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Super Bowl

Posted by ESC on November 15, 2003

In Reply to: Super Bowl posted by Brian from Shawnee on November 14, 2003

: I've heard that the Super Bowl (Championship game of the National Football League of the United States) was not called the Super Bowl until the 3rd Super Bowl in 1969. I was pretty young then so I don't remember.

: They say the original title was something dry like "The AFL-NFL Championship", which was fine when the game was won every year by Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. But a New York sportswriter wanted to come up with a new name that would do justice to the star power of Jets quarterback Broadway Joe Namath, so he informally dubbed it "The Super Bowl" and the name caught on.

: Any truth to that, or is it just Jet fan propaganda?

Looks like I found a different date but no origin yet. The 1967 could just mean when the teams started playing, not the actual naming.

SUPER BOWL - "A final contest between the outstanding contenders. The term alludes to the Super Bowl of football, the championship game between the best teams of the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference respectively. This Super Bowl has been held annually since 1967, when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Los Angeles. In the late 20th century, the term was gradually transferred to the other competitions determining a final champion, at first to other sports (Super Bowl of Bowling, Roller Skating, etc.) and then to nonathletic contests, such as spelling bees. "Southpaws & Sunday Punches and other Sporting Expressions" by Christine Ammer (Penguin Books, New York, 1993).

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