Superbowl

Dave Wilton dave at WILTON.NET
Mon Jan 27 21:16:03 UTC 2003


A question came up about the origin of the term "Superbowl" on my site's
discussion board. A common tale is that it was coined by a KC Chiefs owner
Lamar Hunt in 1970 after seeing his daughter playing with a "superball."
This has all the marks of an apocryphal story, but evidently the name
"superbowl" was not used officially by the NFL until 1970 or so.

I know the OED has a cite from 1966 (a reference to the upcoming game in Jan
67), but is this an isolated use or was the term in general use by
sportswriters and others before the NFL adopted it? Super + bowl is such an
obvious coinage that I wouldn't be surprised if there were independent
coinages.



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