Photo courtesy of ECX Images
Written by Paula Thompson
As the end of the football season rolls around, NFL fans everywhere are preparing for their “national holiday” – no, not New Year’s, but Super Bowl Sunday. Dating back to the late 1960s, the Super Bowl is one of the premier sporting events in the United States, as teams from the AFC and the NFC compete for the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
The first Super Bowl, known then as the “AFL-NFL World Championship Game,” was played on January 15th, 1967, as part of the merger agreement between the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL). When the merger was completed in the 1970s, each league became a conference – the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference we know today. The name “Super Bowl” came from former Kansas City Chiefs owner and founding member of the AFL, Lamar Hunt, who thought of it after watching his kids play with a “Super Ball;” that ball is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The Super Bowl originally took place in mid-January, following a 14-game regular season and two playoff rounds. Today, the game is played the first Sunday of February, due to a number of changes over the years: an expanded schedule (now 16 games with a bye-week), an additional playoff round, and the later start to the regular season (now after Labor Day).
The Vince Lombardi Trophy, awarded to the winner of the Super Bowl, was named for former Green Bay Packers coach Lombardi, who led his team to wins in the first two Super Bowls. The trophy, so named after Lombardi’s death in 1970, was first awarded to the Baltimore Colts at Super Bowl V.
The Super Bowl has presented a number of “dynasties” over the years. The Dallas Cowboys, who have appeared in eight Super Bowls up to Super Bowl XLIII, were in five of those Super Bowls between 1968 and 1980, winning two. The Miami Dolphins won two straight Super Bowls (VII and VIII), the first of which ended the only perfect season in NFL history. The Pittsburgh Steelers won four Super Bowls between 1974 and 1980, with players like Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swan, and “Mean” Joe Greene. The San Francisco 49ers dominated the 1980s with four wins in the big game, while the Cowboys returned to dominance in the early 1990s, with three wins in four years; in a different kind of early 1990s “dynasty,” the Buffalo Bills became the first teams to appear in four straight Super Bowls – and also the first team to lose four straight. The 2000s were highlighted by three wins by the New England Patriots, and two more wins by the Steelers, who became the first team with six Super Bowl victories.
sources: J
ohn Alder, “Super Bowl History,” football.about.com
www.superbowlhistory.net
www.super-bowl-history.us
“Super Bowl,” wikipedia.org
Content provided by Associated Content
