Playoff Bowl

• 1. Introduction

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  The Playoff Bowl was a post-season NFL game that nobody wanted to win by losing, played ten times at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. Its official name was the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl. It matched the second-place teams from the NFL's Eastern and Western conferences, and it generated real money: reportedly a million dollars over the course of the 1960s, all flowing into the league's pension plan for players. But the game carried a stigma from the start. Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi called it "the 'Shit Bowl'...a losers' bowl for losers." That contempt was not unique to Lombardi. The question the game's brief history raises is how a contest that helped fund players' retirements, debuted a goalpost design still used today, and drew over 65,000 fans in its peak year could be so thoroughly despised by the very people playing in it.

• 2. Why the Game Existed

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  After a particular NFL season, league owners found themselves staring down a new rival: the American Football League, which had secured a television deal with ABC for nationally broadcast games, often as double-headers. The NFL at the time had only one scheduled post-season game, the Championship Game, and few regular-season contests were televised nationally. The league's deal ran through CBS. The Playoff Bowl was the owners' answer: by putting the second-place teams from each conference on national television, they doubled from two to four the number of top NFL clubs appearing in post-season play on TV. It was as much a broadcast strategy as a sporting event. The game's founder was memorialized in its official title: Bert Bell, the former NFL commissioner who co-founded the Philadelphia Eagles, co-owned the Pittsburgh Steelers, and served as commissioner until his death during an NFL game in October.

• 3. Lombardi's Disdain

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  Vince Lombardi coached in the Playoff Bowl following both the 1963 and 1964 seasons, coming off back-to-back NFL championships in 1961 and 1962. His Green Bay Packers won the 1963 edition convincingly, beating the Cleveland Browns 40-23 in front of more than 54,000 fans. The 1964 game was different. The Packers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals 24-17 on the 3rd of January 1965, before a crowd of over 56,000. After that defeat, Lombardi's contempt spilled into the open. He described the game as "a hinky-dink football game, held in a hinky-dink town, played by hinky-dink players." He told his players, he said, that second place was simply hinky-dink. The Packers used the humiliation as fuel: they went on to win the next three consecutive NFL championships from 1965 to 1967, the only team in the post-season era to accomplish that. Lombardi's final game as Packers head coach was Super Bowl II, played at the very same Orange Bowl in January 1968.

• 4. Roger Brown's Five Appearances

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  All-Pro defensive tackle Roger Brown appeared in five of the ten Playoff Bowls, more than any other player in the series. He was with the Detroit Lions for three of them (1960, 1961-1962) and with the Los Angeles Rams for the other two (1967-1969), winning every time. His winning record did little to soften his feelings about the experience. Brown said playing in those contests was like having "the worst inferiority complex." He was characteristically direct: "I was in five of them, and to have played in it five in the ten years it was in existence is pitiful." His Lions hold another unenviable distinction: the most victories in the Playoff Bowl, three, along with the best winning percentage in the series at 1.000. The Dallas Cowboys, by contrast, appeared in three games and won only one, finishing with a .333 record.

• 5. What the Game Left Behind

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  On the 8th of January 1967, an Eagles-Colts Playoff Bowl marked the debut of a piece of equipment that now stands on every football field in North America. That game saw the first use of the "slingshot" or "tuning fork" goalpost in American football, the single curved support design. The Canadian Football League had introduced that style the previous November at the 54th Grey Cup. The NFL formally adopted it for the 1967 season, and the design persists in the NFL, the CFL, most colleges, and many high schools across both countries. The same 1966 season game also served a second purpose: NFL Films placed a microphone on Philadelphia Eagles head coach Joe Kuharich, a practice credited by the league as foundational to the signature style of NFL Films featuring live audio from coaches and players on the sideline. The game also led directly to Super Bowl II being held in Miami, the first of 11 Super Bowls played in the Miami area.

• 6. Decline and Disappearance

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  Attendance at the Playoff Bowl peaked at 65,569 on the 9th of January 1966, when the Baltimore Colts routed the Dallas Cowboys 35-3. That was the last season before the Miami Dolphins joined the AFL as an expansion franchise, before the AFL-NFL merger agreement took effect, and before the Super Bowl existed in name. By January 1968 and January 1969, the Super Bowl was being played at the same Orange Bowl the following week, and the Playoff Bowl's crowd figures reflected the competition: the 1968 game drew just over 22,000 fans, and the 1969 game drew just over 31,000. When the merger was completed for the 1970 season, there was discussion about reviving the concept with the losing conference championship teams playing during the idle week before the Super Bowl. The format was rejected. The NFL considered the game unattractive. Players on the winning team in the final years received $1,200 each; losers received $500. The Western Conference team had won eight of the ten games. The NFL today classifies all ten as exhibitions rather than official playoff games, despite their official status at the time they were played.