NFL Owners: Why Do You Ignore The Pre-Super Bowl NFL Championship Games?
Why is the NFL the ONLY professional sports league that intentionally shortchanges their founding teams by not correctly recognizing their early championships? In total, 33 years of NFL championships are treated like “chopped liver”. The term “Super Bowl” is a great marketing asset and should continue to be used, but not at the expense of the pre-merger championships. The term “NFL Championships” should be used to accurately describe the championship statistics going back to the undisputed founding of the NFL in 1933.
I’m going to briefly compare how all four major sport leagues publicize their team’s historic championships records as they grew from much smaller organizations and morphed into their present league. As you’ll see, the NFL’s exclusionary policy regarding historic championships is the only outlier.
Here’s the breakdown by each of the major team sports:
National Basketball Association (NBA)…Was created through the merger of numerous independent entities including the American Basketball League (active 1925–55), National Basketball League (active 1937–49), National Pro Basketball Association (active 1950–51) and the American Basketball Association (active 1967–76) in 1949). In 1949, the NBA was formed for Championship purposes and was composed of 5 existing teams and 14 new teams for a total of 19. By the mid-1950’s, only 5 were left; 2 more teams were added bringing the new total to 7. The NBA didn’t morph into in its present form until the mid-1960’s with many ongoing additions from the late 1970’s through the early 2000’s. Today there are 30 teams.
The official championship carrying the NBA name began in 1950 and the winners of all championships played during those early years were a permanent title for the franchise. The overall leaders in titles are the Boston Celtics with 18 followed by The Minneapolis/ Los Angeles Lakers with 17. Their first victories occurred in 1957 and 1950 respectively. As is the case with other NBA championship winners, all of their championship pennants hang proudly in any NBA stadium today.
The 8-team 1960 NBA played 79 regular season games, which increased to the current 82 games by 17-team 1970 season.
Major League Baseball (MLB)…Like the NBA, the MLB went through a similar creation process. The various independent organizations dated back to roughly the Civil War. The National League was formed in 1876 and the American League in 1901, bringing the total number of teams to 14 at the time the first “World Series” was played in 1903. Like the NFL, the MLB chose to market their championship game with a made up name. The final expansion occurred with 14 teams being added between 1961 and the late 1990’s.
All of the winners from the founding of the MLB proudly display their pennants dating from their first championship. Latecomers don’t get a reset. The New York Yankees have won the World Series an astounding 27 times, with their first coming in 1923.
Even as far back as 1930, the 16-team MLB played 154 regular season games. By 1970, the current 162 regular game season was the norm.
National Hockey League (NHL)…The league officially began with the chartering of the Montreal Canadians and the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1917. Between 1924 and 1926 additional teams were added in Boston, New York, Detroit and Chicago creating the “Original Six”. In 1967, 6 more teams were added and steady franchise expansion continued to bring the current total to 31. As with the other major league sports, 4 smaller organizations eventually agreed to merge with the NHL beginning in 1917 and ending in 1979. A lot of change.
Professional hockey began in 1887 as a club-based sport with roughly a dozen teams and their champion was awarded the “Stanley Cup”, the oldest professional trophy in North America. In those pre-NHL days, the Stanley Cup was open to challenges and not the property of any single league. The NHL does not use any of those records. However, the Stanley Cup tradition was continued with the official formation of the NHL in 1917. The Montreal Canadians have won the cup 24 times, followed by the Toronto Maple Leafs with 13. Their first victories occurred in 1924 and 1918 respectively. As with the NBA, all of their NHL championship pennants from the founding of the league hang proudly in any NHL stadium today.
The 1960’s version of the 6-team NHL played 70 games per season. With the recent 1967 expansion, the league played 70 games in 1970. That was eventually expanded to 82 games into the present day 82 in the mid-1990’s.
National Football League (NFL)… The origins of the current organization begin between 1903–1919 with the founding of the Ohio League and the New York Football League. The American Professional Football Association, the forerunner of the NFL, was founded in 1920, followed by the Midwest Football League (1935–1940) and the All-American Football Conference (1946–1949) and the newly charted American Football League (1960–1969).
Based on discussions I recently had while touring the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio the NFL uses 1933 as their official founding date. The league began to stabilize in the 1930’s and by 1937 had 10 teams that all still exist today.
By 1950, the NFL had grown to 13 teams. In 1969, the 16-team NFL agreed to merge with the 10 team AFL, raising the NFL league total to 26 teams. The NFL has added only 6 teams since the merger bringing the total to 32.
The 1933–1960’s version of the NFL played 10–12 games per season. From 1961–1977 the league played 14 games, which was expanded to 16 games in 1978 and 17 in 2021.
The “NFL Championship Game” began formally in 1933 and retained that designation until 1965. The New York Giants defeated the Chicago Bears in front of a crowd of 25,000 in Chicago’s Wrigley Field. From 1966–1969, the 2 leagues agreed to play an inter-league game titled “The AFL-NFL World Championship Game”. Interestingly, the term “Super Bowl”, which was coined in 1970, was retroactively applied to those 3 games.
So, if pre-merger NFL Championships aren’t relevant in the Super Bowl era, as is their current policy, why does the NFL’s official “Record & Fact Book” properly retain the old teams and individual records from the pre-Super Bowl period comingled with the post-Super Bowl era? This is the correct record keeping policy, but it’s inconsistent with their policy pertaining to publicizing historic championship game winners.
Does the NFL have a reasonable case in arguing that the AFL expansion represented an extraordinary amount of change, which should render the previous 33 years NFL Championship Game history irrelevant?
As stated previously, the 1970 AFL/NFL’s merger increased the league from 16 to 26 teams (+62%). Massive change, right? How does it compare with growth of the other major sport leagues? And, was the NFL’s growth spurt really that unique? From 1961–1970, the NBA, MLB and NHL increased 89%, 50% and 130% respectively. So, there was nothing extraordinary about the NFL’s 62% growth when properly compared to the other major sports.
Unlike the NFL, those other major sports communication policy regarding championship history is untouchable.
Here are a few examples of the lunacy of the NFL’s championship communications policy.
The fabled 1958 NFL Championship Game, played in front of 64,000 fans and dubbed by the media as “The Greatest Game Ever Played” is treated as a non-event because its not a Super Bowl. Historically, it is viewed as the watershed for the NFL’s mass popularity because the game was showcased across the nation on TV for the first time.
The 1964 Championship Game was played in front of 80,000 fans and resulted in a shutout victory for Cleveland Browns and their legendary Hall of Fame fullback Jimmy Brown. It’s not a Super Bowl, so it doesn’t count using the leagues communication policy.
Interesting…you can be a pre-Super Bowl Hall of Famer, but your NFL Championship doesn’t count. My Philadelphia Eagles won the 1960 NFL Championship in front of 67,000 fans with many TV viewers at home. It’s not a Super Bowl, so it doesn’t make the cut.
Players in the 1960’s could win both a Super Bowl and an NFL Championship Game and only Super Bowl wins received their due credit. This happened to the Green Bay Packers in 1965, 1966 and 1967.
So, if the NFL re-set those historic championship titles back to 1933, would the list change significantly?
This is the current list based on just Super Bowl wins (Statista):
· 6 — Pittsburgh, New England
· 5 — Dallas, San Francisco
· 4 — Green Bay, NY Giants, Kansas City
· 3 — Denver, Raiders (Oakland & Las Vegas), Washington
. 2– 6 teams are tied for at 2 wins
And, this is how they would rank using the “NFL Championships” policy (Source: Statmuse):
· 13— Green Bay (It’s nickname “Titletown” is well deserved)
· 9— Chicago
. 8 — NY Giants
. 6 — Kansas City
. 6 — New England
. 6 — Steelers
· 5 — Dallas, Colts (Baltimore & Indianapolis), San Francisco, Philadelphia
Maybe the AFL owners negotiated smarter than the NFL on this point. The AFL owners might have pushed hard that if the NFL Championship games were maintained, the same policy should apply to the AFC Championships from 1960–1966. If that option was on the table, I would have given them 7 years for the NFL’s 33 years. History matters.
There is no more meaningful record in any sport than winning the season’s final game (regardless of the games marketing name) and that recognition should remain historically untouched.
So, all league records should be consistently treated like they are in all other major sports. Whether the league chooses to market their championship game as the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup Finals or the World Series doesn’t matter. Marketing sizzle shouldn’t top history.
Even individual professional sports organizations like golf (PGA, LGPA) and tennis (ATP, WTA) are all in concert with the NBA, MLB and NHL in their historic championship publicity.
Dramatic equipment improvements and training methods occurred in both sports rendering the on-court/course performance somewhat historically incomparable. But, both the historic records and Hall Of Fame content remain intact. The same analogy can also be applied to the amateur-based Olympics Games.
Again, this is not about removing the term “ Super Bowl”. The NFL’s current communication policy discriminates against the pre-merger championship winners.
They should fix it.
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