Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Super Bowl

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

One Sunday every year, the United States celebrates its biggest non-official holiday: Super Bowl Sunday. The championship game of the National Football League is almost always the biggest television audience of the year, and one of the most expensive tickets for any sporting event. However, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, it wasn’t even called the Super Bowl. Learn more about the Super Bowl and how it became so big on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One day every year, the United States celebrates its biggest non-official holiday, Super Bowl Sunday. The championship game of the National Football League is almost always the biggest televised audience of the year, and one of the most expensive tickets for any sporting event in the world. However, it wasn't always that way. In fact, it wasn't even called the Super Bowl. Learn more about the Super Bowl and how it became so big on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Scotty Vest. If you've ever been to a professional sporting event, you know that once you're inside, you are a captive consumer and they get you on the high price of food. Wouldn't it be great, hypothetically, if you could bring in your own food and drink unobtrusively? If one were to do this, and of course I'm not recommending it, you'd want to have some clothing with ample pockets to hold said contraband food. If you wanted to take this strategy, you couldn't do any better than to wear some Scotty Vest gear to the game. You could probably stash enough food and drink to pay for your ticket.

You can get 15% off your next order by going to ScottyVest.com and using coupon code everything everywhere, all one word, at checkout. We should probably start this discussion of the Super Bowl with a question which is never asked amongst Americans and probably befuddles people outside of the United States. Why do we call big American football games bowls? The answer to this question is actually pretty straightforward. The very early football stadiums were called bowls because they were shaped like a bowl with a single tier of seats. In particular, the tradition stems from the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California. When it was built in 1923,

the Tournament of Rose's game became known as the Rose Bowl game, in reference to the stadium. It was a game which was played between the champions of the Big Ten Conference in the Midwest and the Big 12 conference in the West Coast in college football. Over time, other cities, seeing the success of the Rose Bowl,

began hosting special games themselves. Copying the Rose Bowl, they began using the word bowl to describe their games. The Cotton Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl and the Sun Bowl were all established in the 1930s. The use of the word bowl was limited to college football games until the NFL adopted the term Pro Bowl for their All-Star game in 1951. Other games have earned the moniker bowl after the fact if the game was noteworthy.

Most notable was the Ice Bowl played between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys in the 1967 NFL championship game. The game was played at temperatures of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 20, degrees Celsius, with wind chills of up to minus 48 degrees Fahrenheit. It remains the coldest NFL game ever played. The Super Bowl wasn't originally called the Super Bowl. In the 1950s, a rival football league, the American Football League, was created to compete with the established National Football League.

At first, the league wasn't much of a threat. However, the AFL soon began competing with the NFL for college players. The AFL got a television deal with NBC and was starting to be taken seriously. Dallas Cowboys owner Tech Schramm reached out to AFL owners, and in 1966, the two leagues agreed to merge. The official merger would take place in 1970, but before that, each league's champion would compete in an end-of-season game,

which was called the AFL-NFL championship game. The Kansas City chiefs owner Lamar Hunt began informally calling the game the Super Bowl, based on a Super Bowl that his daughter was playing with. informally, everyone used the term Super Bowl to refer to the game, but it wasn't officially given that name until the third game in 1969. The first game was between the Green Bay Packers, fresh off their historic Ice Bowl win, and the Kansas City Chiefs. The NFL was seen as the Elder and Better League.

Everyone assumed that the NFL would easily beat the AFL team. In the end, they did exactly that with the Packers winning 35 to 10, but the game was close at the start. The game was not sold out, even though tickets were only sold for $12. No one knew that the game was going to become a big deal. In fact, many people thought it was just a gimmick, and the real championship already took place two weeks before. It was the only Super Bowl to have been broadcast by two networks. NBC had the rights to NFL games, and CBS had the rights to NFL games, so both networks broadcast the game.

Despite having two networks showing the game, all video copies of the game were lost for decades. Both networks erased the tapes that had copies of the game as a cost-saving measure. It wasn't until 2011 that a colored videotape was discovered in a Pennsylvania addict that contained most of the game except for the third quarter. In 2016, the NFL announced that they had found enough footage to put together all the plays of the game. Super Bowl 2 was still officially called the AFL-NFL championship game, but it was widely called the Super Bowl at this point. The Packers once again won, beating the Oakland Raiders.

The third Super Bowl really changed the status of the game. Prior to Super Bowl 3, people were worried that the divide between the NFL and the AFL was too great, and that the games would be lopsided for years. When the New York Jets of the AFL defeated the Baltimore Colts of the NFL, the game was given life as it was now considered a real competition. The trophy given to the winning team was originally designed by NFL Commissioner Pete Roselle in 1966, and it was created by Tiffany and Company. The trophy is made of sterling silver and has become one of the most iconic awards in all of sports.

In Super Bowl 5, the trophy was named the Vince Lombardi trophy, after coach Vince Lombardi, who coached the first two winning Super Bowl teams with the Green Bay Packers. He had passed away in 1970. Since the creation of the Super Bowl, there are several traditions and superlatives which have been established around it. Of the largest television audiences in American history, 29 of the top 30 have been Super Bowls. The only other program to crack the top 30 was the series finale of MASH in 1983. The Super Bowl is the day of the year with the second largest consumption of food in the United States.

It's second only to Thanksgiving. It's by far the biggest day of the year for gambling. Over $4.3 billion is expected to be bet in 2021, which will set an all-time record. They began using Roman numbers to delineate each game with Super Bowl 5. The only exception to this was Super Bowl 50, because it was thought that Super Bowl L just didn't flow off the tongue. The average cost of a ticket for the last five Super Bowls has been $5,500. The price on the secondary market was over $8,300. The New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers share the record for the most wins at six.

The Patriots and the Denver Broncos share the record for the most losses at five. There are four NFL teams that have never appeared in a Super Bowl. the Cleveland Browns, the Detroit Lions, the Houston Texans, and the Jacksonville Jaguars. All of the teams except the Browns have at least hosted a Super Bowl. The cost of a Super Bowl ad is the highest of any televised event each year. In 2020, the cost of a 30-second ad was $5.6 million. There has always been a rumor of water systems being stressed during the Super Bowl because everyone would flush the toilet at the same time during commercials and halftime.

This is an urban myth. Water systems are not stressed, however, you can clearly see when key moments of the game happen by looking at water usage statistics. The halftime main entertainment for the Super Bowl is not paid. However, the publicity is worth tens of millions of dollars and usually leads to a spike in album and ticket sales. Nonetheless, about $10 million is spent on the halftime show each year

paying for extras, stages, and other parts of the show. After the 2017 Super Bowl, where Lady Gaga, was the halftime show, she saw a 1,000% increased in album sales the next day. Believe it or not, in 55 years, no sitting president has ever attended a Super Bowl. However, several vice presidents have. The very first touchdown ever scored in Super Bowl 1 was scored by Green Bay Packer Max McGee, who was hungover at the time as he was out late the night before drinking. Traditionally, the mayors of the cities of the teams in the Super Bowl will place a wager on the game.

The wager usually consists of some product made in each city. For Super Bowl 55, the mayor of Tampa Bay has put up cigars and craft beers. The mayor of Kansas City has put up Kansas City barbecue. Super Bowl 55 will also be the first time that a team will play in their home stadium. Raymond James Stadium is the home field for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As the game is usually played on a neutral field, the NFC is considered the home team in odd-numbered years, and the AFC is the home team in even-numbered years. So for those of you in the United States, you can join in and be one of the estimated 110 million people who will watch at least some of the game.

Even if you aren't American, if you can, it's probably worth tuning in for at least part of the game, so you can witness this most unique American spectacle. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James McAlla. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. Remember to leave a five-star review to get your review read on the show. They can be left at Apple Podcasts, Podcasts, Podcast Republic, or wherever you listen to the show. Also, you can help support the show over at patreon.com. Patrons can get merchandise like t-shirts and hoodies, as well as having direct access to provide suggestions for future episodes.