With Super Bowl 50 fast approaching, I thought it would be interesting to find out more about the history of the Super Bowl and the history of the National Football League.
Here are some interesting facts I learned about the Super Bowl and Super Bowl 50:
• With a television viewership of over 100 million people and hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on tickets, concessions, and merchandise alone, the Super Bowl is the most watched and greatest sports game on Earth.
• Super Bowl 50 will be the 50th edition of the Super Bowl and the 46th modern-era National Football League championship game.
• In a departure from the NFL tradition of using Roman numerals, this game is marketed in Arabic numerals as “Super Bowl 50” instead of Super Bowl L (the Roman numeral for 50).
• The game is scheduled to be played on February 7, 2016, at 6:30 pm Eastern time at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. This will be the first Super Bowl held in the San Francisco Bay Area since Super Bowl XIX in January 1985.
• It has been dubbed as the Golden Super Bowl because it will be located in the Golden State (California); held in the home stadium of the San Francisco 49ers, a team named after the miners of the California Gold Rush and because a 50th anniversary is traditionally the “golden anniversary.”
• CBS will telecast the game in the United States.
In an effort to learn more about the National Football League, check out some of the resources that are available at the Weinberg Memorial Library here at the University of Scranton:
Books
• America’s game : the epic story of how pro football captured a nation
MacCambridge, Michael, 1963-
New York: Random House, c2004.
Call # GV954.M32 2004
• Close calls : the confessions of a NFL referee
Schachter, Norm.
New York: Morrow, 1981.
Call # GV939.S29 A33
• League of denial : the NFL, concussions, and the battle for truth
Fainaru-Wada, Mark.
New York: Crown Archetype, 2013.
Call # RC1220.F6 F35 2013
E-books (Accessible from our catalog)
• NFL football : a history of America’s new national pastime
Crepeau, Richard C., 1941- author.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014.
• Outside the lines African Americans and the integration of the National Football League
Ross, Charles Kenyatta, 1964-
New York: New York University Press, 1999.
• Tailgating, sacks, and salary caps how the NFL became the most successful sports league in history
Yost, Mark.
Chicago, IL: Kaplan Pub., 2006.
