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An athletic conference is a collection of which play competitively against each other in a sports league. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. Conferences often, but not always, include teams from a common geographic region.
The National Football League (NFL) is divided into an American Football Conference (AFC) and a National Football Conference (NFC). Both conferences have 16 teams, and each conference is divided into 4 divisions of 4 teams each. These conferences, for the most part, derive from the fact that they were once separate organizations: the original National Football League and the 1960s American Football League; the two entities merged in 1970, with each league forming the basis of the NFC and AFC respectively. The NFL allocates seven teams from each conference for the NFL playoffs; the four division winners (guaranteed one of the top four seeds, based on winning percentage), and the three best-non division winners, also known as wild cards.
Major League Baseball (MLB) does not use the word "conference." Instead, it is divided into two separate leagues which are identical to the conferences listed above in all but name (which, although their operations have been integrated via the Commissioner of Baseball in modern times, were originally separately managed organizations with an intense rivalry). These are the American League (AL) and National League (NL), with 15 teams each. Each league is divided into the Eastern (AL, NL), Central (AL, NL), and Western (AL, NL) divisions, with all six divisions having 5 teams each. Each league produces six teams for MLB postseason, with each division winner also guaranteed one of the top three seeds, even if their record is lower than the league's top wild card teams.
In all five sports, the champion of one conference (or league in MLB's case) plays the champion of the other conference for the final round championship, this is guaranteed to occur because the rules for the playoffs require play to be exclusively within the conference/league in all rounds before the final round, leaving only two teams for the finals (one from each conference/league) and the records of teams outside a conference/league are ignored, which can allow teams with inferior records to make the playoffs while teams in the other conference with better records do not get in. An extreme example of this has occurred four times in the NFL, when the 2010 Seattle Seahawks, 2014 Carolina Panthers, 2020 Washington Football Team, and 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers reached the playoffs by winning their respective divisions despite losing records (7–9 for the Seahawks and Washington, 7–8–1 for the Panthers, 8–9 for the Buccaneers). These are the only teams ever to qualify for the playoffs with losing records in seasons that were not shortened by strikes (as in 1982, which was shortened from 16 to 9 games). In addition, a team's regular season schedule is weighted towards more games against other teams within their own division and to a lesser extent their own conference; NBA and NHL teams play at least two games (one at each home arena) against every other team in their league in a regular season, MLB teams play at least one 3-game series against every other team (as of the 2023 season), but the NFL teams do not.
This does not strictly meet the definition indicated in the previous sections of this article, as each individual league mentioned in this section is a separate competition. The only times that teams from different leagues compete against one another in meaningful matches are in knockout cup competitions, such as the FA Cup (open to teams from all levels), the EFL Cup (open only to teams from the Premier League and the English Football League), and the FA Trophy (open only to teams in the broader definition of the National League, plus the two tiers below it).
From 2011 through to 2015, the competition had one conference based in each of its SANZAAR. The winner of each conference received a playoff spot, as did the three next best teams overall. With the addition of Argentina's Jaguares and Japan's Sunwolves for 2016, plus Southern Kings for South Africa, the competition reorganised into a new four-conference system. In 2016 and 2017, Australia and New Zealand formed separate conferences within an Australasian group; the South African teams were joined by the Jaguares and Sunwolves in a "South African" group, with that group also being divided into two conferences. The winner of each conference continued to receive a playoff spot, with additional berths going to the next three best Australasian teams and the next best team of the South African group.
For 2018, Super Rugby will revert to a 15-team format, following the dropping of two teams from South Africa and one from Australia. The new format features three conferences—Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, each with five teams; the Sunwolves will join the Australian conference and the Jaguares will play in the South African conference. The conference winners will continue to receive playoff berths, with additional berths going to the top five teams in the overall competition table that were not already qualified.
After the 2020–21 season, South Africa fully aligned its club rugby structure with that of Europe. The then-existing Pro14 franchises from South Africa were replaced by the country's four Super Rugby franchises, which moved into Pro14 and led to the competition's rebranding as the United Rugby Championship. For the first season under the URC name in 2021–22, the competition reorganized into four regionally based pools, though no longer using the word "conference". Three of the pools are made up of teams from one country—Ireland, South Africa, and Wales. The fourth features the teams from Italy and Scotland. Each regional pool competes for a secondary trophy called a "shield" (Irish, Scottish/Italian, South African, Welsh), with the overall league table used to determine playoff participants. The winner of each shield, however, is assured a place in the following year's European Rugby Champions Cup regardless of its overall league position.
The term "conference" referring to a single tournament does not apply if there's only one tournament in a season, such as in the case of the college sports leagues, the Philippine Football League, and the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League.
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