What is the history of Super Bowl? NFL game returns to Los Angeles where it all started 55 years ago
The American Football League (AFL) was founded in 1960 and the Super Bowl was born. The AFL was founded by a group of businessmen who wanted to own their own pro football franchises but were irritated by the NFL's refusal to grow, and it quickly established itself as an alternative league that played a more open style of football. Hence started a rivalry that would catapult pro football above baseball as the country's most popular spectator sport by the climax of the decade. We stand to witness the magic and rivalry once more this year as the Super Bowl returns to Southern California for the first time in nearly three decades.
After several years of rivalry, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Lamar Hunt, owner of the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs, reached an agreement in 1966 that would see the two leagues permanently combine in 1970. Meanwhile, at the end of the season, the AFL and NFL champions would face off and Hunt proposed renaming the new game the "Super Bowl." Despite the fact that he and Rozelle felt a better name might be discovered, sportswriters began using the nickname in the run-up to the first game in January 1967 and it's stayed ever since.