‘I GUARANTEE IT’

I have lived long enough that I can say that I have seen every Super Bowl, all 55 of them, since its inception on Jan. 15, 1967. Well, it wasn’t actually called the Super Bowl back then, and if you own a ticket from any of the first three games, you will see that they were all called “World Championship Game, AFL vs. NFL.” The words Super Bowl were first used around the third championship game, but it doesn’t actually appear on tickets until the fourth game.

Things changed dramatically for the NFL and the championship game at the third one, held at the Orange Bowl in Miami in 1969. Up to that point, NFL teams considered the game against the upstart AFL as a mere formality to wrap up the season. They considered the NFL title game as the real battle to crown their champion.

In the league championships, the Baltimore Colts had crushed the Cleveland Browns, 34-0, while the Jets had slipped by