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The NFC North has four professional teams. It is a division of the National Football League's National Football Conference. It was created prior to the 2002 season when the league realigned its divisions after expanding to 32 teams. It replaced the NFC Central, which was formed in 1970 after the AFL-NFL Merger, and its predecessor, the NFL Central Division.

The NFC North currently has four members: The Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and Minnesota Vikings. The division contains the same alignment as the NFL Central Division, which was created in 1967 and existed for three seasons before the AFL-NFL Merger. During its earlier incarnation, the division earned the moniker "Black and Blue Division" due to its intense rivalries and physical style of play. Based on the ages of its teams, the NFC North is the oldest division in the NFL: a combined 299 years old (The Packers are 90 years old (founded 1919),the Bears are 89 years old (founded 1920), the Lions are 80 years old (founded 1930), and the Vikings are 48 years old (founded 1961)). Another nickname for the earlier incarnation of the division was the "Frostbite Division" as all teams played home games in late season winter cold until the mid 1970s. The division has a total of 10 Super Bowl apperances, the Packers and Vikings are tied, with four each, for the most apperances. While The Bears and Packers have the only Super Bowl wins of the division, a total of four. With three for The Packers and one for The Bears. Of the top five teams with the highest winning percentage throughout it's franchise history, three of them are in the NFC North. With The Bears at .577, The Packers at .558 and The Vikings at .555. However, The Lions have one of the lowest winning percentage in the NFL.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers became the fifth member of the NFC Central in 1977, after being absorbed from the AFC West, (which they were a member of during their inaugural season in 1976). The Buccaneers were moved to the NFC South in the 2002 realignment. With the departure of Tampa Bay, the division is sometimes humorously called the "Frozen North" (teams in the NFC North are located further north than those in the AFC North), although two of its teams, Detroit and Minnesota, have played their home games indoors since 1975 and 1982 respectively. On the other hand, two of the AFC North teams (Cleveland and Pittsburgh) both are known to play late-season games with intense winter weather while another (Cincinnati) hosted the Freezer Bowl with unusually cold weather in the region. (Cincinnati is on the border between humid subtropical climate and humid continental climate, although most of Ohio as a whole is in the latter.) The NFC North's geography has been compared to that of a college conference since all four of its home cities lie within the territorial boundaries of the NCAA's Big Ten Conference (indeed, three of the metro areas in the NFC North have Big Ten members as well, and Green Bay for many years played exhibition games at the University of Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium).

ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman often refers to this division as the "NFC Norris," because of its geographical similarity to the National Hockey League's old Norris Division, now called the Central Division (although the Minnesota Wild are in the Northwest Division, and Minnesota's former team, the Dallas Stars, play in the Pacific Division).

Division champions

* A players' strike in 1982 reduced the regular season to nine games. Thus, the league used a special 16-team playoff tournament just for this year. Division standings were ignored, Green Bay had the best record of the division teams. Due to the fact that instead of losing four games, The Packers lost three and tied one, not winning more than the Vikings (In which the Packers actually lost their only game against The Vikings in 1982).

Wild Card qualifiers

• A players' strike in 1982 reduced the regular season to nine games. Thus, the league used a special 16-team playoff tournament just for this year.

Total playoff berths

¹ Realigned into the NFC South during the 2002 NFL season.

Schedule assignments

• NFC South: 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011
• NFC West: 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012
• NFC East: 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013
• AFC East: 2002, 2006, 2010
• AFC West: 2003, 2007, 2011
• AFC South: 2004, 2008, 2012
• AFC North: 2005, 2009, 2013