The month of January is headlined by NFL playoff games, with every team either hopeful of making it to the Super Bowl or determined to address the issues that have kept them out of the playoffs.
Of course, the big game is “it” as far as NFL destinations are concerned, but the Super Bowl was not always here, and it certainly was never dreamed that it would be of this magnitude.
It was created on paper before on the field.
A series of secret meetings regarding a possible AFL-NFL merger were held in the spring of 1966, involving Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt and Cowboys president and general manager Tex Schramm.
NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announced the merger on June 8, and among the terms was the creation of an annual AFL-NFL World Championship Game beginning in January of 1967. Rozelle was named commissioner of the newly combined league and, because each league had separate television contracts, both NBC and CBS would televised the game.
The first Super Bowl — as it would be known later — was in Los Angeles, with Green Bay defeating Kansas City by a 35-10 score before a non-sellout crowd of 61,946.
But part of how it got bigger than life in the decades that followed had to do with the work of the Super Bowl architect, Jerry Anderson.
Anderson, who passed away in 2018, was a real Westerner. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Montana State and he obtained his master’s degree in architecture from the University of California-Berkeley. In establishing himself, that Westerner would go on to work with some of the biggest East Coast bigwigs, too.
During his four-decade career, Anderson led designs and operations efforts for the world’s most prestigious sporting events, including the Super Bowl and the Olympic Games venues. He played a key role in designing every Super Bowl since Super Bowl XIX, as well as 13 Olympic Games. As a cofounder of Populous, a prominent sports venue architecture firm, he is credited with “inventing] the modern industry of event planning,” [as the…
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