The AFL on NBC is the branding used for broadcasts of Arena Football League (AFL) games produced by NBC Sports, the sports division of the NBC television network in the United States, that aired from the 2003 to 2006 seasons. Background Jim Foster, a promotions manager with the National Football League (NFL), conceived the idea of indoor football while watching an indoor association football match at Madison Square Garden in 1981. While at the game, he wrote his idea on a 9x12 envelope from his briefcase with sketches of the field and notes on gameplay. He presented the idea to a few friends at the NFL offices, where he received praise and encouragement for his concept. After solidifying the rules and business plan, supplemented with sketches by a professional artist, Foster presented his idea to various television networks; he reached an agreement with NBC for a "test game". In 1998, CBS assumed the broadcast rights to the American Football Conference (AFC) rights from NBC, ending the network's 38-year tenure with the NFL (a relationship it would forge again in 2006 when it acquired the rights to the Sunday Night Football package from ESPN). CBS had previously lost the television rights to the National Football Conference (NFC) to Fox in 1994, a situation that exacerbated CBS' struggles in the ratings. In 2000, NBC declined to renew its broadcast agreement with Major League Baseball. In 2002, it was additionally outbid by ESPN and ABC for the NBA's next broadcast deal, ending the league's twelve-year run on NBC. During this era, NBC experimented with broadcasting emerging sports. In 2001, the network partnered with the World Wrestling Federation to establish the XFL – a new football league which introduced modified rules and debuted to tremendous, but short-lived fanfare, only lasting one season. In 2003, NBC obtained the broadcast rights (on a revenue sharing basis) and a minority interest in the Arena Football League. In conjunction with this, the league moved the beginning of the season from May to February (the week after the NFL's Super Bowl) and scheduled most of its games on Sunday afternoons instead of Friday or Saturday evenings as it had in the past. These moves were directly marketed to those seeking more football after the Super Bowl ended; advertisements for NBC's arena football coverage dubbed this phenomenon "post-Super Bowl stress disorder, or pissed" (thus openly using one of the seven