I worked hard to dig up 12 of the crazier bits of trivia, the type you hopefully haven't grown tired of hearing. You'll either be like "Whoa" or like "Seriously?" or like "Wow, that's stupid." But maybe one of them might just make this whole read worthwhile. Anyway, have at it!
1. Don’t feel bad if your team loses the Super Bowl coin toss. The last 6 teams who won the pre-game flip ended up losing the actual game.
2. Tickets for this year’s Super Bowl are selling for anywhere from $8,000 to $35,000 each. But unlike years past, this year it's not scalping. Why? Because the face value price of the tickets is unknown, as they abandoned hard-copy tickets due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. Super Bowl LV was very close to being a rematch of the very first Super Bowl. The Green Bay Packers beat Kansas City in January of 1966, and had Tampa Bay not pulled off their last-minute comeback in Lambeau Field two weeks ago, today’s matchup would have been Super Bowl I v 2.0.
4. Speaking of Super Bowl I (known as the first NFL World Championship), tickets for that game were priced at just $6 apiece, and there were still 30,000 unsold tickets.
5. According to the USDA, more food is consumed on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year except for Thanksgiving. The National Chicken Council (yes there is one) estimates that Americans will eat over 1.4 BILLION chicken wings today. Raising the water table by half an inch as a result. (Okay I made up that one)
6. As much as everyone talks about how great the New England Patriots were in the Super Bowl, no team has LOST more Super Bowls than the Pats. They are tied with the Denver Broncos at 5, followed by the Minnesota Vikings and Buffalo Bills with 4.
7. Speaking of the Vikings, only have they never won a Super Bowl in four tries, they’ve never even led in a Super Bowl.
8. During the average Super Bowl, 120 footballs are used. Each team is issued 108 balls, 54 for practice and 54 for game use. And each team uses different balls are used for each type of kicking play (field goals, PATs, punts, kickoffs).
9. The game balls are specially made by Wilson, each with the exclusive Super Bowl LV logo. So every ball you see in today’s game was made in Ada, Ohio!
10. Former Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson is the only guy who’s ever beaten the same team in the Super Bowl as player and coach. Pederson coached the Eagles to their upset of Tom Brady’s Patriots in Super Bowl 52, and he was also Brett Favre’s backup QB when the Green Bay Packers took the Pats down in SB 31.
11. The Weeknd, this year’s Super Bowl halftime entertainment, will be performing for the incredible price of…. Zero. Nada. Bupkis. The Super Bowl has never paid for their halftime shows. Not Prince, the Rolling Stones, Bruce, or Beyoncé. Even Up With People got stiffed. It’s the hyperbolic version of “Musicians wanted: sorry we can’t afford for you to play at our bar, but imagine the exposure you’ll get!”
12. Tom Brady started his NFL career 20 years ago, but he’s only played 19 seasons. In the first week of the 2008 season he blew out his knee against—you guessed it— the Kansas City Chiefs. The defender who delivered the hit, Bernard Pollard, played his college ball at Purdue, where in 2004 he squared off against Michigan QB Chad Henne, who is backing up Patrick Mahomes tonight. Small world that football is!
