The Super Bowl is the annual American football game that determines the champion of the National Football League (NFL). The game culminates a season that begins in the previous calendar year, and is the conclusion of the NFL playoffs. The winner receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The contest is held in an American city, chosen three to four years beforehand,[1] usually at warm-weather sites or domed stadiums.[2] Since January 1971, the winner of the American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game has faced the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship Game in the culmination of the NFL playoffs.
Before the 1970 merger between the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League (NFL), the two leagues met in four such contests. The first two were marketed as the "AFL–NFL World Championship Game", but were also casually referred to as "the Super Bowl game" during the television broadcast.[3] Super Bowl III in January 1969 was the first such game that carried the "Super Bowl" moniker in official marketing; the names "Super Bowl I" and "Super Bowl II" were retroactively applied to the first two games.[4]
A total of 20 franchises, including teams that have relocated to another city or changed their name, have won the Super Bowl.[5] There are four NFL teams that have never appeared in a Super Bowl: the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans, though both the Browns (1950, 1954, 1955, 1964) and Lions (1935, 1952, 1953, 1957) had won NFL Championship Games prior to the creation of the Super Bowl in the 1966 season.
The 1972 Dolphins capped off the only perfect season in NFL history with their victory in Super Bowl VII. Only two franchises have ever won the Super Bowl while hosting at their home stadiums: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV and the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI.