We want the Tremendous Bowl for greater than multimillion-dollar TV advertisements and attractive extravaganza halftime exhibits. We additionally want it to fortunately prod us into senseless discussions about semi-meaningless issues.
So, let’s check out this NFL three-peat factor.
Because the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs closed their current semifinal victory, the dialogue within the community broadcast sales space turned to the Chiefs’ alternative to win their third straight Tremendous Bowl. That three-peat was labeled “unprecedented,” and hundreds of Inexperienced Bay Packers followers, once they heard that, sat straight up of their straightforward chairs.
The phrase “unprecedented” is definitely correct, however depending on semantics. It’s unprecedented for the official Tremendous Bowl however there are asterisks.
The Packers, who gained NFL titles below Curly Lambeau in 1929, ’30 and ’31, gained the title once more below Vince Lombardi to finish the 1965 season, beating the Cleveland Browns within the championship recreation 23-12. The sport was performed Jan. 2, 1966, marking the primary NFL title recreation performed in January. It additionally turned the primary leg of the subsequent Packers triple, 1965 to 1967.
On Jan. 1, 1967, the Packers beat the Cowboys in Dallas 34-27 for his or her second straight NFL title, however there was a brand new wrinkle. The rival American Soccer League wanted to be proven that it was inferior, in order that ongoing negotiations for a merger of the leagues would give probably the most leverage to the assumed-superior NFL. Nothing like a great beating on the sector to carry dividends on the bargaining desk.
So, a recreation was created, and it didn’t have a brilliant identify — the AFL-NFL World Championship Sport. It matched the poor little Chiefs, champions of the AFL, in opposition to the large NFL bullies, the Packers.
The sport was scheduled on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It didn’t come near promoting out and the media mingled with the gamers and coaches round resort swimming swimming pools, identical to they could have earlier than an exhibition recreation in August — just about what this was.
The NFL quest for a bargaining chip labored. On Jan. 15, 1967, the Packers, a number of of them reportedly seeing the sights of L.A. properly into the evening earlier than the sport, nonetheless beat up on the Chiefs, 35-10.
This recreation was not immediately labeled “Tremendous Bowl.” commissioner Pete Rozelle of the NFL hated the label, as soon as it was introduced up by AFL commissioner Lamar Hunt, who had gotten the concept from one among his kids’s toys, a Tremendous Ball. Rozelle thought the phrase “tremendous” was principally slang and too undignified for his league. By phrase of mouth, nonetheless, and possibly the necessity of some newspaper columnists to jazz up the sport, Tremendous Bowl caught. It was made the official moniker in 1969, however used freely earlier than that.
In the midst of all this negotiating and game-naming confusion, the Packers gained once more, taking the NFL title on Dec. 31, 1967 within the well-known Ice Bowl recreation in Inexperienced Bay.
Eventually word-of-mouth rely, 11,056,200 folks had reported they had been there. It is a Wisconsin badge of honor to have been on the Ice Bowl, a sign of each Midwestern hardiness and madness. The temperature was minus-13 with a wind-chill of minus-36. The gamers couldn’t begin their vehicles to go dwelling afterward, and the referees needed to hold their whistles out of their mouths for concern of getting them freeze to their lips.
The Packers gained on a last-second quarterback sneak by Bart Starr, following the block of middle Ken Bowman and proper guard Jerry Kramer, who ultimately turned the second right into a bestselling ebook referred to as “Prompt Replay.” The ultimate scores had been 21-17 for the Packers and lots of of hundreds of {dollars} in ebook gross sales for Kramer.
Within the ebook, and on a number of talking excursions, Kramer defined the genesis of the second.
“I seen in movies that [Cowboys tackle] Jethro Pugh would rise up earlier than he charged,” Kramer wrote. “I informed coach Lombardi about that within the week earlier than the sport, he watched the movie and agreed that we may wedge Jethro.”
Lombardi referred to as the play, Pugh stood up, Kramer was capable of get below him for leverage, and Starr snuck into the top zone proper behind Kramer. Instantly, 11,056,200 headed for the exits, with pleasure of their hearts and frostbite over the remainder of their our bodies.
That was a Packers two-peat. Or, within the minds of many Packers followers, a Packers four-peat — an NFL title in ‘65, one other in ’66, plus the primary non-Tremendous Bowl Tremendous Bowl in ‘67, and one other NFL title within the Ice Bowl on the finish of the ’67 season.
Inexperienced Bay coach Vince Lombardi is carried off the sector after the Packers defeated the Oakland Raiders 33-14 in Tremendous Bowl II. It was the Packers’ third consecutive championship.
(Uncredited / Related Press)
Or, possibly even a five-peat, with a 33-14 beating of the Oakland Raiders in Miami on Jan. 14, 1968, within the second non-Tremendous Bowl Tremendous Bowl.
Really, the idea of the Packers’ streak being something greater than the three-peat they’ve at all times been credited for is semantics, fan discuss … a bit of little bit of apples and oranges. The Packers completed three seasons on high. Two of these league titles merely led to a different recreation. A Chiefs victory within the upcoming Tremendous Bowl can be an unprecedented three-peat within the NFL, as at the moment constructed.
Sorry, Packers followers. Tony Romo was proper. Cope with it.
The sport actually turned the Tremendous Bowl, formally and in U.S. sports activities lore, in Tremendous Bowl III, when Joe Namath sat with a bunch of reporters round a pool in Miami, website of the sport for the second straight 12 months, and assured victory. That, after all, was heresy, since Namath performed for the AFL’s New York Jets and the large boys from the NFL champion Baltimore Colts, led by Johnny Unitas, had been 19-point favorites.
On Jan. 12, 1969, Namath and the Jets gained, 16-7, and the merger turned official in 1970. On the again of Namath, the fledgling AFL had earned its spurs.
There was no turning again. Even Rozelle, had been he nonetheless alive, would agree now that it’s all fairly “tremendous.”