Editing Super Bowl III (section)

===Professional football===
The [[National Football League]] (NFL) had dominated professional football from its origins after [[World War I]]. Rival leagues had crumbled or merged with it, and when the [[American Football League]] (AFL) began to play in 1960, it was the fourth to hold that similar name to challenge the older NFL. Unlike its earlier namesakes, however, this AFL was able to command sufficient financial resources to survive; one factor in this was becoming the first league to sign a television contract—previously, individual franchises had signed agreements with networks to televise games. The junior league proved successful enough, in fact, to make attractive offers to players. After the [[1964 American Football League season|1964 season]], there had been a well-publicized bidding war which culminated with the signing, by the AFL's New York Jets (formerly Titans of New York), of [[1964 Alabama Crimson Tide football team|Alabama]] quarterback [[Joe Namath]] for an unprecedented contract.<ref>Davis, p. 267.</ref> Fearing that bidding wars over players would become the norm, greatly increasing labor costs, NFL owners, ostensibly<ref>{{cite magazine | last=Maule | first=Tex | author-link=Tex Maule | title=Ridiculous! The NFL By 50 Points | date=December 16, 1963 | url=https://vault.si.com/vault/1963/12/16/ridiculous-the-nfl-by-50-points | magazine=Sports Illustrated | access-date=November 4, 2021 | archive-date=April 21, 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140421050446/http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1075495/index.htm | url-status=live}}</ref> led by league Commissioner [[Pete Rozelle]], obtained a [[AFL–NFL merger|merger agreement]] with the AFL in June 1966, which provided for a [[common draft]], interleague play in the pre-season, a [[Super Bowl|world championship]] game to follow each season, and the integration of the two leagues into one in a way to be agreed at a future date.<ref>Davis, pp. 277–279.</ref> As the two leagues had an unequal number of teams (under the new merger agreement, the NFL expanded to sixteen in {{nfly|1967}}, and the AFL to ten in [[1968 American Football League season|1968]]),<ref>Davis, pp. 277–281.</ref> realignment was advocated by some owners, but was opposed. Eventually, three NFL teams ([[1970 Cleveland Browns season|Cleveland Browns]], [[1970 Pittsburgh Steelers season|Pittsburgh Steelers]], and the [[1970 Baltimore Colts season|Baltimore Colts]]) agreed to move over to join the ten AFL franchises in the [[American Football Conference]].<ref>Davis, pp. 281–286.</ref>

Despite the ongoing merger, it was a commonly held view that the NFL was a far superior league.<ref name=sivagpvs/> This was seemingly confirmed by the results of the first two interleague championship games, in [[Super Bowl I|January 1967]] and [[Super Bowl II|1968]], in which the NFL champion [[1966 Green Bay Packers season|Green Bay Packers]], coached by the legendary [[Vince Lombardi]], easily defeated the AFL's [[1966 Kansas City Chiefs season|Kansas City Chiefs]] and [[1967 Oakland Raiders season|Oakland Raiders]]. Although publicized as the inter-league championship games, it was not until later that the moniker for this championship contest between the now two conferences ([[National Football Conference|National]] and [[American Football Conference|American]]) began having the nickname of "[[Super Bowl]]" applied to it by the media and later began being counted by using [[Roman numerals]], the creation of the term being credited to the founder of the AFL, [[Lamar Hunt]].<ref>Davis, pp. 296, 311.</ref>