Which Team Has Appeared in the Most Super Bowls?

The Super Bowl is the playoff game between the two conferences in national football, but which team has appeared in the most Super Bowls over the years? The beginnings of professional football resulted from the merger of the two national football leagues that existed early in the sport. The American Football League and the National Football League merged to form a system of two conferences. The Super Bowl game became the playoff at the end of the year to determine the best football team in the entire conference.

Of all the teams that have made multiple appearances in the playoffs and then succeeded into the actual Super Bowl, the Dallas Cowboys have appeared the largest number of times as of 2010. As of 2010, they have appeared in the Super Bowl eight times and of those eight Bowls, they won five of them.

The closest team to that record was the Pittsburg Steelers, who had appeared in seven bowl games by 2010, but the Steelers have a better record of winning at the Super Bowl as they won six of their seven appearances.

There also appear to be a small set of teams that continuously make it to the playoff games each year.

The NFC had a fantastic winning streak from 1981 through 1996. During that period, an NFC team won the Super Bowl fifteen times of the sixteen Super Bowls in those years.

College Football Bowls: Origin of the Super Bowl Idea

College football started to be of great interest in the nation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were many groupings of schools that spanned the country, such as the Pac-10 and Big-8, that were organized to compete with each other.

At the end of the football season, there were playoff games for the teams in order to determine which was the best. The Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl were the biggest Bowl games for the college circuits.

Following this example, the professional football league held their own bowl game and the Super Bowl was born.

Early Years of the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl was preceded by the league championship games during the early 1960s. The very first Super Bowl game was played in 1967, between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. After that, the Super Bowl game would be played each year after the end of the normal football season between the leading team in each of the two Leagues: the NFL and the AFL. Then, by the middle of the 1970s, the AFL became the AFC. 

Several teams have seemed to dominate the Super Bowl playoffs and have appeared numerous times as competing teams in the actual final game of the season:

• The Dolphins
• The Steelers
• The Cowboys
• The Raiders

The Dallas Cowboys have appeared the largest number of times as of 2010.

Broadcast of the Super Bowl

Each year the Super Bowl is broadcast on one of the national television companies, usually ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox.

CBS and NBC have carried the broadcast rights the most number of times. The rights have generally been rotated between the available companies each year.

The early years of the Bowl game saw the black out of the broadcast in the host city due to league restriction that were in place at the time. Starting with Super Bowl VII the game was broadcast in all cities.

Entertainment Value of the Super Bowl

The largest halftime show of any event is seen at the Super Bowl. The halftime show features performances by some of the biggest names in pop music of the day.

The commercials seen during the Bowl game are also special spots designed specifically for the Super Bowl game. The creativity of those commercials has been amazing each year and the Super Bowl has become a popular form of entertainment for both football lovers and non-football lovers alike.

The Super Bowl typically has a very large audience and so advertisers pay a premium price to show their commercials. In 2010, the cost of placing a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl was over $2.5 million.