The Origins of Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. This game is held at a pre-selected site, usually a city that hosts an NFL team. The game was created as part of a merger agreement between the NFL and its then-rival league, the American Football League (AFL). It was agreed that the two leagues’ champion teams would play in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the merger was to officially begin in 1970.

It is the second-largest day for U.S. food consumption, after Thanksgiving Day.In addition, the Super Bowl has frequently been the most watched American television broadcast of the year.The Super Bowl is also among the most watched sporting events in the world, mostly due to North American audiences, and is second to association football’s UEFA Champions League final as the most watched annual sporting event worldwide.

For four decades after its 1920 inception, the NFL successfully fended off several rival leagues. However, in 1960, it encountered its most serious competitor when the American Football League (AFL) was formed. The AFL vied heavily with the NFL for both players and fans, but by the middle of the decade the strain of competition led to serious merger talks between the two leagues. The “Super Bowl” name was derived from the bowl game, a term used to describe post-season college football games. The original “bowl game” was the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California, which was first played in 1902 as the “Tournament East-West football game” as part of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses and moved to the new Rose Bowl Stadium in 1923. The stadium got its name from the fact that the game played there was part of the Tournament of Roses.The game is played annually on a Sunday as the final game of the NFL Playoffs. Originally, the game took place in early to mid-January, following a fourteen-game regular season and two rounds of playoffs. Over the years, the date of the Super Bowl has progressed from the second Sunday in January, to the third, then the fourth Sunday in January; the game is currently played on the first Sunday in February.

The winning team receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the coach of the Green Bay Packers, who won the first two Super Bowl games and three of the five preceding NFL championships in 1961, 1962, and 1965. Following his death in September 1970, the trophy was named the Vince Lombardi Trophy, and was first awarded as such to the Baltimore Colts following their win in Super Bowl Vs in Miami.