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 1000’s of Inexperienced Bay Packers followers, after they heard that, sat straight up of their simple 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 underneath Curly Lambeau in 1929, ’30 and ’31, gained the title once more underneath Vince Lombardi to finish the 1965 season, beating the Cleveland Browns within the championship sport 23-12. The sport was performed Jan. 2, 1966, marking the primary NFL title sport performed in January. It additionally turned the primary leg of the following 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 convey dividends on the bargaining desk.
So, a sport 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, towards the massive 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 lodge swimming swimming pools, identical to they could have earlier than an exhibition sport 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.
In the course 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 sport in Inexperienced Bay.
Ultimately word-of-mouth depend, 11,056,200 folks had reported they have 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 automobiles to go house afterward, and the referees needed to hold their whistles out of their mouths for worry of getting them freeze to their lips.
The Packers gained on a last-second quarterback sneak by Bart Starr, following the block of heart Ken Bowman and proper guard Jerry Kramer, who finally turned the second right into a bestselling e book known as “Instant Replay.” The ultimate scores have been 21-17 for the Packers and a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars} in e book gross sales for Kramer.
Within the e book, and on a number of talking excursions, Kramer defined the genesis of the second.
“I noticed in films that [Cowboys tackle] Jethro Pugh would stand up before he charged,” Kramer wrote. “I told coach Lombardi about that in the week before the game, he watched the film and agreed that we could wedge Jethro.”
Lombardi known as the play, Pugh stood up, Kramer was in a position to get underneath him for leverage, and Starr snuck into the tip 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, another in ’66, plus the primary non-Tremendous Bowl Tremendous Bowl in ‘67, and another NFL title in the Ice Bowl at the end 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 all the time been credited for is semantics, fan speak … just a little little bit of apples and oranges. The Packers completed three seasons on prime. Two of these league titles merely led to a different sport. A Chiefs victory within the upcoming Tremendous Bowl can be an unprecedented three-peat within the NFL, as presently 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, web site 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 massive boys from the NFL champion Baltimore Colts, led by Johnny Unitas, have 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, have been he nonetheless alive, would agree now that it’s all fairly “super.”
