German Football League

Regular season The GFL is divided into the north and south conferences, each with eight teams. In each conference, every team plays against every other team of its own conference, both at home and away. Until 2011, each team also played home and away interconference games against the team from the opposing conference that finished the previous season on the same rank. However, this was abandoned with the league expansion to 16 teams. Playoffs After the end of the regular season, four teams from both conferences enter the playoffs, to determine the German championship. The winner of a conference plays against the 4th place team of the other group, second against third of the other conference. Better placed teams enjoy home field advantage in the playoffs (regardless of record) – the seeding ensures that two teams that finished on the same rank in their division can only meet in the (neutral site) final. The final is called the German Bowl. The lowest ranked team of each conference plays a home and away series against the winner of the second division, and may be relegated if they lose. In case one or several teams withdraw from the GFL, relegation is forgone, more teams are promoted or other measures are taken to "fill up" the divisions to nominal strength if possible. League expansion The league had been expanded from 12 to 14 teams for the 2011 season. It further increased the number of teams to 16 in 2012. Promotion and relegation Below the GFL sits the GFL2, formerly the 2nd Bundesliga, which was formed in 1982. ==History==

Early years (1977–1982) The history of American football in Germany, outside the US Army bases in the country, began in 1977, when the Frankfurter Löwen were formed as the first club to play the game in Germany. At first, this team was only able to play US Army teams, lacking German opposition. In March 1979, the AFBD, the American Football Federation of Germany (), was formed, the first of its kind in Europe. This organisation, in 1982, was replaced by the AFVD, the American Football Association of Germany (). was formed, consisting of six clubs, the Frankfurter Löwen, Ansbach Grizzlies, Düsseldorf Panther, Munich Cowboys, Berliner Bären, and Bremerhaven Seahawks. The first-ever league game was held on 4 August 1979, played between the Frankfurter Löwen and the Düsseldorf Panther, and ended in a victory for Frankfurt. The league saw a split in its second and third season, with Düsseldorf and Bremerhaven leaving the competition to take part in a separate, short-lived competition, the Nordwestdeutsche Football Liga – NFL. By 1981, the Bundesliga was expanded to two regional divisions of seven clubs each. Unlike the first season, play-off semi finals were played in 1980 and 1981 to determine the two German Bowl contestants. From 1982, the play-offs were enlarged to include a quarter final round as well. The Unicorns would miss only one out of the remaining German Bowls of the decade, when they were upset in the 2013 quarter finals by the Berlin Adler. For the 2012 season, the Mönchengladbach Mavericks, runners-up in the northern division in 2011, were refused a license, leaving an extra spot in the league which was awarded to the Lübeck Cougars. The Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns repeated their 2011 success and once more defeated the Kiel Baltic Hurricanes in the German Bowl, becoming the first team from the south to win back-to-back championships since the 1982 Ansbach Grizzlies. The 2013 season saw a return to northern dominance with all four southern teams knocked out in the quarter-finals and the German Bowl contested by the revived Braunschweig Lions, now as the New Yorker Lions, and the Dresden Monarchs who made their first appearance in the championship final, with the Lions winning their eighth German Bowl in a close 35–34 game with the only turnover coming with the last play when Dresden was driving down the field for a potentially game winning score. The 2014 season began with the withdrawal of the Hamburg Blue Devils before the start of the season, leaving the northern division with only seven clubs. In the north Braunschweig won another division title with a perfect season while the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns won the southern division for a fourth consecutive time (who then went on to beat Kiel and Dresden in the Playoffs to reach the final). The 2014 German Bowl was contested by the two division champions with Braunschweig taking out their ninth title with Schwäbisch Hall only scoring a Field Goal until the fourth quarter. The Lions won their ninth German Bowl victory with the highest-ever winning margin, defeating the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns 47–9. The 2015 season played out similar to the previous edition with both Schwäbisch Hall and Braunschweig winning their division before advancing to the final where Braunschweig prevailed once more, this time by a more narrow 41–31 margin. 2016 again saw Braunschweig and Hall win their divisions and meet in the German Bowl with Braunschweig achieving a "championship three-peat" beating the Unicorns 31–20 under Head Coach Troy Tomlin, one of the coaches to have won the German Bowl most often with his team. In 2017 Hall and Braunschweig once more won their divisions and reached the German Bowl but this time the team from the South finally overcame their northern rival winning their third championship in a 14–13 nail biter that was decided by a blocked field goal attempt by Braunschweig late in the game. Despite losing the game, Braunschweig great David McCants was honored as the German Bowl MVP that year. While Schwäbisch Hall and Braunschweig again won their divisions in 2018, the playoffs saw Braunschweig fall at home to the Frankfurt Universe in the semifinal by a score of 20–17 marking the first German Bowl contested by teams from the same division since 2013 and the first all southern German Bowl since 1981 (incidentally then also including a team representing Frankfurt, in that case the Frankfurter Löwen). In the end, the regular season division champ beat the runner up, just as had happened in 2013. Thus making German Bowl XL Hall's third triumph. In 2019 the Lions from Braunschweig managed to avenge their semifinal defeat the year prior beating Frankfurt at home on their way from yet another division title to yet another German Bowl triumph against the Unicorns, in the process thwarting Schwäbisch Hall's attempt at their own "championship three-peat" and dealing the first defeat in the tenure of Head Coach Jordan Neumann who had taken over the job ahead of the 2017 season after the retirement of Schwäbisch Hall icon Siggi Gehrke who had coached the team for most of its existence and is mostly credited with the enduring success of the team. The final score in German Bowl XLI was Braunschweig 10, Schwäbisch Hall 7 making Braunschweig champions for the twelfth time in their history – more than any other team. Pandemic and competition by the newly founded ELF (2020–present) The 2020 season was delayed multiple times and ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic despite other European football leagues as well as other sports in Germany playing some form of 2020 season. The delays and ultimate cancellation caused some teams significant financial and organisational hardship as many costs – including salaries, transportation, and room & board expense for import players – were incurred despite no games being played. Furthermore, many players decided to – temporarily or permanently – leave their clubs (sometimes without ever actually playing for them) to play in those European leagues which did hold play. A very limited number of exhibition matches involving German teams were nonetheless held, but as they sometimes involved German teams with a much different roster than they would've had, had a "normal" 2020 season been played, it is impossible to gauge the "actual" competitive strength of any given 2020 GFL team, even if they did play. The 2021 season was heavily influenced both by the lingering effects of COVID-19 – many teams were only allowed full contact team training much later in their preseason than usual – and the founding of the new European League of Football (ELF) which "plundered" the roster of GFL teams in Frankfurt and Stuttgart (sending the erstwhile playoff or even championship contenders to the bottom of their division) and led to the withdrawal of teams in Ingolstadt and Hildesheim after the attempts to move those teams to the new ELF fell through. The Elmshorn Fighting Pirates earned the questionable distinction of retiring from the GFL due to Covid and the competition by the ELF before ever having played a single GFL match. In the end, the GFL once more started "understrength" with a six team division in the North and an eight team division in the South rounded out by the utterly non-competitive Stuttgart Scorpions and Frankfurt Universe. As can perhaps be expected, the season was full of upsets and surprises despite top teams in Dresden, Schwäbisch Hall and Braunschweig largely keeping their roster intact. In their opening game, the Dresden Monarchs surprisingly lost to the Cologne Crocodiles despite the latter having lost a substantial number of players to the crosstown ELF Centurions. This, however, would prove the only loss of Dresden on the way to their first division title and the second German Bowl participation after 2013 as well as their first ever championship. Braunschweig meanwhile struggled and never achieved full team cohesion, in part due to relatively strict anti COVID-19 measures in the state of Lower Saxony preventing them from training together for much of the preseason and forcing them to hold their home opener in front of empty ranks. Ultimately placing fourth in the North, the Lions were eliminated in the quarter-final on the road in Schwäbisch Hall in a game in which the Unicorns defense won the ball off of Braunschweig turnovers five times. The great surprises of the season, Cologne Crocodiles and Saarland Hurricanes (the latter having been promoted ahead of the season) met in the quarter-finals in Saarland with Saarland advancing to the semifinals losing 37–0 in Dresden in Dresden's last game at Heinz Steyer Stadion until at least 2023. The German Bowl thus sees the division champions meeting once more, but for the first time since 2012 that champion in the North is not Braunschweig. German Bowl XLII was played in Frankfurt am Main at the Waldstadion and saw the first ever title of a team from the New states of Germany in GFL history as the Dresden Monarchs defeated the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns 28–19. In German Bowl XLIII the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns defeated the Potsdam Royals 44 to 27 to win their fifth championship. ==North–south disparity==

Success in American football in Germany and at the German Bowl differs hugely between the clubs from the northern and the southern division, with the south, as of 2021, only winning ten German Bowls (four of them won by the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns) and the north the remaining 32 (12 of them won by the Braunschweig Lions). Similarly, southern clubs have only made 26 appearances in the Bowl, while northern clubs have appeared 58 times. After the first three German Bowls, the final was never again contested by two southern clubs until German Bowl XL in 2018. Between the end of the golden era of the Ansbach Grizzlies in 1986 and the rise of the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns (who first reached the German Bowl in 2011), southern clubs only made five appearances in the championship game of which only one was successful (the Munich Cowboys in 1993). From 1993 to 2006 no southern team reached the German Bowl, with twelve consecutive finals played without southern participation. On five occasions no southern team progressed beyond the quarter-finals. In 1989, 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2013 all four semi-finalists came from the northern division. 2013 was perhaps the most drastic of these instances as the defending champion Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns were upset by the fourth seed in the North Berlin Adler on Hall's own turf in the quarter-final. The disparity is also documented by the inter conference games held from 1994 to 2011 between the northern and southern divisions. Of the 190 games played in this era, the north won 140, almost 75 percent, the south only 48 while two were drawn: • Awarded games not counted. ==Restrictions on foreign players==

in West Germany, 1987 As a sign of the strong influence of Americans in the game in Germany, upon formation of the Bundesliga in 1979, there was no restriction on how many foreigners a team could field. The only stipulation was, that every team had to field a minimum of three German nationals at any time. Soon, this changed, and the allowed number of foreigners on the field for a team at any given time, in this case specifically, Americans, was reduced to five. This was an update in part mandated by the 1995 Bosman ruling (which established a precedent for association football but applies to all professional sports) and the rules on Freedom of movement for workers in the European Union. For the 2011 season, a club can sign up up to ten non-EU players, have six of those on the line-up for any given game but only two of those on the field at any given time. Players are marked with an "A" on their jersey and helmet to allow referees to determine at a glance whether the limit is obeyed on the field. These restrictions are specifically in place for US, Canadian, Mexican and Japanese citizens and, on request, exemptions can be made for players from countries without established structures in the sport. This rule is designed to prevent an advantage to the wealthier clubs, who could otherwise recruit a large number of players from the traditional American football countries. However, the aforementioned inevitable exception for EU citizens provides a strong incentive to sign players with dual nationality who have played college football but do not count as "Americans". In some cases the clubs have even encouraged or helped their players to get the citizenship of an EU country when they are eligible through ius sanguinis or residence. In other European leagues similar limits are implemented by other means. For example, the Austrian Football League limits the number of players who can receive financial compensation for playing while the Italian Football League limits the number of players who have played college football (regardless of citizenship). As such, the same player playing in two different leagues in the same year may be considered an "import" in one league and equivalent to a national player in another. Reilly Hennessey, who has dual Italian and US citizenship, had to wear an "A" on his jersey in the 2021 season of the Italian Football League due to having played college football at Central Washington University but was not subject to this limitation in German Bowl XLII when he played for the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns later that same year. == Teams ==

GFL North GFL South == German Bowls ==

German Bowl participants since 1979: • † Bold denotes German Bowl victory. • ‡ Known as the New Yorker Lions from 2011 to 2025. No German Bowl was held in 2020 due to the COVID-19-related cancellation of the 2020 season. German Bowl XLII which had originally been scheduled for 2020 was held in 2021 instead. ==GFL season placings==

The placings in the league since the renaming of the league to GFL before the 1999 season: North South • In 2000, the northern division consisted of only five clubs. • In 2004 and 2005, the southern division consisted of only five clubs. An asterisk in the column for the 2020 season indicates that the team would have qualified for a season if one had been held, but due to COVID-19 no games of the planned 2020 season were actually played. ==Divisional champions==

This is a list of the winners of the regional divisions of the GFL. A record 15 divisional titles were won by the New Yorker Lions, while the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns hold record for division titles in the south, 14. The Ansbach Grizzlies still have won the secondmost titles in the south, seven, despite not having competed in the league since 1990: ==European Football League participation==

Since the inception of the Eurobowl in 1986, German clubs have taken part in the competition in most seasons. In most cases, the German Bowl winner of the previous season was qualified. In some seasons more than one German club took part in the competition. On ten occasions clubs from Germany have won the Eurobowl. The participations of German clubs at the European Football League, since 2014, in the BIG6 European Football League and, since 2021 the Central European Football League: • Qual. = Qualifying round • QF = Quarter finals • SF = Semi finals • CEFL = Central European Football League • EFLB = European Football League Bowl • EB = Euro Bowl ==References==