Super Bowl Winners
The history of the Super Bowl dates back to 4 decades ago and it started with 2 things: the merging of the two most prominent football association, the American Football League and the National Football league, and of course who can forget about that oh so popular bouncy rubber ball!
Ironically, the National Football League and the American Football League are the greatest competitive rivals in the history of sports. The NFL was incepted in 1920, while the AFLT began their first play in 1960. The intense competition between the players not to mention the forceful war between the fans forced both leagues to serious merger talks in 1966. They have then decided and culminated their agreements; following it is the announcement of a successful merger on June 8, 1966.
The agreement between the AFL and the NFL happened in 1966 after the merger NFL-AFL World Championship Game took place. During the negotiations, Lamar Hunt, Kansas City Chief Owner thought of the phrase Super Bowl as an informal nick name describing the Championship game, after seeing his daughter playing with her favorite toy, the Super Ball. Lamar Hunt did not mean to have the name formalized, he only meant for the name to be a stop-gap until they could think of a better name.
The very first NFL-AFL championship happened in 1967. The official title of the championship game was then The NFL-AFL World Championship Game. With the name being quite a mouthful, the media as well as the fans took the unofficial but short name Super Bowl rather better. Thus, in 1969, since they couldn’t come up with anything better, plus the people are already accustomed to the unofficial name better, the phrase Super Bowl became official.
Since the congregation of two giant football leagues, Green Bay Packers (NFL member) became the Super Bowl winners for two consecutive years. Convincingly, this phenomenon got the people to think if AFL teams could even compete with the NFL team. The very next year, The Jets of the New York football team became the subsequent Super Bowl winners, the first-ever win by the AFL team. The fourth NFL-AFL season opened and the Kansas City Chiefs (another AFL team) made their way to be crowned as the Super Bowl Champions, evening the score at 2-2.
The Super Bowl winners are then awarded by the grandiose and the most prominent Vince Lombardi trophies. These trophies are pure sterling silver and are currently worth $25,000 a piece. Unlike other famous sporting leagues like the Stanley Dup, new Lombardi trophies are made every season and are then giving to the winning team for them to keep. Another FYI is that during the awarding of these trophies to the Super Bowl winners, the committee always keeps a spare trophy just in case the other one get accidentally destroyed due to the celebration. At least now you know.
Until now, there has been a great exchange of Super Bowl wins between the NFL members and the AFL. However, in the last four recent seasons of the Super Bowl, it has been the AFL who has been winning. The last winning by an NFL member was in the Super Bowl XXXVII season in 2003 by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The most recent Super Bowl winners were the Indianapolis Colts (AFL), where they bagged a 29-17 score against the Chicago Bears.
Today, there may be no war between the NFL and the AFL but the games are still rolling and nobody still knows who will win the Super bowl in the next few seasons. Times are fast, the games are still on going. Let us just wait until February of 2008 to see who the next Super Bowl winners will be.