The History of the Super Bowl

It was a downright balmy late-December day in 1958 in New York, a little over eight years before the first Super Bowl took place. 

The temperature was in the high 40s, contrast with the potential snowfall at this year's Super Bowl affair. The New York Giants and Baltimore Colts spent the afternoon beating each other to a pulp at Yankee Stadium, with the Giants holding a three-point lead late in the contest.

Colts kicker Steve Myhra lined up for a 20-yard field goal that would send the game into overtime, something that had never happened in a NFL championship game to that point.

The short field goal sailed through the uprights and unwittingly sparked a football revolution.

Myhra's kick for the Colts would do more than that in the 1958 NFL Championship Game. It would set the wheels in motion to bring us the modern-day NFL and Super Bowl as we know it.

Incidentally, the "Greatest Game Ever Played" is still the only NFL Championship or Super Bowl to go into overtime.

An estimated 45 million people tuned in to watch the affair on television, a monumental moment in NFL history. Millionaires Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams were also watching.

Contender for the Crown

Hunt and Adams would team up to do what many others had tried and failed to accomplish—create a viable alternative to the NFL.

Spurned by NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in their pursuit of the Chicago Cardinals, Hunt and Adams decided to create the American Football League in 1960. Hunt would take ownership of the Kansas City Texans—later changed to the Chiefs—and Adams the Houston Oilers, today's Tennessee Titans.

Like all other comers, the AFL wasn't taken seriously by most in the NFL. It predictably struggled at its onset, plagued by poor venues and fighting owners. But flashy football eventually garnered the interest of the American public, and the AFL quickly gained a foothold where other leagues had faltered.

The nouveau league began attracting top college talent, and soon the rival organizations were embroiled in bidding wars for unproven rookies. But it was another kicker that would help change the fate of modern football. 

Ed Kolenovsky/Associated Press

Wellington Mara, then the owner of the NFL's New York Giants, broke a gentlemen's agreement between the NFL and AFL not to poach each other's players when he signed Pete Gogolak away from the AFL's Buffalo Bills. The move opened the floodgates of a war that threatened to drown both leagues.

The two leagues were already on a collision course that might have still ended in a merger, but it could have just as easily led to football's demise. Al Davis, then-commissioner of the AFL, wanted to bury the NFL rather than merge.

Thankfully for us all, cooler heads prevailed.

League officials for both the AFL and NFL negotiated a deal that would initially bring the leagues together under the guise of an ultimate championship game.

The Super Bowl was not originally named as such—it was originally known as the AFL-NFL World Championship game. The cumbersome name wouldn't last, however. Once again, we have Lamar Hunt to thank.

As Gerald Eskenazi wrote for the New York Times, Hunt's sobriquet for the title tilt was quickly adopted by the press and soon thereafter made official.

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Hunt recalled that in the discussion of playoff games, “the words flowed something like this: ‘No, not those games — the one I mean is the final game. You know, the Super Bowl.’ ”

He added: “My own feeling is that it probably registered in my head because my daughter, Sharron, and my son Lamar Jr. had a children’s toy called a Super Ball, and I probably interchanged the phonetics of ‘bowl’ and ‘ball.’ ”

But the first two games had a less compelling title: the A.F.L.-N.F.L. World Championship Game. After two years, Hunt’s Super Bowl interjection became the name of the game. Then, in a note to N.F.L. Commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt had the whimsical thought that Roman numerals gave the game “more dignity.” After the third Super Bowl, Roman numerals were grandfathered in.

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Indeed, Hunt was also the brains behind the Roman numerals, saying they made the game "much more magisterial." Perhaps he wasn't thinking about XLVIII.

Super Bowl I 

Who else to pen the opening stanza of Super Bowl lore than Vince Lombardi and his Packers?

The legendary coach and his squad had won the NFL Championship game for the second consecutive season.

Lombardi's boys were far too much for head coach Hank Stram's team, steamrolling the Chiefs 35-10 in a decidedly less-than-epic game. Backup Packers receiver Max McGee scored the first touchdown in Super Bowl history with a hangover, and quarterback Bart Starr won the game's first MVP award.

Both CBS and NBC broadcast the event—the first and last time two networks broadcast the event—and both networks taped over the original games as part of then-standard cost-saving practice.

The footage was thought to be completely lost until one copy recently surfaced.

Despite the magnitude of the game, the first Super Bowl drew just 26.8 million viewers, a far cry from the 45 million from the Greatest Game Ever Played. To put that into perspective, there were 26.1 million tweets about Super Bowl XLVII, which was watched by over 108 million viewers.

The slow start would be short-lived, though, as the ratings jumped for Super Bowl II, which saw victory for the Packers.

Broadway Joe's Performance

"We're gonna win on Sunday. I guarantee you."

Those prescient words sent ripples through the NFL that would become a tidal wave of success.

The AFL and NFL had come together, but few thought an AFL team could pose a real threat in the championship game. Hunt's Chiefs and Davis' Raiders were drubbed by Lombardi's Packers in the first two Super Bowls, and the Colts, led by quarterback Earl Morrall, were heavy favorites against the upstart Jets in Super Bowl III.

The NFL coaches were openly disdainful of the AFL, openly mocking the perceived inferior league. It was little surprise New York was an 18-point underdog.

Anonymous/Associated Press/Associated Press

Jets quarterback Joe Namath would have none of it, boldly guaranteeing a victory where few others saw any chance for the AFL champions. Namath uttered his proclamation after skipping the newly minted Super Bowl media day and being supposedly fined $50 for it—a far cry from the $100,000 fine a player might garner for skipping the circus today.

Little did the brash quarterback know what would come of coming through on his promise.

New York's defense cashed the checks Namath had written before the game, holding the Colts to seven points and leading the improbable victory. Namath did his part, throwing for 206 yards and avoiding turnovers.

New York's first and only Super Bowl victory cemented the AFL's merger with the NFL. The two leagues became one, creating a monster. 

The Acts

The spectacle that is the Super Bowl has evolved into much more than a football game.

From the media circus leading up to the game to the hours of pre- and post-game coverage, the Super Bowl has become an entertainment obsession. 

For some, the halftime show is an unwelcome and entirely too long distraction from the game. But there is an obvious market for the annual tableau, given how much time, effort and money is put into it these days. In fact, Madonna's halftime performance ratings eclipsed the game itself two years ago.

There was certainly nothing like the mind-melting, wardrobe-malfunctioning shows we see today, but the very first Super Bowl halftime had a musical performance. Of course, if you are a fan of college football, you will know what kind of show it was.

The first halftime show in Super Bowl history modestly featured the Grambling University and University of Arizona marching bands. Marching bands were the norm for the first few Super Bowls. That is certainly not the case today, though marching bands have been involved in halftime festivities.

It wasn't until Super Bowl VI that we saw a glimpse of what was to come.

Ella Fitzgerald headlined that halftime performance in 1972. It wasn't quite Beyonce, but her performance was a harbinger for today's annual mid-game extravaganza.

Even after Fitzgerald graced the halftime stage, it wasn't until the '90s that the halftime show really took off. Of course, who better to take things to the next level than a magical mouse?

Disney teamed up with New Kids on the Block to perform a somewhat bizarre halftime show at Super Bowl that wasn't actually aired until after the game because of Operation Desert Storm. But the bar was set after that, with big acts like Gloria Estefan and Michael Jackson following in consecutive years.

Like the NFL itself, Super Bowl halftime shows have become monstrous in size and spectacle.

The Steel Curtain Descends

The gaudy halftime acts we see today are antithetical by the smashmouth defense Pittsburgh brought to the NFL in the 1970s. Miami's perfect season and consecutive Super Bowl victories were buoyed by the No-Name Defense, but Pittsburgh took defense to new heights.

The Steelers won their first championship in dominant defensive fashion, holding the Vikings to six points. All in all, the Steelers held opponents to 18.3 points per Super Bowl in the '70s.

Head coach Chuck Noll would lead the Steelers to four championships in that span with big help from the likes of defensive end Joe Greene and linebacker Jack Lambert. Pittsburgh took an early lead in Super Bowl victories it would only relinquish to San Francisco for a short time in the '90s.

Somewhere in the middle of the Steel Curtain's drop rose America's team.

The Dallas Cowboys appeared in four Super Bowls in the '70s, winning two of them. Their Super Bowl XII victory over the Denver Broncos prompted a highlight video proclaiming them "America's Team," a moniker that has stuck through the ages.

Al Davis finally broke through with head coach John Madden at the helm for a big Super Bowl XI victory over the poor Minnesota Vikings, who lost four Super Bowl games during the '70s.

The Ads

A 30-second advertisement spot for the first Super Bowl cost a meager $37,500. Today that number exceeds $4 million.

Hence it should be no surprise companies spent an estimated $238 million on Super Bowl advertisements last year. The ads have become embedded into the game itself, often referred to as the reason to watch the game from non-football fans.

The sacrilege began 30 years ago, when we saw a game-changing commercial that still resonates in modern Super Bowl advertising. 

Apple's hammer-wielding renegade shattered the status quo. The 1984-inspired advertisement set the bar for other companies, eventually leading to the myriad outlandish, thoughtful or even controversial advertisements we see—or sometimes don't see—today.

The stunning commercial wasn't the first iconic Super Bowl ad, to be sure. "Mean" Joe Greene's jersey toss and Master Lock's "bulletproof" lock have lived on in nostalgia, but director Ridley Scott's epic spot instantly became the gold standard.

Who can forget the Bud Bowl series from the '90s or the Budweiser frogs that followed? Who can help but laugh at Terry Tate, Office Linebacker? Anybody in the mood to eat a Snickers or a bag of Doritos?

West Coast Offensive

Bill Walsh didn't invent the West Coast offense, but he added some jet fuel and took off with the 49ers.

Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young and Co. broke several Super Bowl records in their combined five Super Bowl victories through the '80s and '90s. They were catalysts for big scoring in the Big Game—Super Bowls in the '70s averaged just 34.7 total points per game, compared to 48.2 in the '80s.

Montana led the 49ers to the first of five NFL titles with a 26-21 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XVI. San Francisco would score the most points in Super Bowl history with a 55-10 beatdown of the Broncos in 1990.

Of course, the 49ers weren't the only team to win it all during that span.

The Bears capped arguably the most dominant season in NFL history with a 46-10 thrashing of the Patriots in Super Bowl XX. Doug Williams became the first and only African-American quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl—or any NFL championship game, for that matter—when Washington ran roughshod over John Elway's Broncos in 1988.

Business was already booming, and there were still 25 more years of Super Bowl history to be written.

Bills, Cowboys and John Elway

The '90s were bookended by Elway and the Broncos in drastically different circumstances.

San Francisco mauled Denver in aforementioned Super Bowl XXIV, Joe Montana's fourth and final championship. Elway finally broke through with a Super Bowl XXXII, highlighted by Elway's helicopter heroics. He led the Broncos to another championship in 1999 before retiring on top.

There was plenty of intrigue in between.

One of the AFL's original teams, the Buffalo Bills, had an ignominious Super Bowl run. Quarterback Jim Kelly's squad made an impressive four consecutive Super Bowl games starting in 1991, but they were unable to win any of them.

It started with a missed field goal by Bills kicker Scott Norwood and ended with a second-consecutive drubbing at the hands of the mighty Cowboys. 

A New Millennium

If the new millennium belongs to any team, it's the Patriots.

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady teamed up in unlikely fashion—particularly because of Brady's well-documented rise from sixth-round pick to league MVP—and stormed to football dominance at the outset of the 2000s.

The New England Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years to start off the 2000s. They would have won fourth and fifth titles were it not for quarterback Eli Manning and those pesky Giants, who were kryptonite to the vaunted Patriots in recent years.

Pittsburgh squeezed in its record sixth Super Bowl championship in the middle of it all, a narrow victory against the championship-starved Arizona Cardinals. The Packers would deny the Steelers a seventh title two years later.

We have been privileged to see a run of great Super Bowl games. Five of the past six and nine of the past 14 games have been decided by a touchdown or less, and we have seen some spectacular finishes in many of those games.

What Lies Ahead

The Broncos and Seattle Seahawks clash this week in a symbolic battle of the old guard versus the new. Quarterback Peyton Manning looks to add to his long legacy with the Broncos—who have made it to plenty of Super Bowl games over the years—while newcomer Russell Wilson tries to build his early in Seattle's second title tilt appearance in franchise history.

We might be living in a golden age when it comes to the NFL. The league can only climb so high, after all, and lawsuits and safety issues threaten the future. 

Regardless of what happens in the future, the Super Bowl has seen an incredible run to date, and we might have a pair of kickers to thank for it all.

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