NFL Superbowl History

The NFL Superbowl is the most-watched sporting event in the United States, regularly capturing more than 40% of all television viewers in the country. Even people who aren't NFL fans turn up for Super Bowl parties, some just to enjoy the pricey TV commercials and lavish halftime shows that are all part of the event. A football game remains buried under all that hype, born of the merger between two football leagues, although it took some time for the NFL Superbowl to establish itself as an important event, and the NFL even thought of canceling it.

Early Superbowls
In the mid 1960s, a rival professional football league, the American Football League, had begun to challenge the dominance of the older National Football League. Both leagues claimed to have the best players and teams, and 1966 the two leagues agreed to a merger that created the modern NFL. The new league was broken into two conferences, the AFC, representing former American Football League teams, and the NFC, representing the original National Football League teams.

Following the merger, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle decided to end the season with a game between the teams of the former leagues to decide which was the best overall. Because the regular season began in September and ended in January, the league chose roman numerals to identify the games. Rozelle wanted to call the game "The Big One," but Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt suggested the name Super Bowl, partly in reference to the college bowl championship system.

Bart Starr led the Green Bay Packers to victories in the first two Super Bowls, leaving former AFL team owners wondering if the game was a good idea. Still considered a World Championship as the NFL merger progressed, the Super Bowl became a solid league tradition as the New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs won the next two games, proving that the leagues could be competitive. The trophy given to the winning team at the end of the game is named for the coach who won the first two bowls, Green Bay's Vince Lombardi.

From Game to Event
The early NFL superbowls weren't the major TV events that they are today. The first Super Bowl attracted roughly 24.5 million viewers, even though it was shown on two networks. CBS had exclusive rights to NFL games and NBC had rights to AFL games, so they were both allowed to broadcast the game. Since then, every Super Bowl has been awarded to a single network on a rotating basis.

The game is played each year in a stadium designated by the league. While this contributes to the excitement and atmosphere of the game, it's been criticized by long-time football fans who remember the pre-merger rule that awarded the game to the team with the best regular-season record. It also forces fans to travel if they're lucky enough to get Super Bowl tickets.

This policy has also been a source of controversy for teams in colder climates, since the NFL typically holds the game in a part of the United States that's warm in February; the greatest number of NFL Superbowls have been played in California or Florida, although the league held the 2006 game in Detroit's domed Ford Field.

Super Bowl ratings reached a peak in 1983, when nearly 40.5 million homes tuned in to watch the Washington Redskins defeat the Miami Dolphins. It would take 10 years for the Super Bowl to attract a larger number of homes, but viewership has grown since the early 1990s and the game has been reaching an audience of more than 41 million homes since 2001. The most-watched Super Bowl took place in 2008, when nearly 48.7 million homes tuned in to see the New England Patriots' dream of a perfect season crushed by the New York Giants.

Two reasons for the game's increasing popularity are the commercials and the halftime shows. Early halftime shows featured college marching bands, military bands or family-friendly groups like Up With People. In the 1990s, pop musicians increasingly took the stage for halftime.

NFL Superbowl commercials were forever changed by Ridley Scott's "1984" commercial for Apple Computer, which only aired nationally once, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII in 1984. Costing $1.5 million, the ad ushered in the age of high-priced Super Bowl commercials and is considered by many to be the greatest advertisement ever created.