2014 German Football League
| 2014 German Football League | |
|---|---|
Logo of the German Bowl XXXVI
|
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| League | German Football League |
| Sport | American football |
| Duration | 26 April–11 October 2014 |
| Number of teams | 15 |
| Promoted to GFL | Hamburg Huskies |
| Relegated to GFL 2 | none |
| Regular season | |
| GFL North champions | New Yorker Lions |
| GFL North runners-up | Dresden Monarchs |
| GFL South champions | Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns |
| GFL South runners-up | Stuttgart Scorpions |
| German Bowl XXXVI | |
| Champions | New Yorker Lions |
| Runners-up | Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns |
The 2014 German Football League season was the thirty sixth edition of the top-level American football competition in Germany and fifteenth since the renaming of the American football Bundesliga to German Football league.
The regular season started on 26 April and finished on 14 September 2014, followed by the play-offs. The season culminated in the German Bowl XXXVI, staged on 11 October 2014 in Berlin, the third consecutive time and the fifth overall 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 Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns by a record score of 47–9. It was the club's ninth title overall and second consecutive one.
During the regular season each club played all other clubs in its division twice, home and away, resulting in each team playing, nominally, 14 regular season games. The northern division in 2014 however consisted of only seven teams, resulting in only twelve regular season games per club in this division. There was no games between clubs from opposite divisions, interconference games having been abolished after the 2011 season when the GFL was expanded from 14 to 16 teams.
The best four 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 winner 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. In case of a GFL division consisting of less than eight clubs no play-off was necessary.
The 2014 season saw one promoted team, the Allgäu Comets, which replaced the relegated Wiesbaden Phantoms. The withdrawal of the Hamburg Blue Devils three month before the start of the 2014 season left the northern division to play with seven clubs.
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