2013 German Football League
| 2013 German Football League | |
|---|---|
Logo of German Bowl XXXV
|
|
| League | German Football League |
| Sport | American football |
| Duration | 4 May–12 October 2013 |
| Number of teams | 16 |
| Promoted to GFL | Allgäu Comets |
| Relegated to GFL 2 | Wiesbaden Phantoms |
| Regular season | |
| GFL North champions | New Yorker Lions |
| GFL North runners-up | Dresden Monarchs |
| GFL South champions | Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns |
| GFL South runners-up | Marburg Mercenaries |
| German Bowl XXXV | |
| Champions | New Yorker Lions |
| Runners-up | Dresden Monarchs |
The 2013 German Football League season was the thirty fifth edition of the top-level American football competition in Germany and fourteenth since the renaming of the American football Bundesliga to German Football league.
The regular season started on 5 May and finished on 15 September 2013, followed by the play-offs. The season culminated in the German Bowl XXXV, staged on 12 October 2013 in Berlin, as in 2012, and the fourth time for the championship decider to be held in the German capital.
The German Bowl was won by the New Yorker Lions, a club from the city of Braunschweig, who defeated the Dresden Monarchs by a score of 35–34. It was the club's eight title overall and the first since 2008 while Dresden made their first-ever German Bowl appearance.
During the regular season each club played all other clubs in its division twice, home and away, resulting in each team playing 14 regular season games. There was no games between clubs from opposite divisions, inter conference games having been abolished after the 2011 season when the GFL was expanded from 14 to 16 teams.
The four best teams in each division qualified for the play-offs where, in the quarter finals, teams from opposite divisions played each other, whereby the better placed teams had home advantage. The first placed team played the fourth placed from the other division and the second placed the third placed team. From the semi-finals onwards teams from the same division could meet again.
The eighth placed team in each division entered a two-leg play-off with the winners of the respective division of the German Football League 2, the second tier of the league system in Germany. The winners of this contest qualified for the GFL for the following season.
The 2013 season saw one newly promoted team, the Cologne Falcons, who replaced the Lübeck Cougars in the northern division of the league.
The Wiesbaden Phantoms were relegated from the GFL South at the end of the 2013 season after losing to the Allgäu Comets while, in the northern division, the Cologne Falcons defended their league place against the Bielefeld Bulldogs. For Wiesbaden it meant the end to a three year stint in the league. In January 2014 the Hamburg Blue Devils withdrew from the northern division, leaving it to play with seven clubs in the 2014 season.
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