The American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference both have 32 clubs in the National Football League (NFL), a professional American football league (NFC). The NFL is the highest-level professional American football league in the world and one of the most important professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The NFL regular season, which lasts 18 weeks from early September to early January and has each club playing 17 games while taking one bye week, starts with a three-week preseason in August. In the playoffs, a single-elimination competition that concludes with the Super Bowl, seven teams from each conference (four division champions and three wild card teams) make it through the regular season.