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

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

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 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. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ 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 television audience of the year in the United States and is one of the most expensive tickets for any sporting event. However, it wasn't always that way. In fact, originally, 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. We should probably start this discussion of the Super Bowl with a question that 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 bowls with a single tier of seats. In particular, the name stems from the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California. When it was built in 1923, the Tournament of Roses 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 Big, Big Ten and Big 12 college football conferences. 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 Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sun Bowl were all established in the 1930s. The use of the word bowl was originally 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 Fahrenheit or minus 26 Celsius with wind chills of minus 48 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 new league wasn't much of a threat. However, the AFL soon began competing with the NFL for players. The AFL got a television deal with NBC and was starting to be taken seriously. Dallas Cowboys owner Tex Schram reached out to AFL owners, and in 1966, the two leagues agreed to a merger. 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-N-FL 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 began using 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 win in the Ice Bowl, 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.

And in the end, that's exactly what happened in the first game with the Packers winning 35 to 10. But the game was sort of close at the start. The game wasn't sold out, even though tickets were only $12. Nobody really knew that the game was going to become a big deal. In fact, many people thought that it was just a gimmick and that the Real Championship had already taken place two weeks before. It was the only Super Bowl to have been broadcast by two networks. NBC had the rights to AFL games and CBS had the rights to NFL games, so both networks

broadcast the game. Despite two networks showing the game, all 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 color videotape was discovered in a Pennsylvania attic that contained most of the game except for the third quarter. By 2016, the NFL announced that they had found enough footage to put together all of the plays of the first Super Bowl. 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 NFL was simply too great in 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 new 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 was created by Tiffany and Company. The trophy is made of sterling silver and has become one of the most iconic awards in sports. In Super Bowl 5, the trophy was named the Vince Lombardi Trophy, after Vince Lombardi, the coach of the first two winning Super Bowl teams, the Green Bay Packers, who passed away in 1970. Since the creation of the Super Bowl, several traditions and superlatives have been established around it. Of the largest television audiences in American history for regularly scheduled broadcasts, 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. For any TV audience in the U.S., Eight of the ten most watched television programs in U.S. history have been Super Bowls. The other two were the Apollo 11 moon landing and the resignation of Richard Nixon. Despite rumors to the contrary, the Super Bowl is not the most watched television program in the world. In fact, it isn't even close, with the finals of the FIFA World Cup getting much larger audiences. And this shouldn't be a surprise considering that American football really doesn't have much interest outside the United States and Canada. The estimated audience for Super Bowl 58 in 20,

2024 will be 115 million people in the U.S. alone. Surprisingly, despite ratings for television having dropped across the board, the Super Bowl audience keeps getting bigger. The Super Bowl is the day of the year with the second highest consumption of food in the United States, just behind Thanksgiving. It is by far the biggest day of the year for gambling. Over $23 billion is expected to be bet in 2024, which will set an all-time record. and that is up from just $16 billion in 2023.

The dramatic increase in betting is due to the increase in legal sports betting in many states. The use of Roman numbers to delineate each bowl game started with Super Bowl 5. The only exception to this rule was Super Bowl 50 because it was thought that Super Bowl L just didn't look good. The average cost of a ticket for the last five Super Bowls has been $5,500. and the price on the secondary market was over $8,000. And to buy a luxury suite at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas in 2024 will run you $1.4 million. 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.

Four NFL teams have never appeared in a Super Bowl. The Cleveland Browns, the Detroit Lions, the Houston Texans and the Jacksonville Jaguars. The cost of a Super Bowl commercial is the highest of any television event each year. In 2024, the cost of a 30-second ad will be $7 million. And to put that into perspective, a 30-second ad for Super Bowl 1 was just $37,000. Commercials are actually the highlight of the game for many people. There are many large companies that will prepare their best advertisements to air during the Super Bowl,

and they'll often spend as much money on the production of a commercial as for the ad-sperson. spot itself. Several years ago, one glue company called Lactite spent its entire annual budget on one 30-second ad. There's always been a rumor of water systems being stressed during the Super Bowl because everybody 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 stats. The halftime main event for the Super Bowl is not a paid position. However, the publicity is worth tens of millions of dollars and usually leads to a spike in album and ticket sales. For example, after the 2017 Super Bowl where Lady Gaga

was the halftime show, she saw a 1,000% increase in album sales the very next day. Nonetheless, about $10 million is spent on the halftime show, paying for extras, stages, and other parts of the show like pyrotechnics. Believe it or not, in 58 years, no sitting president has ever attended a Super Bowl. However, several vice presidents have. The very first touchdown ever recorded in Super Bowl history was scored by Green Bay Packer Max McGee, who was hung over at the time and was out late the night before drinking. One of the reasons he was out late and drinking is because nobody really took the game seriously at first. 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 58, the mayor of San Francisco has put up dungeness crab from Fisherman's Wharf, and the mayor of Kansas City has put up Kansas City barbecue from Gates Barbecue Ribs, which, by the way, if you're ever in Kansas City, I highly recommend visiting. Super Bowl 55 was the first time that a team played in their home stadium. Raymond James Stadium in Tampa was the home field for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who happened to have won the NFC Championship that year. 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 considered the home team in even-numbered years. So for those of you in the United States, you can join in and become one of the estimated 115 million people who will watch at least some part of the game. Even if you aren't American and have absolutely no interest in the NFL, it's probably worth tuning in for a few minutes to witness this most unique American spectacle. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon.

Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified of future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.