2015 German Football League
| 2015 German Football League | |
|---|---|
Logo of the German Bowl XXXVII
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| League | German Football League |
| Sport | American football |
| Duration | 18 April–10 October 2015 |
| Number of teams | 15 |
| Promoted to GFL | Frankfurt Universe Hildesheim Invaders |
| Relegated to GFL 2 | Franken Knights |
| Regular season | |
| GFL North champions | New Yorker Lions |
| GFL North runners-up | Dresden Monarchs |
| GFL South champions | Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns |
| GFL South runners-up | Allgäu Comets |
| German Bowl XXXVII | |
| Champions | New Yorker Lions |
| Runners-up | Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns |
The 2015 German Football League season was the thirty seventh edition of the top-level American football competition in Germany and sixteenth since the renaming of the American football Bundesliga to German Football league.
The regular season started on 18 April and finished on 5 September 2015, followed by the play-offs. The season culminated in the German Bowl XXXVII, held on 10 October 2015 in Berlin, the fourth consecutive time and the sixth overall for the championship decider to be held in the German capital. The championship was won by the New Yorker Lions who defeated the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns 41–31 in a repeat of the 2014 final which the Lions had won by a record margin of 38 points.
During the regular season each club plays all other clubs in its division twice, home and away, resulting in each team playing, nominally, 14 regular season games. The northern division in 2015 however consisted of only seven teams, resulting in only twelve regular season games per club in this division. There are 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 qualify for the play-offs where, in the quarter finals, teams from opposite divisions play each other, whereby the better placed teams have home advantage. The first placed team plays 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 can 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 2015 season saw one promoted team, the Hamburg Huskies, which filled the vacant spot created by the withdrawal of the Hamburg Blue Devils shortly before the start of the 2014 season. No team was relegated from the GFL at the end of the 2014 season as the Franken Knights defended their league place in the south in the promotion-relegation round against the Kirchdorf Wildcats. Shortly before the start of the 2015 season the Cologne Falcons withdrew from the northern division for financial reasons, leaving the division to play with seven clubs for the second consecutive season.
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