Super Bowl: It Is Not Just a Game

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Does anyone care for Sunday night football? This is not just any Sunday night NFL game, but the biggest sporting event in the world that 151 million people will watch in 232 different countries. (“By the Numbers”). Welcome to the Super Bowl. The huge night that everyone looks forward to is a “billion-dollar economic engine that is bigger than the Gross Domestic Product of many nations” (John 3). Although the Super Bowl is only played once a year, it is the biggest, most-widely known game in American history and the most-widely viewed television spectacle in the world.

It all started in 1920 with the fourteen-league American Professional Football Association. The league broke into two competing rivals, the National Football League and the American Football League. The NFL conquered the sport until the 1960s when a new, more dominant and competitive AFL formed. Because of this new spark, many fans converted to supporting and cheering for the AFL teams (“NFL Super Bowl”). The tension grew between the two leagues, and there were many disagreements about who actually was the best team in the nation. Because Americans are born with a competitive spirit, the champions of the AFL and NFL decided to play each other for a championship game, the Super Bowl. The first Super Bowl was played on January 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The Green Bay Packers took on the Kansas City Chiefs in front of almost 62,000 fans (Anderson 69). The Packers collected a victory for the NFL on the very first Super Bowl Sunday. Three years later, when each league had two Super Bowl wins under their belt, the NFL and AFL decided to join together to form one league consisting of two conferences, the NFC and AFC (Anderson 75). Even though t...

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