[advance_copy]

Vince Lombardi coaching a team quarterbacked by Bart Starr. Has there ever been a better football team, ever? I didn't think so.

[barkeep]

My memory of this comes from the goal line stand keeping Dallas out. Worth a mention in the irony class, the first Dallas pro team was the Dallas Texans, owned by Lamar Hunt. The team cratered both financially and on the field. Lamar packed up in high dudgeon and went to Kansas.

[Fiji Hill]

Television coverage of Super Bowl I was blacked out in Southern California, so we had to listen to the game on the radio. However, dics jockeys on the rock station KRLA--a music station at 1110 kilocycles on the AM band, not the present-day conservative talk station at 870 kc.--and its rival, "Boss Radio" station KHJ, were giving out instructions as to how to make a "Super Bowl antenna" from coat hangers so as to pick up a televised broadcast of the game from San Diego.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Fullback Jim Taylor was the team's top rusher with 705 yards, and also caught 41 passes for 331 yards.

..Jim Taylor....one tough fullback.

[Aquinasfan]

Super Bowl I was the only Super Bowl in history that was not a sellout in terms of attendance, despite the TV blackout in the Los Angeles area.

Wow!

I was born in the early '60s and just missed the Packers era. My first football memory is O'Brien kicking the winning field goal for the Colts against the Cowboys in Super Bowl V. By the early '70s the Super Bowl had grown into an extravaganza.

[fgoodwin]

January 15, 1967 : Packers face Chiefs in first Super Bowl

http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&displayDate=1/15&categoryId=leadstory
http://tinyurl.com/y3er8v

On this day in 1967, at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the first-ever world championship game of American football.

In the mid-1960s, the intense competition for players and fans between the National Football League (NFL) and the upstart American Football League (AFL) led to talks of a possible merger. It was decided that the winners of each league's championship would meet each year in a single game to determine the "world champion of football."

In that historic first game--played before a non-sell-out crowd of 61,946 people--Green Bay scored three touchdowns in the second half to defeat Kansas City 35-10. Led by MVP quarterback Bart Starr, the Packers benefited from Max McGee's stellar receiving and a key interception by safety Willie Wood. For their win, each member of the Packers collected $15,000: the largest single-game share in the history of team sports.

Postseason college games were known as "bowl" games, and AFL founder Lamar Hunt suggested that the new pro championship be called the "Super Bowl." The term was officially introduced in 1969, along with roman numerals to designate the individual games. In 1970, the NFL and AFL merged into one league with two conferences, each with 13 teams. Since then, the Super Bowl has been a face-off between the winners of the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC) for the NFL championship and the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy, named for the legendary Packers coach who guided his team to victory in the first two Super Bowls.

Super Bowl Sunday has become an unofficial American holiday, complete with parties, betting pools and excessive consumption of food and drink. On average, 80 to 90 million people are tuned into the game on TV at any given moment, while some 130-140 million watch at least some part of the game. The commercials shown during the game have become an attraction in themselves, with TV networks charging as much as $2.5 million for a 30-second spot and companies making more expensive, high-concept ads each year. The game itself has more than once been upstaged by its elaborate pre-game or halftime entertainment, most recently in 2004 when Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" resulted in a $225,000 fine for the TV network airing the game, CBS, and tighter controls on televised indecency.

[SamAdams76]

Pretty amazing that for a game that attracted 80% of the TV audience nationwide, they couldn't even sell out the game at the stadium. But the $12 tickets was probably why. That was BIG money back then. I was only a kid at the time but my father was making about $85 a week and I thought he was one of the richest men in the world when he would come home from work on Fridays and flash those bills around. My mother found $50 in his wallet once and she freaked out that he would walk around with that much money on him.

Anyway, I watched the game that day and vaguely recall the marching bands at halftime (that Al Hirt must have put on quite a show) but I have no recollection of all about Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr. Too bad the networks trashed the tapes. What were they thinking!