superbowl sunday
An event that finds millions of fans across the country anxiously awaiting the kickoff in the most celebrated annual sporting event is Super Bowl Sunday. This event is so prolific in our society, it is practically a holiday as many businesses close early to allow employees and customers the opportunity to attend parties and watch the game. This annual festivity had its beginnings in 1967 with the first super bowl Sunday.
The first Super Bowl Sunday was actually not called ‘Super Bowl Sunday’ it was the First AFL-NFL World Championship Game. Legend has at least two stories where the term super bowl came from. The media at the time referred to the game as a Super Bowl, mainly because of the college games being referred to as Bowl Games after the Rose Bowl. This event was the game of all games, and the briadcasters were giving it special significance with the unofficial minker of super bowl Sunday. However, the NFL did not actually use the name until a few years later as the Official name of the world championship.
Super Bowl Sunday may have also derived its namesake from an experience by Lamar Hunt. The story goes that one of Hunt’s children was playng with a popular toy of the time, called a super ball. Because of the popularity of the super ball toy, (it sold over 7 million in the first six months), Hunt remarked to his colleagues at an NFL conference, they should name the AFL-NFL World Championship, ‘Super Bowl’. The similarity with the super ball was already a catch phrase in most American homes.
Nevertheless, Super Bowl Sunday is an annual event that draws millionms of fans from all across the globe. The Last several Super Bowl Sunday’s have drawn a national television audience of more than 90 million people, making it one of the most watched events of all time.
Super Bowl Sunday also is the 2nd largest family-gathering and food-stuffing ‘holiday’ next to Thanksgiving. More money is spent on snacks, drinks and tailgating party supplies on super bowl Sunday than any other day of the year.
Even though the World Series has always been an American tradition embedded in our history, recent years has shown that super bowl Sunday is a more popular event, and has become the new great American pastime.