Super Bowl Sunday - Everything You Need To Know About Football

 The game of American Football (or as we simply call it Football) has enjoyed a glorious history of thrilling victories and tragic defeats  in the modern age of organized sports. Every year millions of die hard fans tune into or attend both college and professional football games across the country. This being said there are many of you out there that have no idea what you are looking at.

I will try to explain and educate you on the subtle rules and history of NFL Football:

The Rules

Lets start on offense:

This comes from a blog called The Football Girl. It explains everything so well I decided to barrow from it.

How many players are on a football team? Each team is made one of 11 players. One 11-man team has possession of the football. It is called the offense and it tries to advance the ball down the field-by running with the ball or throwing it – and score points by crossing the goal line and getting into an area called the end zone.

While only the quarterback, the wide receivers and tight ends, and the running backs can legally handle the ball, it is the quarterback who is the leader of the team and the playmaker. In fact, he’s a man of many talents – he not only throws the ball, he outlines each play to his team.

The quarterback (“QB”) passes or hands off the ball.
The center snaps the ball to the QB and blocks the defense.
2 guards and 2 tackles keep the defense at bay.
2/4 wide receivers catch the ball thrown by the QB.
1 or 2 running backs take the ball and run with it.
1 or 2 tight ends block the defense and can also catches passes.

You got that so far? No, okay let's go to the video:

Okay now we are on the same page.

History

The National Football League (NFL) was founded in 1920 the American Professional Football Association (APFA) with ten teams from four states, all of whom existed in some form as participants of regional leagues in their respective territories; it took on its current name in 1922. The NFL was the first professional football league to successfully establish a nationwide presence, after several decades of failed attempts. Only two founding members, the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), are still in the league. The Green Bay Acme Packers, founded in 1919 (joined the NFL in 1921, now the Green Bay Packers) are the oldest NFL franchise with continuous operation in the same location. 

 League membership gradually stabilized throughout the 1920s and 1930s as the league adopted progressively more formal organization. The first official championship game was held in 1933. The NFL stopped signing black players in 1927 but reintegrated in 1946 following World War II. Other changes followed after the war; the office of league President evolved into the more powerful Commissioner post, mirroring a similar move in Major League Baseball. Teams became more financially viable, the last team folding in 1952 and the league absorbing teams from the briefly more successful All-America Football Conference in 1950, of which only the San Francisco 49ers and the Cleveland Browns survive to the present day. By 1958, when that season's NFL championship game became known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played", the NFL was on its way to becoming one of the most popular sports leagues in the United States. 

 The rival American Football League was founded in 1960. It was very successful, and forced a merger with the older NFL that resulted in a greatly expanded league and the creation of the Super Bowl, which has become the most-watched annual sporting event in the United States. The league continued to expand to its current size of 32 teams. A series of labor agreements during the 1990s and increasingly large television contracts have helped keep the league one of the most profitable in the U.S., and the only major league in the U.S. since 1990 to avoid a work stoppage that resulted in the loss of regular-season games.

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Public Enemy Number One

The most important thing that anyone needs to know about the NFL is that no matter what team this guy plays for, you root against him. If you get nothing else out of this article if you can understand this one simple item you should be able to navigate any Super Bowl party or work discussion on football.  Unless you live in a city where Tom Brady plays or you are in a room surrounded by fans of the team he plays for. If you find yourself in one of those scenarios, disregard what I said or you may end up getting hit over the head with a whisky bottle.

Yes football is complicated indeed.

Let's Meet The Teams

The Kansas City Chiefs

The team was founded in 1960 as the Dallas Texans by businessman Lamar Hunt and was a charter member of the American Football League (AFL). In 1963, the team relocated to Kansas City and assumed its current name. The Chiefs joined the NFL as a result of the merger in 1970. The team is valued at over $2 billion. Hunt's son, Clark, serves as chairman and CEO. While Hunt's ownership stakes passed collectively to his widow and children after his death in 2006, Clark is the operating head of the franchise; he represents the Chiefs at all league meetings and has ultimate authority on personnel changes. 

 The Chiefs have won three AFL championships, in 1962, 1966, and 1969.They became the second AFL team (after the New York Jets) to defeat an NFL team in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game, when they defeated the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. The team's victory on January 11, 1970, was the final such competition before the leagues' merger went into full effect. The Chiefs were also the second team, after the Green Bay Packers, to appear in more than one Super Bowl (and the first AFL team to do so) and the first to appear in the championship game in two different decades. Despite post-season success early in the franchise's history, winning five of their first six postseason games, the team struggled to find success in the playoffs for many years, including losing 10 of 11 playoff games from 1993 to 2017, which included an 8-game losing streak. Since then, the Chiefs have won 4 of their last 5 playoff games, including Super Bowl LIV in 2020, which earned the franchise their first championship in 50 years. - Source

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers

FYI this is the team that Tom Brady plays for.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The club joined the NFL in 1976 as an expansion team, along with the Seattle Seahawks, and played its first season in the American Football Conference (AFC) West division. Prior to the 1977 season, Tampa Bay switched conferences and divisions with Seattle, becoming a member of the NFC Central division. During the 2002 league realignment, the Buccaneers joined three former NFC West teams to form the NFC South. The club is owned by the Glazer family and plays its home games at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. 

 The Buccaneers were regarded as a perennial losing franchise for most of their first two decades of existence due to suffering 26 consecutive losses in their first two seasons (including a winless inaugural season) and 14 consecutive losing seasons from 1983 to 1996. Despite this lack of success, they are the first post-merger expansion team to win a division championship, a playoff game, and host a conference championship game; a feat they accomplished by their fourth season in 1979. Aided by the Tampa 2 defensive scheme, the team improved their image during the late 90s, culminating in their first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XXXVII. This remained their only playoff win for nearly two decades until they made it to Super Bowl LV in the 2020 season, in which they will be the first team to ever play in a Super Bowl in their home stadium. - Source

Cheerleaders 

Yes pro football teams have cheerleaders just like high school and college teams do. However, a pro football game is the only place on Earth were a group of the most beautiful women that God has ever created can dance around in their underwear for three hours and absolutely nobody pays any attention to them.

The most famous group of NFL cheerleaders hails from Dallas, where somebody figured out that people would want to look at beautiful women in their underwear when the game was over by marketing a series of calendars, posters and bringing the girls out for personnel appearances.    

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (sometimes initialized as DCC, and officially nicknamed "America's Sweethearts") are the National Football League cheerleading squad representing the Dallas Cowboys team. Preparing for the 1970 season, Schramm decided to change the Cheerleaders' image to boost attendance. At first the main change was to create an all-female squad and change the uniforms and style of cheerleading routines to be primarily dance and less like traditional acrobatic routines like that of high school or college cheerleading squads. The ten local high school cheerleaders who were selected for the 1970 season were also involved in the task of totally redesigning the uniforms and creating new dance style cheer routines under Dee Brock's direction and with the help of a choreographer. In 1971, the qualification rules changed to allow not only local female cheerleaders to compete for a spot on the squad, but also high school drill team officers. Then in 1972, Texie Waterman, a New York choreographer, was recruited and assigned to auditioning and training an entirely new female squad who would all be over 18 years of age, searching for attractive appearance, athletic ability, and raw talent as performers. Since the 1972 squad consisted of adults, this allowed the possibility of again redesigning the uniforms to introduce a more revealing look (most notably transitioning from the traditional cheerleader skirt to hot pants) closer to the classic DCC image that is known today. This modified squad first appeared on the sidelines during the Cowboys' 1972 season.

 Even greater national attention came in the fall of 1977 when the Cowboys, along with designer and photographer Bob Shaw, produced the first NFL cheerleader poster for the Dallas Cowboys. This, and an Esquire magazine article by Shaw in October 1977, led to the squad appearing on two network TV specials, NBC Rock-n-Roll Sports Classic and The Osmond Brothers Special on ABC. Also that year, the DCC produced their own one-hour special, The 36 Most Beautiful Girls in Texas, which aired on ABC prior to the season opener of Monday Night Football (which coincidentally was a game that the Cowboys hosted). On 14 January, 1979, the made-for-TV movie The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders aired. Starring Bert Convy and Jane Seymour, it had a 48% share of the national television audience. - Source

How bout dem Cowboys!

The Greatest Play In Super Bowl History:

As a Rams fan that one makes me tear up a little.

The Greatest Play In NFL History:

That play known as The Immaculate Reception still blows my mind all these years later.

Detroit Lions Tailback Billy Sims Jumps One Player A Karate Kicks Another: 

Eric Dickerson Runs Over And Past Everybody:

I had to post this one because I just loved to watch Eric Dickerson run. After watching this clip I am convinced that he was actually a cyborg of some kind in a Rams uniform.

My Super Bowl Prediction:

I break the game down in two simple terms. If the NFL is as fair and squeaky clean as we all hope and pray, Chiefs win. If the NFL is as scripted as  professional  wrestling Buccaneers win. 

No, really I'm picking the Chiefs.

Enjoy the game!