Major League Baseball has the World Series.
Basketball culminates with the NBA Finals.
And the NHL crowns its king with the Stanley Cup Finals.
But football? Unlike the other three that require multiple victories for a title, two NFL teams square off in a one-game, winner-take-all spectacle known as the Super Bowl.
But what if there was a Super Bowl Series, a best-of-three format to determine pro football’s ultimate champion?
As odd as it might seem now, it was actually discussed during the 1973 NFL owners meeting.
I was researching the late, not-so-great NFL Playoff Bowl when I stumbled across this novel idea.
The first mention came in the June 7, 1960, edition of the Miami Herald. Sports editor Jimmy Burns was notebooking NFL meetings when he relayed a throwaway comment by league commissioner Pete Rozelle.
After suggesting that the NFL – then 13 teams – was eying expansion to 16 franchises, Burns wrote that Rozelle said, “Then there might be the possibility of a two-out-of-three playoff for the NFL championship.”
I scrambled to find some other reference to what seemed like a pretty big deal, yet found nothing during that time range.
But …
Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders and one of the great movers/shakers/agitators in professional sports history, brought it up ahead of the NFL’s annual meeting of minds in 1973.
Sudden death overtime and adding a two-point conversion were on the agenda, and then Davis proposed the boldest innovation of all.
Davis was a member of the NFL’s four-person competition committee, so he wasn’t merely howling at the moon. He was serious.
“I believe it’s provocative and has a lot of merit,” Davis told wire service reporters in April, 1973. “The games would be played on three successive weekends and we’d eliminate the Pro Bowl. I had never explored the Super Bowl Series idea before with the other committee members (Paul Brown of Cincinnati, Tex Schramm of Dallas and Jim Finks of Minnesota), but I think it has a lot of merit.
“The commissioner is determined that pro football not stand still like some other sports but take a step forward. I think some of the proposals we’ll be discussing this week will become a reality. The country would be excited about it – it would be dynamic – and the series would give us more of a gauge of a true champion.”
George Allen, whose Washington team came up short to unbeaten Miami in Super Bowl VII, was on board.
“I’m in favor of a two-out-of-three Super Bowl Series,” he said.
The NFL was a juggernaut entering the 1973 campaign, and after completing the merger with the American Football League in 1970, it was up to 26 clubs. If Rozelle thought 16 was the threshold for a best-of-three championship, surely he would be all-in now, right?
Nah.
“The plusses are obvious,” Rozell told United Press International. “A better gauge, more television. But I have certain negative feelings about it. The logistics would be tough, not knowing where you were playing the following week. I think right now I’d rather have the impact of one shot.”
Davis, of course, disagreed.
“As for the last Super Bowl, Miami proved itself the champion on that day – no question,” Davis said. “But in the future a three-game Super Bowl Series might be a better test to decide who’s best. Each of the three networks (NBC, CBS and ABC) would get a game to televise, and we might play one at night. It might be a home and home arrangement. Maybe it won’t take place this year, but it might in the future.”
(One glaring problem there was that if a team swept, there would be no third game – thus one network would be left with no Super Bowl Series contest and the subsequent loss of major advertising dollars).
Turns out, not much came from that particular owners meeting.
Proposals such as the two-point conversion and sudden death overtime were voted down, and the Super Bowl Series never even came to a vote.
More than 50 years later, it’s still an interesting concept, though. Remove the physical toll it would take on the players from the equation, and it makes a lot of sense.
However, with the standalone Super Bowl an international cultural event and the NFL season already long – and brutal – one game to claim the Lombardi Trophy is enough.