History of the Super Bowl

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Here in America, it is the week of the Super Bowl. This is the culmination of the professional football season. I want to provide a history lesson of how we got to this point ahead of the game itself.

As I’ve talked about before, games and sports have an incredibly long history. People have been trying to entertain themselves since the beginning of time. American football is really no different. There was a game that was played in ancient Greece that had some similarities, and football also derives from soccer and rugby.

Most sources agree that the start of football was a college match in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton Universities. Colleges, especially Ivy League schools, continued to play variations of this game with different rules. In 1876, the first set of rules were written down. In 1880, the rules were changed a little more into the game we know today, including establishing the line of scrimmage.

As football began to take shape as a more distinct sport, it became more popular, especially in colleges. A key moment came in 1892 when the first person was paid to play the game. This made him the first professional football player. The first professional team played in 1895. In 1898, a team was founded on the south side of Chicago. They were the Morgan Athletic Club and then became the Chicago Cardinals. They moved to St. Louis and today are the Arizona Cardinals (the oldest continuously operating football team).

The first league was formed in 1902 and called the National Football League. It was formed by baseball players who also wanted to compete in football. They held a best-of-5 World Series that lasted for two seasons. In 1904, Charles Follis became the first professional African-American player. After the World Series, football popularity spread to Ohio, where they had seven professional teams. But the popularity in Ohio declined quickly because 1906 was marred by a betting scandal and high salaries that owners couldn’t afford to pay. Popularity once again rose in 1916 when Canton, Ohio, signed a contract with Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe was a Native American Olympian athlete.

Due to the lack of consistency across the country, fourteen teams got together and formed the American Professional Football Association in 1920. Fourteen turned into twenty-two in 1921. They changed their name to the National Football League in 1922. Scandals, lack of appropriate schedules, and even lack of finite season ends rocked the early years of the NFL. After the Staley Swindle of 1921, the league was forced to adopt an end to the season. For the rest of the 1920s, whoever had the best record at the end of the season won the title.

That changed in 1932. The Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans had the same record by the end of the season. The league voted for a playoff game to determine the winner. The idea of the playoff game was so popular that the entire league restructured itself into two divisions. The winner of each division would then face each other to determine the overall champion.

Leagues and teams came and went. Some teams merged in World War II to help with temporary player shortages. In 1950, the Los Angeles Rams became the first team to televise their schedule. The Baltimore Colts were the first NFL team to have cheerleaders. The NFL Players Association formed in 1956 as a union to protect the players. In 1958, the championship game for the first time went into sudden-death overtime. This is now commonly referred to as “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” Both the excitement of the game itself and the television coverage it received made football an incredibly popular sport across the nation.

In 1959, A Texas businessman created the American Football League, or AFL. While this was the fourth iteration of the name, this one was the most successful. They were able to acquire many talented players from smaller colleges and historically black colleges. The league became a successful competition to the NFL and they merged partially in 1966. They would play a season-ending game, the NFL-AFL World Championship. Two years later, they became just the National Football League.

Bowl games had been a common practice in college football since the 1920s. While not originally named “______ Bowl”, the names often got shortened due to some stadiums looking like bowls. The owner of the AFL Kansas City Chiefs, Lamar Hunt, is credited with being the first one to refer to the game as the “Super Bowl.” The popularity of this term grew in the media until it became the official term. Since the third championship, it has always been called that. The trophy that the teams compete to win is called the Vince Lombardi trophy. Lombardi was the coach of the Green Bay Packers who won the first two Super Bowl games in 1967 and 1968. Lombardi also won five championships prior to the merge of the two leagues.

It was really fascinating to step outside of my usual branch of knowledge. I learned so much myself. I love watching football, and it was cool to see how things have evolved over the years and how we got to this point. When it comes to studying the history behind sports, however, I think I’ll stick to baseball. Nevertheless, I learned something new and I hope you did too!

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