The first Super Bowl, played Jan. 15, 1967, in Los Angeles, pitted the NFL champion Packers against the Chiefs, then champs of the upstart AFL.
Up until then, the NFL — which came into being in 1920 and was originally named the American Professional Football Association — had its champion before the AFL was born in 1960. The new league crowned six of its own pre-Super Bowl champs.
It wasn’t until that first Super Bowl that pro football had a unified champion.
Before it won the first two Super Bowls, Green Bay won the last pre-Super Bowl NFL title, defeating Jim Brown and the Cleveland Browns on Jan. 2, 1966.
Hall of Fame linebacker Dave Robinson, who played for those Green Bay title teams, said there’s no question his Packers were undisputed world champs in pro football for three consecutive years.
The AFL was considered the inferior league, and lopsided wins by the Packers in the first two Super Bowls probably proved that point. The perception of NFL superiority is what made the Super Bowl 3 win by the New York Jets and quarterback Joe Namath‘s “guarantee” so memorable.
“I’ll have a little bit of disappointed [if the Chiefs win], but in my mind, though, they wouldn’t say they broke any record,” said Robinson, 83, who made his post-football living in beer wholesale. “They’d just tie [our] record. You can’t really be upset if someone just ties your record.”
Eight surviving Packers played on all three of those Green Bay title teams: Kramer, Robinson, split end Boyd Dowler, wide receiver Carroll Dale, tight end Marv Fleming, defensive back Tom Brown, wide receiver Bob Long and offensive lineman Steve Wright.
Fleming, 83, insists his Packers teams should be considered greater than the current Chiefs, based on the concentration of talent. Eleven mid-’60s Packers players and coach Vince Lombardi are enshrined in Canton, Ohio, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“We had a top-of-the-line players at every position,” said Fleming, who went into real estate after football. “Today, have one or two, three on a team, and it’s all watered down. We had, on every team and at almost every position, there was a guy who belonged there, OK?”
Dale said he’d cut slack to any football fans who don’t mention his Packers in the same breath as modern juggernauts like the Chiefs.
“I figure that there are not many people alive that remember seeing that game [the last pre-Super Bowl NFL championship game] 60 years ago,” said Dale, who went on to become the athletic director at the University of Virginia at Wise. “So they tend to forget. I forgive them for that.”
Long was far less forgiving when it came to football fans whose history books don’t extend further than the first Super Bowl.
“They’re [possibly going to be] the first team ever to win three Super Bowls [in a row], the Kansas City Chiefs. But in my mind, we already did that,” said Long, 83. “They just forget it for some reason. I’ve never heard that [Super Bowl 2 was] the third [championship] in a row for the Packers in the media.”
The failure to mention the Packers as a three-peat champion, Long said, is akin to wiping out a generation of football greats.
“There were some pretty good players in the league,” in the 1960s, said Long, who made his post-football living as an early Pizza Hut franchisee. “They’re trying to tell me that Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus weren’t very good? Or Jim Brown or John Unitas? Unfortunately, in my mind, they keep forgetting those players.”
Even if those mid-’60s Packers won’t get mentioned alongside today’s Chiefs, Dowler, 87, said he has enough self-satisfaction to let any potential slight slide.
“The fact is we won three straight world titles. I don’t care whether you call it a Super Bowl, the world title, the NFC, the NFL, whatever,” said Dowler, who was a longtime NFL assistant coach after he hauled in 7,270 receiving yards during a run-dominated era of football.
“It all becomes very wordy. I don’t [argue], because we won what was put in front of us, right? Nothing that anybody says or does can take that away from us.”
Wright couldn’t be reached for comment this week, while Brown is in “the ninth year of his Alzheimer’s journey,” daughter Jessie Brown said.
In his assisted living facility, Brown, 84, is surrounded by senior citizens who vividly remember the 1967 NFL championship game, known as the Ice Bowl, and remind their housemate that he played in one of pro football’s most important games.
“He doesn’t really talk anymore, but they like to talk to him [about the Ice Bowl] and he’ll smile,” Jessie Brown said of her father, who worked in youth sports after his playing days. “It’s not really definitive enough to say, ‘Oh, yeah, he [remembers the Ice Bowl], but that doesn’t stop people from talking to him about it, which I love.”
