I don’t think it can be true. Somebody is telling a fib. Why someone would lie about it is beyond me, but it just cannot be true. Was the Super Bowl played on Sunday really the 52^nd Super Bowl? Really? I can’t believe that. If it is true, then I have been around a long time. But surely, not that long.

            The first Super Bowl wasn’t even called the Super Bowl. One of the announcers referred to it by that name just before the game started to try and build a little excitement about a game that everyone knew was going to be a blowout. The final score was Green Bay 35, Kansas City 10, but it wasn’t even that close. The stadium wasn’t even sold out. So, the announcer referred to it as a super bowl, kind of a take off on the New Year’s college games, and the name stuck.

            That first game was actually called AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The NFL was the old, established league. They were used to being the top dog. But then the AFL, or American Football League, came along in the late 1950s and offered something a little different. The used gimmicks like red, white and blue footballs. They went into cities that had been trying to get NFL teams for years. And they went all out to sign star players coming out of college. Joe Namath, coming out of Alabama, was signed by the New York Jets for an unbelievable $100,000 bonus, thus becoming the first ‘bonus-baby.’ The NFL, however, could have withstood all the gimmicks and new cities and signings. They were, after all, the establishment. All of these things cost a lot of money and AFL stadiums were typically less than half full. It would have to end. The common thinking was that the cities that had signed with the AFC, like Buffalo and Kansas City and Oakland, would be punished by never getting their own team and star signees like Namath would never catch on with an NFL club once the AFL folded. The NFL, and their television network CBS, would reign supreme.

            But then the AFL signed a deal with NBC and AFL style football, with its wide open offenses and fast play, was suddenly available to anyone who wanted something a little different. The NFL nearly choked on their tradition and old style. Finally, they sat down with their AFL counterparts and worked out a deal. For three years, 1967, 68 and 69, the two leagues would come together after the two leagues had played out seasons 1966, 67 and 68 and had crowned their own champions, and would play a championship game called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. After that, there would be a complete merger and the championship game would just go back to being called the NFL Championship Game. Not all of the AFL cities would be brought into the NFL, but enough to make everyone sort of happy.

            Thus, the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game was played. CBS and NBC actually carried the game. I kept switching back and forth until my father yelled at me and told me I was going to break the knob, which was probably true. CBS showed the game better, but NBC had snazzier stuff and better graphics, at least for 1967. The game was a dud, but we all knew it would be. Green Bay rolled up Kansas City. Close at halftime, but it was really over for KC by halfway through the third quarter. I had bet a quarter at school that Kansas City would win, so I lost twenty five cents. If I had won I would have made a dollar. We had our own 11 year old bookie.

            But the chance reference by that announcer, who was on NBC, sparked the name Super Bowl. Over the next two seasons Super Bowl ‘fever’ started to become a real thing. In the 1968 game, still called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game but much more often referred to as the Super Bowl, The Packers again won, this time by a score of 33-14 over the Oakland Raiders. The game, however, had a great lead in. The Packers had beat the Dallas Cowboys in the famous ‘Ice Bowl’ to get there and a lot of people were watching. Another blowout and everyone was assured that the old NFL teams were the class.

            Then came Super Bowl III. 1969. The championship game for the 1968 season. 1968 had been one of the most upside down ears in the history of the country. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam made folks start to realize that the war was not going well. Civil rights riots shook the country. War protests riots on college campuses had everyone on edge. Dr. Martin Lither King, Jr. was assassinated in April and Robert Kennedy was killed in June. It had been a vicious year. People needed a break. Super Bowl III, the first game officially named Super Bowl, was an important game. It was the last game for the old AFL. The next season the old AFL would be a part of the NFL. The establishment had won, or so it seemed. Nothing in the country was as it had been even five years earlier. In this game, it was fully expected that the Baltimore Colts would destroy the New York Jets. The Colts just missed having a perfect season while the Jets had struggled some. The Colts had blown away the Cleveland Browns in the NFL Championship Game while the Jets just did edge the Raiders in the AFL Championship Game. It would be another ho-hum affair with the NFL taking another one.

            Only it didn’t happen that way. The Jets dominated on defense and mounted a running game that the Colts couldn’t stop. Much has been said about the brash predictions by Namath and how great a game he played, but the truth is the former ‘bonus-baby’ had one of the least remarkable games of any Super Bowl quarterback ever. The Jets won 16-7. I had bet fifty cents with our young bookie and won a buck and a half. Inflation.

          The merger took place a few months later with more AFL teams going along than imagined. The game grew in importance, reaching the level of a national event. People watch the game just to see the commercials. Very different from that first game that didn’t even sell out the stadium.

          Is there a point to this, other than an old guy remembering ‘back in the day?’ Sure, there is. Ten months ago, I had a surgery that saved my life. A month and a half later I had a car accident that could have killed me. A brash, obnoxious guy upset the apple cart and became the president. We look up in the sky and see planes flying over every day. One family can farm hundreds and hundreds of acres. If, back in the 1960s, somebody hadn’t bucked tradition and common knowledge and started fooling around with the idea of bypassing a blocked artery, I would be dead. If the foreign car influx of the 1960s and 70s hadn’t happened, which challenged American carmakers, which in turn, challenged the foreign makers, my car wouldn’t have had the innovations in it that not only saved my life in the accident, but also kept me secure enough not to injure my recent surgery. If that brash and obnoxious candidate hadn’t bulled his way around and challenged the common belief we would not be in recovery now. If some brave men and women hadn’t dared to dream but rather just follow along and go with the common thought we wouldn’t see those planes racing across the skies. If farmers had been content to hook up the mule to the plow instead of making that first steam tractor and then on to gas and diesel, one family would be hard pressed to farm forty acres. Change for the sake of change is rarely a good idea, but that doesn’t make change a bad thing. Just like the human body grows and changes, all things need to change.

          I am no longer a football fan. Just don’t care for it. But I can see that its changing saved the game. We face some changes this year at this church. We have to face all this at some point and the sooner we make our decisions, the better. We don’t know where it might all end up but we can be pretty sure that if we do nothing it will end badly.

          Keep praying.

          Blessings.