Overrated, underrated Super Bowls By Eric Edholm - June 10, 2009 Question: Which Super Bowl was most overrated ? Underrated ? Overrated: Super Bowl III > http://www.profootballweekly.com/PFW/Features/NFL+Features/2009/overund0610.htm
What a joke. Isn't PFW run by a bunch of Pats tools or am I thinking of a different site. Either way for them to count SB III as overrated then they seriously need to think about starting a new career. The importance of that game was huge. Not only was a big time upset over a team many considered the best ever assembled it also validated the AFL.
While I agree that it was one of the biggest upsets in pro-sports, I would tend to think that Kansas City's win in SB IV was the one that validated the AFL. Many saw SB III as a fluke, which we all know it wasn't.
LMAO..... Of course, if I admitted that the VIKINGS are bullshit for losing 4 SB's, what would I be saying about my own squad?:sad::sad::sad::sad: The VIKINGS are awesome!!!! Seriously, they were dominant in the 70's, just could finish when it counted.
regardless of how convincing a win it was, or how much we dominated the NFL in that SB,the magnitude and hype generated by Joe and just the circumstances that surrounded it, made SB III the first "SUPERBOWL". I tend to believe it was this hype that got enough people aware of the AFL's potential, and actually pulling it off and winning sealed the deal on alot of fans, completely refacing american football and making it into what it is today (aka the merge) If not for this victory, 3 losses in a row as the laughing stock in comparison to the nfl i dont think kc would have gotten the chance to defeat the vikings, and who knows what the football world would be like today, without the merge maybe not existant, who knows... anyway thats why i truly feel that SB III and the events leading up to it were the most important of any, regardless of the game itself.
SB III was definitely the more important between SB III and SB IV. I'm just saying that it was KC's win that made the NFL sit up and realize that the AFL was for real. That's why the merger happened. SB IV wouldn't have happened without SB III. That's why, even as a BILLS fan, I have a huge appreciation for what the JETS did in that game.
Yeah but it's fairly well known that the NFL was having second thoughts after the Packers destroyed the Raiders and Chiefs by a combined 68-24 score in the first two meetings. They weren't ready to call off the show yet but if the Jets had gotten beaten badly by the Colts there's a good chance they would have. The merger was not about what the NFL has turned into since then at the time. The merger was about trying to co-opt business rivals and rein in the surging expenses, particularly in player salaries, that the rivalry had created for the NFL. They'd have been just fine with the AFL going the way of the dodo if that's how it had turned out in the end. Three straight blowout losses in the Super Bowl probably would have done the AFL in, marking it forever as inferior product to the NFL brand. The NFL would have walked away from the table secure in the knowledge that they had the upper hand for TV contracts and merchandising and the AFL probably would have contracted significantly before another merger opportunity presented itself, as the ABA did a decade later before remnants got into the NBA. Super Bowl III was not a great game to watch but it was the single most impactful Super Bowl in NFL history. How anybody could say that it was over-rated is beyond me. Joe Namath's prediction and the 3 days of back and forth that followed were better entertainment than almost anything that has happened at a Super Bowl since then.
Well it is clear that this person is not a Jets fan. I wasn't alive but.....Best Superbowl ever!:jets:
The Jets get no respect and the Pats give this guy a hard on. Just like everyone else in the media. What else is new?
While Super Bowl III has gotten it's due as a landmark event and the biggest upset in NFL history, the game itself has been underrated by most in the media. This was never more evident than when NFL Network first started running America's Game and only showed the "Top 20" SB's out of the first 40 and the 1968 Jets were not in this group. Ridiculous! It should've been in for their upset and milestone factors alone, but not only that. Thought the final score was low, 16-7, and it seemed like the Colts were never really in the game, that is not the reality of it. The Colts were in the red zone at least twice in the first half before the Jets scored the 1st TD and came away empty because of a miraculous pick and a missed FG. Then there's the infamous missed flea-flicker play that should've put 7 on the board for the Colts. I have the entire game broadcast on 3 DVDs and it was an exciting game with many big plays on both sides. The last 10 years has seen an uptick in competitive Super Bowl games so I can understand the Super Bowl III not making the Top 5, but it should still be a Top 10 game based on the action that took place and the implications. Certainly it should be among the Top 20.
I've done a lot of reading on the merger, and I've never read that the NFL was going to back out of the agreement.
Here's a pretty good read on the back-and-forth that happened between 1966 when the NFL was more interested in the merger than the AFL and 1968 when the situations were reversed. The key things are that neither of the first two Super Bowls sold out, in fact Super Bowl I was played in front of 30,000 empty seats. Also the Raiders and the Chiefs performances in I and II created public relations problems for the NFL with it's fans. In 1967 the Baltimore Colts didn't even make the playoffs with an 11-1-2 record and yet only 1 team in the AFL had a record as good as that and the one team got crushed by the Packers in the Super Bowl. The TV ratings for Super Bowl III were the lowest ever, evidence of declining interest in the game. The official histories all claim that everything was smooth sailing, but that's primarily because Pete Rozelle was in control of the information coming out and he made sure that nobody (even Al Davis who was very anti-merger) spoke negatively of the period under threat of league action against dissidents. Dr Z used to write about the merger now and then when he had an empty column and wanted to spice things up, and his info was somewhat contradictory to the official histories. Of course he had extensive conversations at the time with both Sonny Werblin - who was very pro merger and Al Davis who was anti, so there were some really interesting tidbits in there. Davis, BTW, was convinced that the fix had somehow been put in in Super Bowl III in favor of the Jets. He was as anti-Jets as he was anti-merger. Oops, forgot the link - http://www.shmoop.com/analysis/history/us/history-of-the-nfl/analytic-lenses-culture.html
Agreed. I was too young to remember the true impact of it on the sport (I was 2), but recently saw the game nearly in its entirety on NFL Network. What I got for the first time was the intrigue as the game moved along. At first it looked like the Colts should blow us away and just missed a few chances, then we got up 7-0 and held it to the half. Then we added FGs, then Unitas came in and they got a TD and the onsides kick. The drama just built because the Colts were supposed to be able to kill us and hung on the fringe of the game until the end. By today's standards it didn't have a lot of scoring or record stats, but as pure football game with a lot riding on it, it was awesome.
Good article. I didn't see anything that said they were going to back out of the merger though. I think they wouldn't have been able to do that because at that point they had already had a shared draft and such. Regarding the 1st Super Bowl, it wasn't nearly as boring as the article suggests. The first half was very exciting and KC surprised the Packers trailing only 14-10 at halftime. The second half GB broke it open. The SB II wasa a boring blowout though.
