boomboomsroom

What did 61,946 people do all together on January 15th, 1967?  If you said they watched live from their wooden bench seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum as the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-14 in the very first Super Bowl played you were right.

A lot has changed since the first and this season’s upcoming Super Bowl LV (that’s 55), and a lot hasn’t.

It was the smallest crowd in SB history.  Leave it to uninterested Californians, even back then, to set the low mark.  But, we digress.

It was also played three weeks earlier than the date (Feb 7, 2021) that the final two teams will play LV.  Never forget that more games mean more money.  And acutely, more playoff games mean way more TV money.

No teams had bye weeks back then.  If you made the playoffs, you played off that next week.  And, only four teams in total made the playoffs.  The NFC had 15 teams while the AFC had nine.  This was prior to the next year’s major realignment.

Today 32 teams compete in two conferences that each has 16 teams.  And, for the first time ever, 14 teams (7 from each conference) will advance.

Importantly, the best regular-season record from each will have a one-week bye.  And, with one week remaining, who is in the driver’s seat for the one seed and that very valuable week of rest?  Why it’s the NFC Green Bay Packers and the AFC Kansas City Chiefs.

Maybe not so much has changed after all.  Or, maybe it has.

The popular saying that “defense wins championships” might be a bit dated.  It turns out that scoring points, and lots of them, attract even more viewers than ever.  And more viewers mean more money.  So, over the last 55 years time and again, the NFL has changed old rules and created new ones that provide the offense with a more distinct advantage by the year.

Now, if you throw in a quarterback or two that can buy more time with his feet, run for a first down when pressured, and still throw a tight spiral through a tight window, you’ve got points and points.

And Green Bay and Kansas City had just that in Bart Starr and Len Dawson.  In fact, they still do and a whole lot more.  They have the likely first and second-place finishers for the league MVP trophy in Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes.

Rodgers is a young 37 years old and seeking a second Super Bowl win.  He’s on a shortlist of the best QB’s to play in the last 15 years.  Mahomes is a mature 25 years young and is seeking his second consecutive Super Bowl win.  The QB list of the now and the future begins with his name.

Rodgers runs when he has to, while Mahomes runs when he wants to.  Both can break the hearts of a defense that forces a difficult third down and has done everything right.  That is until it hasn’t.

Green Bay can clinch the bye with a win over Chicago this week.  Kansas City already has.  The route to 55 will go through cold KC and colder GB.

Somewhere up there Vince Lombardi and Hank Stram are looking down and smiling about what might be yet to come.

And LA can relax.   After 55 years a pandemic will restrict the number of fans to far fewer than 61,946 in Tampa.