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] The NFC/NFL leads the AFC/AFL with 28 wins to 27. 20 franchises, including teams that have relocated to another city, have won the Super Bowl.[5]
The New England Patriots (6–5) and Pittsburgh Steelers (6–2) have won the most Super Bowls with six championships, while the Dallas Cowboys (5–3) and the San Francisco 49ers (5–2) have five wins. The New England Patriots have the most Super Bowl appearances with 11, while the Buffalo Bills (0–4) have the most consecutive appearances with four (all losses) from 1990 to 1993. The Miami Dolphins (1971–1973) and New England Patriots (2016–2018) are the only other teams to have at least three consecutive appearances. The Denver Broncos (3–5) and Patriots have each lost a record five Super Bowls. The Minnesota Vikings (0–4) and the Bills have lost four.
The record for consecutive wins is two and is shared by seven franchises: the Green Bay Packers (1966–1967), the Miami Dolphins (1972–1973), the Pittsburgh Steelers (1974–1975 and 1978–1979, the only team to accomplish this feat twice and the only team with four wins in six consecutive seasons), the San Francisco 49ers (1988–1989), the Dallas Cowboys (1992–1993), the Denver Broncos (1997–1998), and the New England Patriots (2003–2004). Among those, Dallas (1992–1993; 1995) and New England (2001; 2003–2004) are the only teams to win three out of four consecutive Super Bowls.
The 1972 Dolphins capped off the only perfect season in NFL history with their victory in Super Bowl VII. The only teams with multiple Super Bowl appearances and no losses are the Baltimore Ravens and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, both having achieved a (2–0) Super Bowl record. Four current NFL teams have never appeared in a Super Bowl, including franchises that have relocated or been renamed: 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.
Numbers in parentheses in the table are Super Bowl appearances as of the date of that Super Bowl and are used as follows:
(1966–1969) | (1970–present) |
---|---|
National Football League (NFL) | National Football Conference (NFC) |
NFL championn (4, 2–2) |
NFC championN (51, 26–25) |
American Football League (AFL) | American Football Conference (AFC) |
AFL championa (4, 2–2) |
AFC championA (51, 25–26) |
S Indicates a team that made the playoffs as a second-place team (rather than by winning a division).
W Indicates a team that made the playoffs as a wild card team (rather than by winning a division).
Seven franchises have won consecutive Super Bowls, one of which (Pittsburgh) has accomplished it twice:
No franchise has yet won three Super Bowls in a row. Several franchises have had eras of sustained success, nearly accomplishing a three-peat:
Three franchises have lost consecutive Super Bowls:
The Buffalo Bills have the most consecutive appearances with four from 1990 to 1993. The Miami Dolphins (1971–1973) and New England Patriots (2016–2018) are the only other teams to have at least three consecutive appearances. All three teams with three or more consecutive Super Bowl appearances are in the AFC East division. Including those three, 11 teams have at least two consecutive appearances. The Dallas Cowboys are the only team with three separate streaks (1970–1971, 1977–1978, and 1992–1993). The Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Denver Broncos,[n 1] and New England Patriots have each had two separate consecutive appearances. The Kansas City Chiefs are the most recent team to appear in consecutive Super Bowls playing in Super Bowl LIV and Super Bowl LV. The full listing of teams with consecutive appearances is below in order of first occurrence; winning games are in bold:
The following teams have faced each other more than once in the Super Bowl:[n 2]
NFLn/NFCN teams (28–27) | AFLa/AFCA teams (27–28) |
NFLn/AFCA (0–1 as a "National" team, 2–1 as an "American" team)[n 5] |
In the sortable table below, teams are ordered first by number of wins, and then the number of appearances, and finally precedence is given to the first team to achieve this record.
Four current teams have never reached the Super Bowl. Two of them held NFL league championships prior to Super Bowl I in the 1966 NFL season:[n 7]
Although four teams have not appeared in a Super Bowl to date, there are an additional nine teams whose most recent Super Bowl appearance was before Houston joined the NFL in 2002, resulting in a longer drought.
Eight teams have appeared in the Super Bowl without ever winning. In descending order of number of appearances and then years since their last appearance, they are:
Article List of Super Bowl champions in English Wikipedia took following places in local popularity ranking:
Presented content of the Wikipedia article was extracted in 2021-06-13 based on https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=2145410