anti-Black racism. Individual Ivy League universities also formed their own advocacy organizations and movements as a direct response to instances of anti-Black violence. After the murder of Michael Brown, Princeton University students formed the Black Justice League, which in 2015, occupied Nassau Hall and presented a list of demands to university administrators. Similarly, in 2017, Cornell students made demands to their administration protesting the assault of a Black student. Led by Black Students United, the demands included banning the Psi Upsilon fraternity for hate crimes, implementing implicit bias training, and introducing policies to increase the number of Black students at the university.


title: Ivy League

text: Student demonstrations have also focused on sparking change beyond Ivy League campuses. Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Harvard’s Black Law Students Association, beyond calling for more Black faculty, critical race theory curriculum, and protection for student protestors, also called on the university to divest from prisons and denounce state-sanctioned violence.


title: Ivy League

text: In response to racially charged incidents across the country and prompting from student activists, Ivy League universities have removed and renamed campus landmarks. In response to the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests, Cornell renamed their botanical gardens, previously called the "Cornell Plantations," to the "Cornell Botanical Gardens." Similarly, in response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Princeton University removed Woodrow Wilson’s name from a residential college and the School of Public and International Affairs because of his “racist thinking and policies.”


title: Ivy League

text: The first formal athletic league involving eventual Ivy League schools (or any US colleges, for that matter) was created in 1870 with the formation of the Rowing Association of American Colleges. The RAAC hosted a de facto national championship in rowing during the period 1870–1894.


title: Ivy League

text: In 1881, Penn, Harvard College, Haverford College, Princeton College (then known as College of New Jersey), and Columbia College formed The Intercollegiate Cricket Association, which Cornell University later joined. Penn won The Intercollegiate Cricket Association championship (the "de facto" national championship) 23 times (18 solo, 3 shared with Haverford and Harvard, 1 shared with Haverford and Cornell, and 1 shared with just Haverford) during the 44 years that The Intercollegiate Cricket Association existed (1881 through 1924).


title: Ivy League

text: In 1906, the organization that eventually became the National Collegiate Athletic Association was formed, primarily to formalize rules for the emerging sport of football. But of the 39 original member colleges in the NCAA, only two of them (Dartmouth and Penn) later became Ivies.


title: Ivy League

text: In February 1903, intercollegiate wrestling began when Yale accepted a challenge from Columbia, published in the Yale News. The dual meet took place prior to a basketball game hosted by Columbia and resulted in a tie. Two years later, Penn and Princeton also added wrestling teams, leading to the formation of the student-run Intercollegiate Wrestling Association, now the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA), the first and oldest collegiate wrestling league in the US.


title: Ivy League

text: In 1930, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton and Yale formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League; they were later joined by Harvard, Brown, Army and Navy.


title: Ivy League

text: Before the formal establishment of the Ivy League, there was an "unwritten and unspoken agreement among certain Eastern colleges on athletic relations". The earliest reference to the "Ivy colleges" came in 1933, when Stanley Woodward of the New York Herald Tribune used it to refer to the eight current members plus Army. In 1935, the Associated Press reported on an example of collaboration between the schools:


title: Ivy League

text: Despite such collaboration, the universities did not seem to consider the formation of the league as imminent. Romeyn Berry, Cornell's manager of athletics, reported the situation in January 1936 as follows:


title: Ivy League

text: Within a year of this statement and having held month-long discussions about the proposal, on December 3, 1936, the idea of "the formation of an Ivy League" gained enough traction among the undergraduate bodies of the universities that the "Columbia Daily Spectator", "The Cornell Daily Sun", "The Dartmouth", "The Harvard Crimson", "The Daily Pennsylvanian", "The Daily Princetonian" and the "Yale Daily News" would simultaneously run an editorial entitled "Now Is the Time", encouraging the seven universities to form the league in an effort to preserve the ideals of athletics. Part of the editorial read as follows:


title: Ivy League

text: The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. Rowing teams from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, on August 3, 1852. Harvard's team, "The Oneida", won the race and was presented with trophy black walnut oars from then-presidential nominee General Franklin Pierce. The proposal did not succeed—on January 11, 1937, the athletic authorities at the schools rejected the "possibility of a heptagonal league in football such as these institutions maintain in basketball, baseball and track." However, they noted that the league "has such promising possibilities that it may not be dismissed and must be the subject of further consideration."


title: Ivy League

text: The integration of sports followed a similar pattern to the overall integration of the Ivy League's in the 19th and early 20th century. There was no active policy that would discriminate against incorporating Black student athletes into the athletic coalition. Harvard has the earliest record of breaking the color barrier in athletics after recruiting William Henry Lewis to their football team in 1892. Dartmouth followed suit, with Black athletes integrating onto their football teams in 1904. Brown integrated their football team shortly after, in 1916. Cornell would follow suit in 1937. University of Penn had Black students on their track and field team as early as 1908. Columbia's track and field team would be integrated in 1934. Basketball would become integrated at Yale in 1926, at Princeton in 1947.


title: Ivy League

text: In 1945 the presidents of the eight schools signed the first "Ivy Group Agreement", which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams. The principles established reiterated those put forward in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton presidents' Agreement of 1916. The Ivy Group Agreement established the core tenet that an applicant's ability to play on a team would not influence admissions decisions:


title: Ivy League

text: In 1954, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports, effective with the 1955–56 basketball season. This is generally reckoned as the formal formation of the Ivy League. As part of the transition, Brown, the only Ivy that had not joined the EIBL, did so for the 1954–55 season. A year later, the Ivy League absorbed the EIBL. The Ivy League claims the EIBL's history as its own. Through the EIBL, it is the oldest basketball conference in Division I.


title: Ivy League

text: As late as the 1960s many of the Ivy League universities' undergraduate programs remained open only to men, with Cornell the only one to have been coeducational from its founding (1865) and Columbia being the last (1983) to become coeducational. Before they became coeducational, many of the Ivy schools maintained extensive social ties with nearby Seven Sisters women's colleges, including weekend visits, dances and parties inviting Ivy and Seven Sisters students to mingle. This was the case not only at Barnard College and Radcliffe College, which are adjacent to Columbia and Harvard, but at more distant institutions as well. The movie "Animal House" includes a satiric version of the formerly common visits by Dartmouth men to Massachusetts to meet Smith and Mount Holyoke women, a drive of more than two hours. As noted by Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "The 'Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men's colleges."


title: Ivy League

text: In 1982 the Ivy League considered adding two members, with Army, Navy, and Northwestern as the most likely candidates; if it had done so, the league could probably have avoided being moved into the recently created Division I-AA (now Division I FCS) for football. In 1983, following the admission of women to Columbia College, Columbia University and Barnard College entered into an athletic consortium agreement by which students from both schools compete together on Columbia University women's athletic teams, which replaced the women's teams previously sponsored by Barnard.When Army and Navy departed the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League in 1992, nearly all intercollegiate competition involving the eight schools became united under the Ivy League banner. The two major exceptions are wrestling, with the Ivies that sponsor wrestling—all except Dartmouth and Yale—members of the EIWA and hockey, with the Ivies that sponsor hockey—all except Penn and Columbia—members of ECAC Hockey.


title: Ivy League

text: The Ivy League was the first athletic conference to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by shutting down all athletic competition in March 2020, leaving many Spring schedules unfinished. The Fall 2020 schedule was canceled in July, and winter sports were canceled before Thanksgiving. Of the 357 men's basketball teams in Division I, only ten did not play; the Ivy League made up eight of those ten. By giving up its automatic qualifying bid to March Madness, the Ivy League forfeited at least $280,000 in NCAA basketball funds. As a consequence of the pandemic, an unprecedented number of student athletes in the Ivy League either transferred to other schools, or temporarily unenrolled in hopes of maintaining their eligibility to play post-pandemic. Some Ivy alumni expressed displeasure with the League's position. In February 2021 it was reported that Yale declined a multi-million dollar offer from alum Joseph Tsai to create a sequestered "bubble" for the lacrosse team. The league announced in a May 2021 joint statement that "regular athletic competition" would resume "across all sports" in fall 2021.


title: Ivy League

text: Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the Ivy League Conference committed itself to uphold "diversity, equity, and inclusion," to combat racism and homophobia. At Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton there are Black Student Athlete groups and other affinity groups that are dedicated to ensuring their organizations are committed to anti-racism and anti-homophobia.


title: Ivy League

text: The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with all schools reporting acceptance rates at or below approximately 10% at all of the universities. For the class of 2025, six of the eight schools reported acceptance rates below 6%. Admitted students come from around the world, although those from the Northeastern United States make up a significant proportion of students.


title: Ivy League

text: In 2021, all eight Ivy League schools recorded record high numbers of applications and record low acceptance rates. Year over year increases in the number of applicants ranged from a 14.5% increase at Princeton to a 51% increase at Columbia.


title: Ivy League

text: There have been arguments that Ivy League schools discriminate against Asian-American candidates. For example, in August 2020, the US Justice Department argued that Yale University discriminated against Asian-American candidates on the basis of their race, a charge the university denied. Harvard was subject to a similar challenge in 2019 from an Asian American student group, with regard to which a federal judge found Harvard to be in compliance with constitutional requirements. The student group has since appealed that decision, and the appeal is still pending as of August 2020.


title: Ivy League

text: Members of the League have been highly ranked by various university rankings. All of the Ivy League schools are consistently ranked within the top 20 national universities by the "U.S. News & World Report" Best Colleges Ranking. "The Wall Street Journal" rankings place all eight of the universities within the top 15 in the country.


title: Ivy League

text: Further, Ivy League members have produced many Nobel laureates and winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Another measure is endowment size per student.


title: Ivy League

text: Collaboration between the member schools is illustrated by the student-led Ivy Council that meets in the fall and spring of each year, with representatives from every Ivy League school. The governing body of the Ivy League is the Council of Ivy Group presidents, composed of each university president. During meetings, the presidents discuss common procedures and initiatives for their universities.


title: Ivy League

text: The universities collaborate academically through the IvyPlus Exchange Scholar Program, which allows students to cross-register at one of the Ivies or another eligible school such as Berkeley, Chicago, MIT, and Stanford.


title: Ivy League

text: Different fashion trends and styles have emerged from Ivy League campuses over time, and fashion trends such as Ivy League and preppy are styles often associated with the Ivy League and its culture.