The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league’s National Football Conference (NFC) South division.
In 2003, they won the NFC Championship Game and advanced to the Super Bowl XXXVIII, where they lost 32–29 to the New England Patriots.
Only in 2013 did they win their first of three straight NFC South championships after previously making the playoffs in 2005 and 2008.
The Panthers made it back to the Super Bowl in 2015 after losing to the Denver Broncos in the NFC Championship Game the year before against the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round.
It has only appeared in a postseason game once since, in 2017. Only the New Orleans Saints have won more NFC South championships since the division was formed in 2002.
The Carolina Panthers will still be the newest team in the NFC in 2021. Owner David Tepper, who purchased the team from its founder Jerry Richardson for an undisclosed sum on May 22, 2018, received unanimous approval from league owners to do so legally as Panther Football, LLC. According to Forbes, the club is worth an estimated $2.3 billion.
How did Carolina Panthers get their name?
Mark Richardson, the founder Jerry Richardson’s son, was the one who came up with the moniker “Panthers.” This is the third time in the annals of North Carolina athletics that a team has been given the moniker “cats.”
In 1945, the owner of the team, Mickey McBride, held a fan contest, and the entry that received the most votes was Browns.
One version of the tale claims that Paul Brown objected to the nick name and suggested changing it to Panthers. However, a local businessman later informed the team that he held the rights to use the name Cleveland Panthers.