Everything about The 1970 Nfl Season totally explained
The
1970 NFL season was the 51st
regular season of the
National Football League, and the first one after the
AFL-NFL Merger.
The merger forced a realignment between the combined league's clubs. Because there were 16 NFL teams and 10
AFL teams, three teams needed to transfer to balance the two new conferences at 13 teams each. The
Baltimore Colts,
Cleveland Browns, and the
Pittsburgh Steelers agreed to join the other
AFL teams to form the
American Football Conference (AFC). The remaining NFL teams formed the
National Football Conference (NFC). The conferences were divided into three divisions: East, Central, and West. The two Eastern divisions had five teams; the other four divisions had four teams each. The realignment discussions were so contentious that at one point team names were pulled out of a hat.
The 26-team league began to use an eight-team
playoff format, four from each conference, that included the three division winners and a
wild card team, the second-place team with the best record. The season concluded with the Colts defeating the
Dallas Cowboys 16-13 in
Super Bowl V, the first Super Bowl played for the NFL Championship. The game was held at the
Orange Bowl in
Miami, and was the first Super Bowl played on
artificial turf.
To televise their games, the combined league retained the services of
CBS and
NBC, who were previously the primary broadcasters of the NFL and the AFL, respectively. It was then decided that CBS would televise all NFC teams (including playoff games) while NBC all AFC teams. For interconference games, CBS would broadcast them if the
visiting team was from the NFC and NBC would carry them when the visitors were from the AFC. The two networks also divided up the Super Bowl on a yearly rotation.
Meanwhile, with the debut of
Monday Night Football on
ABC in
September 21,
1970, the league became the first
professional sports league in the
United States to have a regular series of nationally televised games in
prime time.
The
Chicago Bears's first home game of the season against the
Philadelphia Eagles was played at
Northwestern University's
Dyche Stadium as part of an experiment. Before the season, the league demanded that the Bears find a new home field because the
seating capacity of their then-current home,
Wrigley Field, was less than 50,000. Ultimately, a deal to make Dyche Stadium as the Bears' new home fell through and the team moved to
Soldier Field in
1971.
Major rule changes
- The NFL rules become the standardized rules for the merged league, including the rule that a point after touchdown is worth one point, (that is, no two-point conversion). The AFL had the two-point conversion, which wouldn't be adopted to the NFL until 1994.
- The official game clock is the stadium's scoreboard clock.
- Rules are added to place last names on the back of players' jerseys. The AFL had names on jerseys, the pre-merger NFL teams did not.
Final standings
W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, PCT= Winning Percentage, PF= Points For, PA = Points Against
Tiebreakers
Green Bay finished ahead of Chicago in the NFC Central based on better division record (2-4 to Bears' 1-5).
Playoffs
» Note: Prior to the 1975 season, the home teams in the playoffs were decided based on a yearly rotation.
Further Information
Get more info on '1970 Nfl Season'.
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