 Super Bowl tickets have been the most sought after sports tickets in America since the game began as an exhibition between two competing leagues, the NFL and the AFL. The first Super Bowl has become such a cultural force that the event is as known for its commercials (since the event has the largest single viewing artist of the year) as much as it is known for the actual football being played on the field. In fact, every year employers expect that a good portion of the workforce will be taking the Monday after off this unofficial national holiday. The game began as the first step of the merger between the NFL and the AFL. The leagues had poached players from each others leagues and media attention, creating a detrimental competition between the two leagues in an era that brought football to the national conscious as more than just a game those young athletes played in college. The first game would be on January 15, 1967 and would be held annually as a contest between the champions from both leagues. Then, the game was simply known as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. It was only after Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, saw his children playing with a toy called the Super Ball that he was stricken with the name that would stick, the Super Bowl. The NFL offices had been playing around with name, referring to the game as "the big one" because of the long-winded name. Hunt knew that the college game still dominated the football fans interest, so by calling the game the Super Bowl he could help win more fans over for professional football by bringing about the image of the highly regarded bowl games at the end of the college season. Thus, the Super Bowl was born and tickets for the final game of the NFL season had a nifty new name to print on the stubs. The first Super Bowl featured the NFL champion Green Bay Packers and the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs. The Packers won convincingly 35-10. This helped justify the perception that the AFL was the weaker league. The Packers won the next game easily as well. Then the AFL put together an upset win with Joe Namath and the New Jets upsetting the Baltimore Colts 16-7. The Chiefs won the next year and the first year that the AFL-NFL merger became official the two leagues had split the games. The AFL's wins were perhaps the most important step for the merger, since it let NFL fans know that the league was not being weakened by the addition of AFL teams. Since then, Super Bowl tickets have pitted the NFC champions against the AFC champions. Super Bowl tickets have become some of the most expensive event tickets annually and the television audience leaves no doubt of the nation's love for the big game, the sport, and just a big event. Each conference has taken turns dominated the Super Bowl. The AFC won eight times in the 1970s, with the Pittsburgh Steelers winning three in the decade. The NFC mounted its own era with 13 straight wins from 1985 to 1997. The Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers became staples in the big game. Since 1997, the AFC has won nine of the 12 Super Bowls. Team wise, The Steelers have the most Super Bowl wins by a single franchise with six and the Cowboys and 49ers are tied for second with five. Every trip to the Super Bowl is something to be proud of, but for certain teams the big game has haunted them. The buffalo Bills lost four Super Bowls in a row, the Denver Broncos seemed cursed with four losses until John Elway closed out his career with two wins in a row, and the Minnesota Vikings remain a respected franchise that had the misfortune of playing against a dominant stretch of three of the best football teams in history in their three Super Bowl appearances in the 1970s. The Super Bowl is a big game that alternates locations. The game tends to land in warm weather cities since the pleasant weather makes for a better tourist destination. The super Bowl will be held at Sun Life Stadium in Miami on February 1, 2010 for Super Bowl XLIV, and will go to Arlington for a game at Cowboys Stadium in 2011, Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium (it's a dome) in 2012, and the Superdome in New Orleans in 2013.
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