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Super Bowl Overview

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The Super Bowl was created as a part of the merger agreement between the AFL and NFL. One of the conditions of the merger was the winner of each league’s championship game was to meet in a contest to determine the “World Champion of Professional Football”. Then NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle wanted to call the game “The Big One”. AFL founder and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt referred to the game as the Super Bowl from seeing his daughter play with a toy called “Super Ball”. (The original “Super Ball” is at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio). The name Hunt came up seemed like it would work, because college football post-season games had been known as “bowl games”. Not having an official name, the championship game was called the AFL/NFL World Championship Game, but the fans and media used the expression Super Bowl as an unofficial name.

Starting with the third game in January of 1969, the term Super Bowl became the championship’s official name. The previous two championship games were retroactively re-named Super Bowls I and II. Within the AFL/NFL merger, three NFL teams joined 10 AFL teams to form the American Football Conference (AFC), and the 13 other teams became the National Football Conference (NFC). As of Super Bowl XL, former AFL teams have won 12 Super Bowls, pre-1970 NFL teams have won 26 Super Bowls, and two Super Bowls have been won by teams created after 1970. 

After the 1970 merger of the AFL and the NFL, the Super Bowl became the championship game, played annually on a Sunday, following the playoffs. The Super Bowl originally occurred in early to mid-January, then late January, and in 2002, the first Sunday in February. This change from January to February in 2002 was because of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. The NFL cancelled the second weekend of the season (September 15-16, 2001). The playoffs were pushed back one week, forcing the first Super Bowl in February.

The playoff format for the NFL teams vying to get into the Super Bowl is a single elimination tournament at the end of a 16 game regular season. There are 12 teams (six from each conference-AFC and NFC). Four division champions from each conference are seeded one through four, and two wild cards from each conference are seeded five and six. Seeds three and six and seeds four and five play each other in a “Wild Card Game”, while seeds one and two have a bye (an advance to the next round of the playoffs without playing). The winners of the “Wild Card Game” face seeds one and two in a “Divisional Game”. The winners of the “Divisional Game” play in a “Conference Championship Game”, and those winners play in the Super Bowl. The team that wins the Super Bowl receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named for the coach of the Green Bay Packers, who won the first two Super Bowl games. Following Lombardi’s death in 1970, the trophy was named the Vince Lombardi Trophy. It was first awarded at Super Bowl V in Miami.

The Super Bowl is one the most watched US television broadcasts of the year. Many companies around the world spend millions upon millions of dollars on commercials aired during the Super Bowl broadcast. This Super Bowl Sunday commercial frenzy caused the starting time of the Super Bowl to be pushed back to the Super Bowl being played during prime time on the East Coast. The last Super Bowl game to be played during the day was Super Bowl XI in January 1977. Popular singers and musicians also perform during the Super Bowl pre-game and halftime celebrations. Here is an interesting tidbit about the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Sunday is the second largest US food consumption day, following Thanksgiving.

There are other events that surround the Super Bowl, and the Taste of the NFL is one of them. Otherwise known as “The Party With a Purpose”, a true goal of the Taste of the NFL is to raise money and awareness in the fight against hunger. The nation’s finest chefs and the NFL’s current and legendary players from 32 NFL cities, volunteer at the event. Attendees are able to sample specialty foods, meet the chefs, and get photos and autographs from players and celebrity guests. Other popular Super Bowl parties include: Leather and Laces, the Maxim Super Bowl Party, and the Playboy party. There is also Pre-Game Hospitality before the Super Bowl. It features three hours of seasonal and regional food stations, a full open bar, live entertainment, a dedicated security entrance, and more.