The Road to the Super Bowl

Football is more than a national pastime; it is perhaps one of the most exciting winter sport games in the US, with baseball being the most popular spring and summer sport. To those of you are not familiar with football; Sunshine Slots thought it would be a great idea to provide a quick tutorial about the teams in contention and how they prevailed as the top teams on The Road to the Super Bowl.

Who Are the Teams in Contention?

As you know, this past weekend football teams played in the wild card playoffs to determine who would advance to the division playoffs. We have the results for you. The teams that won their division are:

• American Football Conference: New York Jets, Baltimore Ravens, Indianapolis Colts, and San Diego Chargers.
• National Football Conference: Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings, Arizona Cardinals, and New Orleans Saints.

The division playoff consists of teams in the AFC and NFC Conference playing against each other to vie for the championship round. The division playoffs will commence on January 16 and 17. The teams in play are: Baltimore vs. Indianapolis and Jets vs. San Diego in the AFC division; Arizona vs. New Orleans and Dallas VS Minnesota in the NFC division. Out of the 8 teams playing, only 4 will emerge victorious and play in the championship game on January 24. The winners of the championship game will determine who goes to the Super Bowl.

How Did the Teams on the Road to the Super Bowl?

To understand how teams get to the playoffs, you first have to realize that football is a rough and tumble sport. The National Football League (NFL) season begins the weekend after Labor Day. Each team plays 16 games during a 17-week period, not counting the playoffs. In the NFL, each of the two conferences (the AFC and the NFC) send two wild-card teams along with four division champions to its postseason playoffs, which are games played after the regular season.

The first round of the playoffs is called the "Wild Card Round." In this round, each conference's two best (by regular-season record) division champions are exempted from play and granted automatic berths in the "Divisional Round." The four division champions are seeded from #1 through #4, while the two wild card teams are seeded #5 and #6 with seeding determined by regular-season record. In the "Wild Card Round," the #6 team (a wild card team) plays against the #3 team (a division champion) and the #5 team (a wild card team) plays against the #4 team (a division champion). The division champions have automatic home-field advantage in these games.

In the "Divisional Round," the bottom-seeded remaining team plays the #1 seeded team, while the best seeded remaining team that played in the wildcard round plays the #2 seed. The winning teams of the "Divisional Round: then vie for the "Championship Round" in which two teams will emerge and play in Super Bowl 44.

When and Where is the Super Bowl?

The Super Bowl will be played in Miami, Florida at the Dolphin Stadium. Normally, the Super Bowl is played on the last Sunday in January, however, this year it will be played on the first Sunday in February - February 7. Starting counting down - the Road to the Super Bowl has begun!