Professional Football includes the professional forms of American and Canadian gridiron football. In common usage, it refers to former and existing major football leagues in either country. Currently (2009), there are three major Professional Football leagues in North America: the NFL and the UFL in the U.S. and the Canadian Football League (CFL) in Canada.

The NFL has existed continuously since being so named in 1922. The several sections below bearing that name are to distinguish between time periods in whch the league makeup, schedules, or other characteristics differed. The first record of an American football player receiving "pay for play" came in 1892 with William "Pudge" Heffelfinger's $500 contract to play in a game for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

For several years afterwards, individual players and sometimes entire teams received compensation to play in 'barnstorming' type games without rigid schedules and against a variety of opponents. Independent teams of post-collegiate football players began playing for shares of gates collected from spectators at sandlot games. As early as 1903, some formed 'leagues', informal associations with loose schedules in which several teams played one another during a 'season', after which the team with the best record was declared the league champion.

Players were signed to contracts based on their actual or perceived abilities, and teams had rights to them only to the extent that individual contracts stated. Early teams included the Canton Bulldogs, the first Professional Football team, and the Massillon Tigers of the Ohio League; the Rochester Jeffersons (independent); and the Buffalo Prospects and All-Tonawanda Lumberjacks of the Buffalo Semi Pro Football League. What is believed to be the first Professional Football playoff system was played between the Prospects, the Lumberjacks and the Jeffersons in 1919, with Buffalo winning.

A year after the Buffalo Prospects won the first Professional Football championship game, the Ohio League became the American Professional Football League in 1920. One month later, the league added the Buffalo Prospects and the Rochester Jeffersons, and changed its name to the American Professional Football Association (APFA). The league did not have a championship game.

The Akron Pros had the best record in 1920, and the Chicago Staleys were the 1921 'champions'.

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