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Super Bowl

A commissioner’s take on growing the event

PAUL TAGLIABUE
Former NFL commissioner

As the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers prepare to compete in Super Bowl 50, it is clear that the Super Bowl is healthier and more attractive than ever to sports fans in America and globally.

In recent years, the Super Bowl games have been highly competitive, with captivating individual and team performances, and highly entertaining with few exceptions. They have featured super talents — both players and coaches. Even in the rare lopsided contest (e.g., Seattle’s win over Denver), talents such as Russell Wilson and Richard Sherman have dazzled fans.

Paul Tagliabue hands the Vince Lombardi Trophy to Steelers owner Dan Rooney after Super Bowl XL.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
Looking Back


We asked dozens of executives throughout sports to share memorable moments from the Super Bowls they’ve attended. From encounters with entertainers, to last-minute field repairs, highlights of their responses can be found by clicking on the links below:

RICK NAFE, VP of operations and facilities, Tropicana Field: Borrowing’ turf for late-night repair

DON RENZULLI, Executive vice president of events, NHL: Trophies can't skip security

ARLEN KANTARIAN, Kantarian Sports Group: Wait, call it 'The Thriller Bowl'?

JIM STEEG, Former NFL senior vice president of special events: Helping the nation get back on track

BILL SCHMIDT, President, Pegasus Sports Marketing: The 'Gatorade Dunk' makes debut

STEVE BRENER, President, Brener Zwikel & Associates: Coaxing Garth to sing

DAVID HILL, Former chairman, Fox Sports: 'America had not lost a step'

TONY PONTURO, Former Anheuser-Busch media and sports marketing chief: It's game on for Bud Bowl

LEIGH STEINBERG, Steinberg Sports & Entertainment: Sharing highs and lows with players

JOHN BELLO, Former NFL Properties president; founder of SoBe: How NFL got its Tailgate on for one big party

JOE BROWNE, NFL senior adviser to the commissioner: Anecdotes from attending all but one Super Bowl

GIL BRANDT: 'The best two-yard run I've ever seen'

SUPER BOWL I: Cheap seats and last-minute decisions to go

MORE QUICK HITS

Apart from the Seattle-Denver game, the average margin of victory in the eight games since 2007 has been six points, probably the tightest in any similar span in Super Bowl history. The television audience last February for New England’s 28-24 win over Seattle in Super Bowl XLIX set a record for total viewers for the fifth time in six years. Overall, the New England Patriots — with six Super Bowl appearances and four wins in the past 14 years — are seen by many to be at least the equal of any of the NFL’s greatest teams.

Certainly, the Super Bowl has been an extraordinary attraction in earlier decades, too. Coach Lombardi’s Packers, Joe Namath’s Jets and Lamar Hunt’s Chiefs combined to launch the Super Bowl with very compelling football. And no team has yet matched the Steelers’ four Super Bowl wins in six seasons or the Dolphins capping their 1972 perfect season with a win in Super Bowl VII.

But other decades had their unexpected lopsided outcomes. In six of the seven Super Bowls between January 1984 and January 1990, the average margin of victory was 30 points. Too often the “blowouts” were ridiculed — fairly or not, it didn’t matter.

As a result, a decade that began with the highest-rated Super Bowl ever — a 49 rating for the 49ers’ 26-21 win over the Bengals in 1982 — ended with the lowest-rated Super Bowl telecast since 1971 — a 39 rating for the 49ers’ 55-10 win over the Broncos in 1990.

The string of six lopsided Super Bowl games viewed as uninteresting mismatches in the ’80s was a deep disappointment for Commissioner Rozelle and many others in and out of the league. Even more frustrating for Rozelle, he knew that protracted labor disputes between the owners and players’ union in that decade had damaged the league’s product, produced disinterest if not disgust among fans, and caused advertisers and sponsors to question their commitments to the league’s product. In television negotiations in 1987, the resulting contracts with CBS, NBC and ABC had yielded flat or lower revenue to the league for the first time in history going back to 1961.

In this context, Super Bowl XXV, to be played in Tampa to conclude the 1990 season, became a pivotal moment for the league. But as the 1990 preseason was opening, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, setting the stage for the first Gulf War. The Super Bowl was set for Jan. 27, 1991; Tampa was the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command led by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf that was responsible for the Iraq conflict; and on Jan. 16 President Bush “41” ordered U.S. forces to launch Operation Desert Storm to thwart Saddam’s takeover of Kuwait — 11 days before kickoff.

To recognize the momentous challenges and sacrifices then facing the nation and the Tampa community, the league made major changes in Super Bowl week and the game’s presentation. These focused on deeper engagement with the local community, in which thousands of men and women were readying themselves and the nation for warfare, and with children in those families. Among other steps, the planned Disney halftime show was changed to include Tampa area children whose families would be directly touched by war in the Mideast; league and team parties and celebrations were canceled; and extraordinary security measures were implemented.

When voices emerged suggesting that the Super Bowl itself should be canceled or postponed, the relevance of the game to the public’s collective mood was recognized. Through Jack Kemp, once a star quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and then a member of President Bush’s Cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, I received a message from Gen. Schwarzkopf: “Play the Super Bowl; the troops all over the world want to watch it.”

So, as U.S. and Allied troops proceeded with Operation Desert Storm, Whitney Houston inspired both the stadium and TV audiences with a rendition of the national anthem later described by The Washington Post as “just classic.” And the game itself was a classic. In a battle between the Giants and the Bills, two teams loaded with future Hall of Fame players and head coaches, the Giants prevailed 20-19 in the only Super Bowl ever decided by one point and on the game’s final play — the infamous “wide right” field goal attempt.

The Tampa experiences led many league minds to re-evaluate every aspect of presenting the Super Bowl. Some observed that the game often seemed to affect the nation’s psyche, and was becoming an unofficial midwinter national holiday. And Super Bowl advertising spots were a hot topic of media coverage and entertainment interest. But how could the momentum created by the classic Giants-Bills contest be captured, and the Super Bowl’s presentation transformed to produce a much larger, deeply committed, diverse and complex audience with a sustainable foundation and operating models?

The next Super Bowl, to conclude the upcoming 1991 season, would be unusual but for reasons far different from those found in Tampa. Slated for Minnesota in January 1992, it would be only the second Super Bowl ever played in a very cold weather region — and perhaps the perfect occasion for reimagining and reshaping the Super Bowl with bold new strokes.

“As the NFL entered the 21st century, the critical components of highly successful Super Bowls had been identified and firmly established.”
Focusing on community, kids and broad fan engagement with NFL football, the league and the Vikings developed a range of initiatives. But the truly momentous change unexpectedly came from outside: Fox announced that during the Minnesota halftime show, it would televise a special, live, football-themed episode of “In Living Color” to compete with the Super Bowl show — “Winter Magic” featuring Winter Olympic figure skating medal winners.

The impact on the size of the mid-game Super Bowl audience was stunning. While ratings estimates varied, it seemed that 20 million to 30 million viewers may have chosen the Fox comedy special over the halftime show. And the overall CBS rating for Washington’s 37-24 win over Buffalo was disappointing, substantially below the prior year’s Giants-Buffalo cliffhanger.

For the league, however, the community experiences in Tampa and the Fox TV experience in Minnesota combined to define a transformative path forward. While terrific football was clearly the core attraction for the largest Super Bowl fan segment, other segments were motivated by interests in ancillary entertainment. These would include football-themed amusement venues, music festivals and other televised football or personality features, whether in the days leading up to the Super Bowl or at halftime.

So major new elements were created and implemented for the next Super Bowl, XXVII, slated for the Rose Bowl in Southern California’s diverse metropolitan area. The January 1993 Super Bowl game was the ideal platform for dramatically reinventing the Super Bowl experience, with new talents, partnerships and operating incentives.

The critical new elements featured superstar talent for the pregame and halftime entertainment (Garth Brooks and Michael Jackson); the NFL Experience for fan engagement around the game, current players and heroes of seasons past; an NFL Youth Education Center to provide enhanced social and educational opportunities for young people; and an array of other television and community centered programs.

Fortuitously, in Super Bowl XXVII, football was top drawer, with the Bills’ unprecedented third consecutive try to win a Super Bowl, and the re-emergence of the Cowboys, seeking to win their first NFL title in 14 years. Led by MVP Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rolled to a 52-17 win. Jackson’s performance dominated the halftime viewing, and the game’s 45 TV rating was five points higher than the prior year and the highest in six seasons.

As luck would have it, the football appeal of the Super Bowl was well-achieved in the next several years starting with Super Bowl XXVIII in Atlanta. The winners of the six Super Bowls from 1994 until 1999 (Super Bowl XXXIII) were Dallas (twice), San Francisco, Green Bay and Denver (twice).

These years featured the exceptional sway of the Cowboys as “America’s Team”; the culmination of the 49ers’ unmatched five Super Bowl victories with Joe Montana and Steve Young in little more than a decade; Brett Favre’s marvelous performances for the Packers producing comparisons with Bart Starr and the Lombardi Super Bowl winners; and ultimately the resurgence of the AFC with the Broncos’ back-to-back victories in 1998 and 1999 led by John Elway and Terrell Davis.

As the NFL entered the 21st century, the critical components of successful Super Bowls had been identified and firmly established. They have been improved and expanded in the ensuing two decades — and adapted to new conditions, including the digital media and online revolutions and exceptional new stadiums. There is every reason to expect the league will continue to provide NFL fans and wider national and international audiences with unmatched entertainment values for decades to come.

Paul Tagliabue served as NFL commissioner from 1989 to 2006. He is now senior counsel at Covington & Burling.

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