January 15, 1967: Super Bowl I

January 15, 1967: The 1st AFL-NFL World Championship Game is held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, between the Champions of the American Football League, their founding franchise, the Kansas City Chiefs; and the Champions of the National Football League, their most successful franchise with 10 Championships, the Green Bay Packers. It is the beginning of the competitive phase of the merger between the 2 leagues, which had battled since 1960.

Lamar Hunt, founder of the AFL and founding owner of the Chiefs, claimed he'd seen his children playing with a little rubber ball, marketed as a "Super Ball." So he suggested that the Game be called "the Super Bowl." The name stuck, and in 1969, it was made official. It wasn't until 1971 that the Roman numerals came into effect: Super Bowl V. The 1st 4 were retroactively renamed Super Bowl I, Super Bowl II, Super Bowl III and Super Bowl IV.

NOTE: Unlike the writers who cover college football, NFL writers did not give this game the label "Game of the Century." But, 10 months later, Number 1 USC would play Number 2 UCLA on the same field, and that game would receive the label.

Tom Brown, whose interception had clinched the Packers' 34-27 NFL Championship Game win over the Dallas Cowboys, had played 61 games in Major League Baseball, all with the Washington Senators in 1963. This game made him the 1st man ever to play in Major League Baseball and in a Super Bowl. (Deion Sanders would later become the 1st to play in both a World Series and a Super Bowl. As of the 2021 season in each sport, he remains the only one.)

The Packers took a 7-0 lead in the 1st quarter, as the 1st touchdown in Super Bowl history was a pass from Bart Starr to Max McGee. In the 2nd quarter, the Chiefs tied it. The Packers scored another touchdown, and the Chiefs added a field goal, to make the halftime score 14-10 in Green Bay's favor. The AFL Champions were very much still in the game.

The AFL Champions did not score again. So much has been made of the Green Bay offense (with Hall-of-Famers Bart Starr, Jim Taylor and Forrest Gregg, with Hall-of-Famer Paul Hornung injured and unable to play) that their defense (with Hall-of-Famers Willie Davis, Ray Nitschke, Herb Adderley and Willie Wood) often gets overlooked. But the Chiefs (whose Hall-of-Famers included Len Dawson on offense and Buck Buchanan, Bobby Bell and Willie Lanier on defense) would not score again until the 1967 AFL season dawned.

The Packers added touchdowns at each end of the 3rd quarter, and added another touchdown with 6:35 left in the game. Final score: Packers 35, Chiefs 10.

Packer coach and general manager (not a part-owner, but effectively controlling the team as if he were the owner) Vince Lombardi received the silver trophy made by Tiffany that would, just 4 years later, following his early death from cancer, bear his name. Starr was named the game's Most Valuable Player.

Rozelle presents Lombardi with the Trophy

Despite both networks having aired the game live, neither CBS nor NBC has a complete videotape copy of the game. Videotape was expensive, and the game was simply taped over. Some pieces of videotape of the game have been found, and have been combined with surviving radio broadcasts and the footage that NFL Films (which, smartly, also got the AFL's permission to record their games) has of the game, to produce a full play-by-play.

This was also the only Super Bowl that was not a sellout: Although the Coliseum seated over 93,000 people (an exact figure is hard to pin down), only 61,946 people paid to see it. They paid $12 for any seat, about $87 in today's money. Even by today's regular-season NFL standards, that's cheap.

The Chiefs did recover, and after the Packers also won Super Bowl II over the Oakland Raiders, and the New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in the most stunning upset in pro football history, the Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings to win Super Bowl IV on January 11, 1970. Clearly, Super Bowl III was an upset not because the NFL was so much better than the AFL, but because the Packers were so good.

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Obviously, this was the only professional football game played on that 1st "Super Sunday." There were 4 games played that day in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Chicago Bulls, 131-116 at the Chicago Stadium. This as the Bulls' 1st season of play. Four months later, the Knicks drafted Walt Frazier. Three years later, they finally won their 1st NBA Championship.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Boston Celtics, 110-95 at the Boston Garden. This runaway victory of Wilt Chamberlain and the Sixers over Bill Russell and the C's was a foreshadowing: While they had won the last 8 NBA titles, Boston would lose this year's Eastern Conference Finals to Philadelphia, which would win the title.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 127-116 at Cobo Hall in Detroit.

* And the St. Louis Hawks beat the San Francisco Warriors, 114-112 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

This was the last season for the NHL's "Original Six" teams. And all 6 were in action:

* The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Red Wings, 2-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, 3-1 at the Boston Garden. So both the Celtics and the Bruins lost at home on the same day; and each, arguably, to their biggest rivals.

* And the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-0 at the Chicago Stadium. So the Stadium hosted both the Bulls and the Hawks on the same day. The Hawks, for the 1st time in their 41-season history, would finish 1st overall in the NHL in the regular season. But the Leafs would beat them in the Stanley Cup Semifinals, and then the Canadiens in the Finals.

That night, The Rolling Stones appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and did not exactly get to sing what they would hoped would be their new big hit single. I have a separate entry for that event.

And Lisa Velez, later to become the singer Lisa Lisa, was born on this day.