Super Bowl History | Super Bowl TV Coverage | Super Bowl Entertainment | Super Bowl Trivia
Super Bowl Location
The location of the Super Bowl is chosen by the NFL well in advance, usually 3 to 5 years before the game. Cities compete to host the game in a selection bidding process similar to ones used by the Olympic Games and soccer's World Cup. To this date, Super Bowls have either been played in cities with mildly warm winter climates, or in domed stadiums where weather is not an issue. The only three cold-winter-climate cities to have hosted the Super Bowl are Pontiac, Michigan, Detroit, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Over half of the Super Bowls have been played in one of the following three cities: New Orleans, Louisiana (9 times), Miami, Florida (8 times) and the Greater Los Angeles Area (7 total, 5 times at Pasadena's Rose Bowl stadium and twice at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum). Miami has been selected to host two future games: Super Bowl XLI in 2007 and Super Bowl XLIV in 2010. After Hurricane Katrina damaged the Louisiana Superdome and the city, the game might never return to New Orleans. The last time the Los Angeles area hosted the game was Super Bowl XXVII in 1993; the area is currently not considered a possible venue after the league's two teams vacated the city in 1995: the Raiders moved back to Oakland, California, and the Rams moved to St. Louis, Missouri.
Coincidentally, no NFL team has ever played the Super Bowl on its own home turf. However, Super Bowl XIV (which involved the then-Los Angeles Rams) was played at nearby Pasadena's Rose Bowl stadium; and Super Bowl XIX (which involved the San Francisco 49ers) was played at the nearby Stanford Stadium on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto.
Home vs Visitors
The designated "home team" alternates between the NFC team in odd-numbered years (the Philadelphia Eagles in 2005), and the AFC team in even-numbered years (the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2006). The home team is given the choice of either wearing their colored jerseys or their white ones; this started with Super Bowl XIII. Prior to that, the home team always wore the dark jerseys. The Dallas Cowboys wore their rarely used blue uniform tops in Super Bowl V, and lost to the then-Baltimore Colts, which has led to the widely held belief that the Cowboys do not play well in their blue shirts. While most home teams in the Super Bowl choose to wear their colored jerseys, only the Cowboys in XIII and XXVII and the Washington Redskins in XVII have worn white as the home team. The Pittsburgh Steelers will become the fourth home team in a Super Bowl to wear their white jerseys when they will compete in Super Bowl XL.
Super Bowl History | Super Bowl TV Coverage | Super Bowl Entertainment | Super Bowl Trivia
|