The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football franchise based in the Miami metropolitan area. The Dolphins compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The Dolphins play their home games at Hard Rock Stadium in the northern suburb of Miami Gardens, Florida, and are headquartered in Davie, Florida. The Dolphins and the Atlanta Falcons (who also began play in 1966) are the oldest NFL franchises in the Deep South, and Miami is the oldest AFC team in that region. However, of the four AFC East teams, they are the only team in the division that was not a charter member of the American Football League (AFL).

The Dolphins team was founded by attorney-politician Joe Robbie and actor-comedian Danny Thomas. They began play in the AFL in 1966. The region had not had a professional football team since the days of the Miami Seahawks, who played in the All-America Football Conference in 1946 before becoming the first incarnation of the Baltimore Colts. For the first few years the Dolphins' full-time training camp and practice facilities were at Saint Andrew's School, a private boys boarding prep school in Boca Raton. In 1970 the Dolphins joined the NFL when the AFL–NFL merger occurred.

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