1967 NFL season

Infobox NFL
year = 1967
NFLchampion = Green Bay Packers
Eastchampion = Dallas Cowboys
Westchampion = Green Bay Packers
regular_season = September 17, 1967 - December 17, 1967

The 1967 NFL season was the 48th regular season of the National Football League. The league expanded to 16 teams with the addition of the New Orleans Saints. The league's teams were realigned into four divisions: the Capitol and Century Divisions in the Eastern Conference, and the Central and Coastal Divisions in the Western Conference. The Saints and the New York Giants agreed to switch divisions in 1968 and return to the 1967 alignment in 1969.

The NFL season concluded on December 31, when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL Championship Game (in a game that would be known as the "Ice Bowl"). Two weeks later, the Packers handily defeated the AFL's Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II in Miami's Orange Bowl, Vince Lombardi's final game as the Packers' head coach.

The Baltimore Colts had tied for the NFL's best record at 11-1-2, but were excluded from the four team playoff, because of the rules for breaking ties within a division, to the L.A. Rams following the Rams' 34-10 win on the last game of the regular season and a 20-20 tie earlier. In competition against each other, L.A. had a 1-0-1 edge, giving them the tiebreaker. The other three division winners had only nine victories.

Major rule changes

*The "slingshot" goalpost, with one curved support from the ground and offset behind the crossbar, was made standard in the NFL. This replaced the previous year's offset goalpost, which had two non-curved supports from the ground. Before the introduction of the offset goalpost, the supports were directly on the goal line.
*A six-foot-wide border around the field was also made standard in the league. Its outer edge designates the closest that non-players can be to the field, and thus enables the game officials to have a running lane to work in.

Division races

The Eastern Conference was split into the Capitol and Century Divisions, and the Western Conference had the Coastal and Central Divisions. Under the new system, each team would play six division games (a home-and-away series against teams in its division); a game against each of the other four teams in its conference; and a nonconference game against each member of a four-team division, for a total of 14 games. In the past, if two teams were tied for the division lead at season's end, a one-game playoff was conducted to break the tie. Starting in 1967, a tiebreaking system was implemented that started with net points in head-to-head competition, followed by which team that had less recently been in a title game [ http://www.pfraforum.org/index.php?act=Print&client=printer&f=2&t=305 ] . As such, only one team in a division would be the division winner, even if the won-loss record was the same.