Super Bowl
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The Super Bowl is the world championship game of professional American football. It is the championship game of the National Football League, and is the most important American football competition.
An AFL-NFL Championship Game was first played after the 1966 football season on January 15, 1967, between the champions of the American Football League and the NFL. The game was a result of the merger agreement between the two leagues that took full effect for the 1970 season. The third such game, after the 1968 season, was called the "Super Bowl", and that name is now used to refer to the first two AFL-NFL Championship Games as well. After the 1970 season, the game reverted from an essentially interleague championship to the NFL championship, featuring the champions of the NFL's two conferences, the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference.
Previous to the 1966 football season, American professional football's championship games were played for various league championships, and games were not played between league champions. The game was called the "All-America Football Conference Championship Game", the "American Football League Championship Game" or the "NFL Championship Game", depending on the league playing it. (See: Professional American football championship games and National Football League championships)
Following Apple Computer's 1984 commercial announcing the Apple Macintosh computer, directed by Ridley Scott, the broadcast of the Super Bowl became the premier showcase for high concept or simply extravagantly expensive commercials. Famous commercial campaigns include the Budweiser "Bud Bowl" campaign, and the 1999 and 2000 dot-com ads.
The Super Bowl tends to have a high Nielsen Rating which ranges around 40.0. An estimated 80 to 90 million Americans watch a Super Bowl each year. The most watched Super Bowl was 1998's Super Bowl XXXII between the Denver Broncos and Green Bay Packers which lured 90 million viewers.
Incidentally, home field advantage in Super Bowls are at the discretion of the NFL, and are sometimes not necessarily determined by strength of record going into the Super Bowl. Also, with the exception of Super Bowls XI, XIV, XVII, XIX, XXI, and XXVII (which were played on neutral sites, cities which did not have an NFL team at the time of the games), no one NFL team has ever played the Super Bowl on its own home turf, although Super Bowl XIX (which involved the San Francisco 49ers) was played in Stanford, California, in the vicinity of the 49ers, and Super Bowl XIV (which involved the Los Angeles Rams) was played at the nearby Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The Houston Texans were the host team for Super Bowl XXXVIII, played in Houston, but they did not even make the playoffs in the 2003-2004 season.
Game Results
See also
External links
| NFL Super Bowls I 1967 | II 1968 | III 1969 | IV 1970 | V 1971 | VI 1972 | VII 1973 | VIII 1974 | IX 1975 | X 1976 XI 1977 | XII 1978 | XIII 1979 | XIV 1980 | XV 1981 | XVI 1982 | XVII 1983 | XVIII 1984 | XIX 1985 | XX 1986 XXI 1987 | XXII 1988 | XXIII 1989 | XXIV 1990 | XXV 1991 | XXVI 1992 | XXVII 1993 | XXVIII 1994 | XXIX 1995 | XXX 1996 XXXI 1997 | XXXII 1998 | XXXIII 1999 | XXXIV 2000 | XXXV 2001 | XXXVI 2002 | XXXVII 2003 | XXXVIII 2004 | XXXIX 2005 | XL 2006 |
da:Super Bowl de:Super Bowl fr:Super Bowl it:Super Bowl ja:スーパーボウル nl:Super Bowl
