The Super Bowl is the final contest of the professional
season and determines the league's annual champion.
Currently the Super Bowl routinely finishes among the
all-time top 50 programs in television ratings, and the
1994 game reached an estimated 750 million viewers
around the world. Now probably the most important
single-day sporting event in the United States, the
Super Bowl had more modest beginnings.
In 1967 the
champions of the American Football League (which merged
with the NFL in 1970) and the NFL met in what was called
the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The name was later
shortened to Super Bowl, named after a child's toy, the
Super Ball. In this first game, the Green Bay Packers
beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. The Los Angeles
Coliseum, site of the game, fell far short of a sellout,
although tickets were only $10 each. In comparison, the
highest ticket price at the 1994 Super Bowl reached
$250, with scalpers illegally charging more than twice
that much. |
