Super Bowl

• 1. Introduction

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  The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League, and it has spent more than half a century becoming something far larger than a football game. Seven of the most-watched broadcasts in American television history are Super Bowls. Super Bowl LIX drew an average of 127.7 million viewers in the United States alone, making it the most-viewed television broadcast of any kind in American history. On any given Super Bowl Sunday, more than 100 million people in the United States are tuned in at the same moment. That is a staggering number for a single sporting event. But how did a football championship game turn into a de facto national holiday, complete with its own food traditions, its own advertising economy, and halftime shows regarded as among the highest honors in music? The answer runs through a bitter rivalry between two competing leagues, a name borrowed from a children's toy, and six decades of dynasties, upsets, and moments that became part of the American fabric.

• 2. A Name From a Toy

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  Lamar Hunt, the owner of the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs, coined the name that would stick. In merger meetings with the NFL in the mid-1960s, Hunt started calling the proposed championship game the "Super Bowl," and he later said the phrase was probably floating in his head because his children had been playing with a Super Ball toy. A vintage example of that ball now sits at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In a letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle dated the 25th of July 1966, Hunt wrote with characteristic modesty: "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon." The leagues' owners chose "AFL-NFL Championship Game" as the official name, but when the Kansas City Star quoted Hunt on the subject that same month, the media seized on his term immediately. Green Bay safety Tom Brown used it in the days leading up to the first game: "I would guess you can't get any bigger in professional football than to play in the first Super Bowl game." League officials were publicly skeptical. A statement in May 1967 noted that "not many people like it. It's a bad play on words. Everything became super this and super that." Commissioner Rozelle even solicited alternatives. Early contenders included "Merger Bowl," "Summit Bowl," and simply "The Game." None of them took hold. The Associated Press observed that "Super Bowl" simply "grew and grew and grew." The name became official beginning with the third annual game, and Roman numerals were adopted to identify each edition starting with the fifth, played in January 1971. The sole exception was Super Bowl 50 in 2016, which used Arabic numerals; Roman numerals returned the following year with Super Bowl LI.

• 3. The Bowl Game Lineage

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  The word "bowl" in the game's name did not come from football. It came from a stadium. The Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California, traces its roots to 1902, when it was played as the "Tournament East-West football game" as part of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses. In 1923 the game moved to a new stadium that took its name from the fact that it was shaped like a bowl and hosted a game tied to the Tournament of Roses. That stadium became the Rose Bowl, and the game inside it became the Rose Bowl Game. Other cities recognized the appeal. In 1935 alone, post-season college football contests launched for Miami (the Orange Bowl), New Orleans (the Sugar Bowl), and El Paso (the Sun Bowl). Dallas followed with the Cotton Bowl in 1937. By the time the first professional championship was played under the new name in 1967, the concept of a "bowl game" had been embedded in American football culture for decades. It was that long tradition that gave the AFL commissioner Joe Foss reason to propose a "World Playoff" game between the two leagues as early as the 14th of January 1961, after just the AFL's inaugural season. Had it happened then, it would have pitted the AFL champion Houston Oilers against the NFL champion Green Bay Packers. It took five more years of negotiation before that matchup actually came to exist in any form.

• 4. Early Dominance and a Shocking Upset

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  Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr won the Most Valuable Player award in each of the first two AFL-NFL World Championship Games. The Packers, under coach Vince Lombardi, had already claimed five NFL championships before the merger era; those first two wins extended one of the most concentrated stretches of excellence in professional football history. Five championships in seven years represented the second three-peat in NFL history, and the Packers are the only team to accomplish a three-peat twice, having also done so in 1929, 1930, and 1931. After those early Packer victories, some team owners feared the AFL teams simply could not compete with their NFL counterparts. Super Bowl III settled that debate with force. The AFL's New York Jets were 19.5-point underdogs against the Baltimore Colts, but quarterback Joe Namath guaranteed a Jets victory before the game and then delivered one, winning 16-7. Former Colts head coach Weeb Ewbank led the Jets on the sideline. A year later, the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs defeated the NFL's Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV in New Orleans. That game was the final AFL-NFL World Championship Game played before the two leagues formally merged, and it ensured that the AFL's legacy would enter the merged era with its credibility intact. The trophy awarded to every Super Bowl winner was named after Vince Lombardi following his death in September 1970. The first Vince Lombardi Trophy under that name went to the Baltimore Colts after their Super Bowl V win in Miami.

• 5. Dynasties and Decades

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  The Pittsburgh Steelers became the defining team of the 1970s, winning four Super Bowls in six years (IX, X, XIII, and XIV). Their roster was built substantially in the 1974 draft, from which Pittsburgh selected four future Hall of Famers, the most any team in any sport has produced from a single draft. A fifth player from that era, Donnie Shell, went unselected in that same draft but was signed by Pittsburgh and later enshrined in the Hall of Fame as well. Chuck Noll coached that dynasty; his players included Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, Mike Webster, and the defensive unit known as the Steel Curtain, anchored by "Mean" Joe Greene, Jack Ham, and Jack Lambert. In the 1980s and 1990s the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys traded supremacy. The 49ers, running Bill Walsh's West Coast offense, won four Super Bowls in the 1980s with quarterback Joe Montana, who won three Super Bowl MVP awards and later tied that record with Tom Brady. The 1989 49ers, under first-year head coach George Seifert, beat the Denver Broncos 55-10 in Super Bowl XXIV, the most lopsided victory in Super Bowl history. The Cowboys responded by winning three of four Super Bowls from 1992 to 1996 with Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin, all of whom reached the Hall of Fame. Then came the New England Patriots. Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl in Super Bowl XXXVI with a 20-17 upset of the St. Louis Rams and went on to win seven championships in total, more than any individual NFL franchise. Bill Belichick coached eight Super Bowl victories, also a record, appearing in twelve as either head coach, assistant head coach, or defensive coordinator.

• 6. Unforgettable Games

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  Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans became known as the "Harbaugh Bowl" because the two head coaches, John Harbaugh of the Ravens and Jim Harbaugh of the 49ers, are brothers. The Ravens led 28-6 in the third quarter when a power blackout struck the Superdome and delayed play for 34 minutes. San Francisco scored 17 straight points after the delay but still lost 34-31. Super Bowl LI produced the largest comeback in Super Bowl history. The Atlanta Falcons led New England 28-3 late in the third quarter, and the Patriots never held the lead until the game-winning touchdown in overtime, winning 34-28. It was the first Super Bowl to go to overtime. Tom Brady threw for a then-record 466 yards and was named MVP for the fourth time, another record. Super Bowl LII flipped the script: the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Patriots 41-33, with Brady this time throwing for 505 yards in defeat, an all-time playoff record. The combined 1,151 yards of offense in that game broke an NFL record for any game that had stood for nearly seven decades. Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey was the first played outdoors in a cold-weather environment; Seattle's defense dismantled a Peyton Manning offense that had broken the NFL single-season scoring record, winning 43-8. And Super Bowl XLIX ended on a play that defined the last-second stakes of the game: rookie free agent Malcolm Butler intercepted a Russell Wilson pass at the one-yard line to preserve a 28-24 Patriots win.

• 7. The Spectacle Beyond Football

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  Whitney Houston's performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, during the Gulf War, was for many years regarded as one of the best renditions of the anthem in history. Before Super Bowl XLVIII, soprano Renee Fleming became the first opera singer to perform it. After a special live episode of the Fox sketch comedy series In Living Color caused a viewership drop during the Super Bowl XXVI halftime show, the NFL moved to recruit major talent. Michael Jackson performed the following year and drew figures higher than the game itself. U2's appearance at Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 featured the band playing beneath a projection screen that scrolled through the names of victims of the September 11 attacks during their third song, "Where the Streets Have No Name." The halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII drew controversy after Justin Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson's top, briefly exposing her breast. The FCC levied fines, and MTV was banned by the NFL from producing future halftime shows. The league responded with a moratorium on pop performers, turning instead to veteran acts like Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. That policy reversed at Super Bowl XLV. The game is also the second-largest event for American food consumption behind only Thanksgiving dinner. Commercial airtime during the Super Bowl is the most expensive of the year; advertisers paid as much as $7 million for a thirty-second spot during Super Bowl LVI in 2022. Nielsen reported in 2010 that 51 percent of Super Bowl viewers tune in specifically for the commercials. Famous ads include the 1984 introduction of Apple's Macintosh computer and the Budweiser "Bud Bowl" campaign, with advertising viewership now considered an integral part of the event itself.

• 8. Hosting and the Chiefs Era

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  The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans has hosted eight Super Bowls, more than any other venue. The NFL has never played the game in a metropolitan area without an active NFL franchise; this requirement became a de jure condition for bidding. Super Bowl XXVII was originally awarded to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, but was moved to the Rose Bowl after Arizona voters declined to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday; when Arizona voters created that holiday in 1992, Super Bowl XXX was awarded to Tempe. The Kansas City Chiefs have become the dominant force of the current era. They won their first Super Bowl in 50 years with a comeback victory in Super Bowl LIV, then won back-to-back titles with Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, becoming the first team since the 2004 New England Patriots to win consecutive championships. Patrick Mahomes went to his fifth Super Bowl since becoming the starting quarterback when the Chiefs appeared in Super Bowl LIX, making Kansas City the first team in NFL history to win back-to-back championships and then appear in the Super Bowl again the following year, and the first to play in five Super Bowls over a six-year period. The Philadelphia Eagles ended that run at Super Bowl LIX, winning 40-22 after leading 34-0 at the close of the third quarter. Jalen Hurts was named MVP. Super Bowl LX in 2026, held at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, saw the Seattle Seahawks defeat the New England Patriots 29-13, with running back Kenneth Walker III named MVP, continuing a pattern in which teams avenged previous Super Bowl defeats in their immediate rematch.