Traditionally , football is an autumn sport. A season typically begins in mid-to-late August and runs through December, into January. The NFL playoffs run further through January, and the Super Bowl is often played in the first week of February.
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As such,
the sport is played in a wide range of weather conditions, from the heat and humidity of late summer, to the cold winds and snow in mid-winter. Unlike rainouts in baseball, play is only generally postponed or canceled in very extreme conditions such as lightning and hurricanes.
The NFL draft is usually held in April, in which eligible college football players are selected by NFL teams, the order of selection determined by the teams' final regular season records.
It is a long-standing tradition in the United States (though not universally observed) that high school football games are played on Friday night, college games on Saturday, and professional games on Sunday.
In the 1970s, the NFL began to schedule one game on Monday nights. Beginning in 2006, the NFL began scheduling games on Thursday and Saturday nights after the college football regular season concludes in mid-November, aired on the NFL Network.
Nationally televised Thursday-night college games have become a weekly fixture on ESPN, and most nights of the week feature at least one college game, though most games are still played on the traditional Saturday.
Certain fall and winter holidays—such as the NFL's Thanksgiving Classic and numerous New Year's Day college bowl games—have traditional football games associated with them.
Despite this, there are a few professional leagues that have played in the spring, mainly to avoid competition with the established leagues. Examples include the now defunct XFL, the United States Football League, and the proposed All American Football League. Indoor football is played primarily in spring for this same reason.
At most levels of competition, college football teams hold several weeks of practices in the spring. These practices typically end with an intramural scrimmage open to the public. In certain areas, high school football teams also hold spring practices.
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The National Football League regular season...
begins the weekend after Labor Day. Each team plays 16 games during a 17-week period. Traditionally, the majority of each week's games are played on Sunday afternoon, with weekly games on Sunday night and Monday night, and occasional games on Thursday night or Saturday.
NFL on television
Currently, the majority of NFL regular-season games are played on Sundays at 1 pm or 4:15 pm ET, with 4:15 pm games usually going to games hosted in the Pacific Time Zone or Mountain Time Zone. The current NFL television contract awards the American broadcast of these games to FOX or CBS, with FOX showing games where the visiting team is from the NFC and CBS showing games where the visiting team is from the AFC. The schedule allows for 4 other regular time slots:
1. One Sunday night game, which has been regularly scheduled since 1987 and currently appears on NBC.
2. One Monday Night Football game, which has been regularly scheduled since 1970 and currently appears on ESPN.
3. For the last few weeks of the regular season (after the NCAA football regular season has concluded), multiple Saturday games, which usually appear on the NFL Network following the usual Sunday system.
4. On Thursday nights since 2006, one game has been played and aired on the NFL Network on the weeks including and after Thanksgiving Day. In addition, during the day on Thanksgiving, the NFL has played Thanksgiving Classic games since 1920; by tradition the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions always host these afternoon games.
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