Superbowl

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:16 PM -0800 1/27/03, Dave Wilton wrote:
>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 remember it as being official as of Super Bowl III, the famous
Jets-Colts matchup in January '69.  Remember that in those days
(until the 1970 season ending in what we now call Super Bowl IV) the
leagues hadn't yet merged, so it would need to be both NFL and AFL
archives that would have to be checked.  I've also heard the Lamar
Hunt/superball theory.  I wonder whether Barry's instantly-found 1966
cite makes that story less likely.

>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.