The Football Game That Changed America: How the NFL Created a National Holiday
We enter the final weekend of 2024 without the NFL, which kicks off next Thursday. During this last lull, while everyone is working on their fantasy teams, it’s good to look at the hope ahead, but also the road to how the NFL got here. Colleague, professor, industry professional Dennis Deninger has a new book out about an NFL origin story, the Super Bowl. The book, The Football Game That Changed America: How the NFL Created a National Holiday, is an easy and informative read for both fan and those in the industry, full of tidbits and characters that we sometime lose to history. What we…and they…know now the powers that be certainly didn’t know then, and the book give us a great look on how this cultural phenomenon got to be just that.
We asked Dennis to take us through the lessons learned in the process, and the takeaways he had.
Was the Super Bowl of the past more luck than design?
The NFL did not have a grand design to create a Super Bowl pitting their league champion against the champion of the AFL. The league was very happy with its annual “NFL Championship Game” and when the AFL launched in the 1960’s, the NFL set out to undermine and destroy the new league. But when the AFL thrived, in no small measure on the strength of its TV deals with ABC then NBC, the competition for top players between the two leagues started costing NFL owners far more than they wanted to spend. So, you could say the merger of the two leagues, and the Super Bowl that resulted, was a happy accident born out of the economic reality of competition between two American enterprises.
What were the two or three things that you found in doing the book that surprised you?
– It surprised me that the first NFL title game was an accident. Two teams finished the 1932 season tied, so an additional game was added to decide the champion. It proved so popular that it became a fixture the following season.
– It’s surprising that the NFL was a regional TV product until a full year after the AFL debuted in the fall of 1960 on ABC. There was no national TV coverage of regular season NFL games until 1961. Why that was and how it changed are explained in The Football Game That Changed America.
– And the power of the Super Bowl to change voters’ minds is also surprising. Arizona voters had turned down a referendum to establish the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, so the NFL moved the 1993 Super Bowl that was to be played in the state to the Rose Bowl. When the referendum was put up for a vote again a few years later, it passed handily, and Arizona started hosting Super Bowls again.
What are the biggest worries the NFL has today with the game if any, losing its place in popular culture, in your opinion?
– If more and more American youth stop playing football because of safety concerns or because of too many competing leisure time diversions, or if more kids are raised in households that don’t subscribe to TV sports channels, the number of lifelong NFL fans could dwindle.
– The NFL has embraced sports gambling and is reaping the financial rewards. But if there were to be a massive gambling scandal that called into question the integrity of the league and its players, that would be a major setback. That’s why the NFL is so vigilant in its enforcement of its gambling restrictions.
There were many turning points for the NFL in its history, is there one that stands out for you in the early history of the Super Bowl that could have sent this game in a different direction?
– This is one of the crucial stories in my book. If the New York Jets had not won Super Bowl III, the Super Bowl as we know it now may not exist. After the NFL’s Green Bay Packers had convincingly won the first two Super Bowls, it appeared to many fans that this game would be an annual matchup between the major league champion and a minor league team from the AFL. The NFL was ready to change the end-of-season playoff structure at its next owners’ meeting. But Joe Namath and the Jets changed history.
Who are the unsung heroes of the Super Bowl past who people should know about and why?
– Lamar Hunt died in 2006, and fewer fans outside “Chiefs Kingdom” may remember his name as time progresses. But if Lamar Hunt, still in his twenties in 1959, had not sought to establish an NFL franchise in Dallas, and when he was turned down hadn’t pursued creation of a rival league, there never would have been a Super Bowl.
– Jim Steeg was the NFL’s director of special events in the 1980’s and ‘90’s. He was 29 years old when he booked Diana Ross to sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl XVI in 1982. That helped lead the way for big-name, popular entertainment to become part of the Super Bowl.
– And one of my personal favorite “unsung heroes” is Bill Fitts. He was executive producer of CBS Sports for the first “AFL vs. NFL World Championship” in 1967. With precious little lead time Bill pulled together the production of what would become the most-watched TV sporting event up to that date. “The quirky problems and predicaments that he had to deal with make for very entertaining reading.”
Kickoff awaits!
