The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event of the year in America and it has become a tradition to gather to watch the big game. If you love watching the Super Bowl with your friends, then you might also be interested in learning a little bit about the history of the Super Bowl. Read on to learn more about how the big game came to be.
The Very First Super Bowl
The very first Super Bowl was actually originally called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. It was named the Super Bowl after the fact, but it’s undeniable that this game was a big deal. The NFL and the AFL were separate entities at this point and the game between the two top teams of these leagues would settle who was the best in 1967. The Green Bay Packers of the NFL defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL 35-10.
How the Name Came to Be
Learning how the name Super Bowl came to be is a little more ambiguous. There are several stories about this, but it is widely thought that Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt came up with the name. It is said that he found his daughter playing with a “super ball” one day and then came up with the name Super Bowl. He suggested the name for the big game between the Chiefs and the Packers, but NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle thought the name didn’t have the right tone for such an important game.
Big Television Audience
The first Super Bowl drew a huge television audience for the time. It is estimated that the game was viewed by 60 million people between two different television networks. The first Super Bowl was a joint broadcast between CBS and NBC. The reason that two networks carried the game is that NBC had the rights to air AFL games while CBS had the rights to air NFL games.
Sixty million viewers were a huge number for the year 1967 and it helped to popularize the sport of football even more. Of course, modern Super Bowls are regularly viewed by more than 100 million people, but that doesn’t change the significance of the viewership of Super Bowl I. This was the beginning of big things for professional football.