Panthers

Bank of America Stadium sits in uptown Charlotte with room for 75,037 people, though the Panthers did not start out there. When the franchise joined the NFL in 1993, its stadium was still going up, so the inaugural 1995 season opened at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina, and the club moved into its Charlotte home the following year.

The colours run black and Panther blue, and the team plays as the "Black and Blue" in the NFC South, a division shared with the Atlanta Falcons, the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Against Atlanta the meetings carry a name of their own, the I-85 Rivalry, after the interstate linking the two cities. The Saints fixture runs deeper: Sam Mills left New Orleans for Carolina in 1995, and the two sides have traded hard, physical games since, including a playoff meeting in 2017.

Carolina has reached the Super Bowl twice and lost both times, to the New England Patriots after the 2003 season and to the Denver Broncos after 2015. Ownership changed in 2018, when Jerry Richardson, who had brought the franchise to the Carolinas in the first place, sold the team to David Tepper.

No one carries the club's identity more than Sam Mills. The linebacker gave the team its rallying cry, "Keep Pounding," and the phrase is still printed around Bank of America Stadium. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2022, and Julius Peppers, drafted by Carolina in 2002, followed him in 2024.