It began as nothing more than a friendly - an opportunity for professional American football to get additional TV exposure and hopefully attract new fans.
Football still played a distant second fiddle to baseball in the orchestra of American sport in the late 1960s, but that was about to change.
The year was 1969, when charismatic, flamboyant New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath led his team to an upset over the heavily favoured Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
 |
Namath helped cement the Super Bowl's appeal
|
The appeal of "Broadway Joe", and the idea that a fledgling American Football League side could beat a team from the long-established National Football League, changed the status of the event.
"It made people pay attention," veteran NFL scribe Art Spander, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, told this website.
"And of course, it was doubly important because it's a New York team."
Football had made its way out of the small towns into the big cities of America, and the public began to watch in record numbers.
The sport of football has grown exponentially since 1969 and at the centre of its success is the Super Bowl, the single biggest annual event in American sport, and American television, by far.
The day of the game, known simply as "Super Bowl Sunday," has become something of an unofficial national holiday in the States.
Nearly everyone - sports fan or not, man or woman, adult or child - will gather in front of a television and watch the game.
The five most-watched TV programmes in American history are all Super Bowl broadcasts.
|
SUPER BOWL XXXVIII
|
There are Super Bowl parties throughout the country and, needless to say, bars are filled to capacity for the game.
Its popularity is helped by the fact that the Super Bowl is a solitary event, two weeks removed from the end of the NFL Conference play-offs.
This allows for a massive amount of hype - and hyperbole - in a build-up that borders on media overload.
"All the pre-game hype makes people think they're going to see something they've never seen before," said Spander.
Rarely has that been the case, as the majority of Super Bowls have been one-sided contests, but it has not hurt the allure of the game.
The quality of the actual production of the Super Bowl is so high that Americans enjoy watching even if the game itself isn't close.
|
Entertainment's biggest names feature in the Super Bowl show
|
There are cameras and microphones everywhere to make sure no detail is missed and, for a sport as custom-tailored for the screen as football is, it makes for a great show.
"Television made football because you see so much more than you see at the stadium," says Spander.
"You see the close-ups, you see the instant replays. Football became America's game because of television."
Come 1 February 2004, football will be on its biggest stage once again, in Houston this time, and you can bet all of America will be watching.
"The Super Bowl is America," Spander told BBC Sport. "Everybody else has the World Cup, and we have the Super Bowl."
~RS~a~RS~Domestic~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~39~RS~){kind=small}
MMX
E-mail this to a friend
Printable version
