After the season, NFL owners faced competition from the newly-formed
American Football League and wanted a vehicle through which to showcase more of its supposedly superior NFL professional football product on television, then carried through the
CBS Television Network. At the time, unlike the AFL, which had a contract with the
ABC Television Network for their nationally televised games, often double-headers, few NFL games were televised nationally during the season and there was only one scheduled post-season game, the NFL Championship Game. The Playoff Bowl was devised to match the second-place teams from the NFL's two conferences (Eastern and Western). This doubled from two to four the number of top NFL teams appearing in post-season play on national television. The
1966 season required another game following the
American Football League Championship Game and the NFL Championship Game, the first of four
AFL–NFL World Championship Games between the champions of the two major
Professional Football leagues for the undisputed championship. The establishment of the AFL–NFL World Championship Game (the Super Bowl name was not made official until
Super Bowl III) was the first phase of the
AFL–NFL merger of June 1966. This new mega-game between the rival leagues was played in mid-January at a warm weather location, two weeks after the championship games for each league. The NFL's Playoff Bowl was played during the idle week, and because of AFL's equally major league status, interest in the game was waning. In addition, the arrival of the
Miami Dolphins in
1966 as an expansion franchise in the AFL reduced local interest in the game. In the season, the NFL expanded to 16 teams and four scheduled post-season contests. The NFL sub-divided its two conferences (now eight teams each) into two divisions of four teams each: The Capitol and Century divisions in the Eastern conference, and the Central and Coastal divisions in the Western conference. The four division winners advanced to the post-season, competing for their conference titles in the first round of the NFL playoffs. The winners (conference champions) advanced to the NFL championship game, the losers (conference runners-up) appeared in the Playoff Bowl to vie for third place. For the three seasons (–
69) preceding the merger with the
AFL, the loser of the NFL's third place game ended up with a peculiar record of 0-2 for that post-season. In its final season in
1969, the AFL also expanded to a four-team post-season, adding two more playoff games. The highest attendance was over 65,500 in January 1966 for the
Baltimore Colts' rout of the
Dallas Cowboys; the season was the last one prior to the Dolphins starting play, the
AFL–NFL merger agreement, and the creation of the Super Bowl. In January 1968 and 1969, the Super Bowl was played in the Orange Bowl the following week, which further contributed to the declining attendance for the NFL's consolation game.
The end of the Playoff Bowl When the merger was completed for the season, there was discussion about continuing the Playoff Bowl, with the losers of the
AFC and
NFC Championship Games playing each other during the idle week before the
Super Bowl. There were now seven post-season games in the NFL (three for each conference, plus the Super Bowl), and the
Pro Bowl all-star game. A "losers' game" was not necessarily attractive for the league, and the Playoff Bowl came to an end.
Official status The ten Playoff Bowls were official
third place playoff games at the time they were played; today, the NFL consider the games as exhibitions.
Criticism Green Bay Packers coach
Vince Lombardi detested the Playoff Bowl, coaching in the games following the
1963 and
1964 seasons, after winning NFL titles in
1961 and
1962. To his players, he called it "the 'Shit Bowl', ...a losers' bowl for losers." This lack of motivation may explain his Packers' rare postseason defeat in the 1964 game (January 1965) to the
St. Louis Cardinals. After that loss, he fumed about "a hinky-dink football game, held in a hinky-dink town, played by hinky-dink players. That's all second place is – hinky dink." Using the Playoff Bowl (and loss) as motivation in
1965, the Packers won the first of three consecutive
NFL championships from 1965 to
1967. The Packers remain the sole NFL team to win three consecutive titles in the post-season era, which began in . During this successful run, the Packers also won the first two
Super Bowls in convincing fashion. Lombardi's final game (and victory) as
head coach of the Packers was
Super Bowl II, played in the Orange Bowl in January 1968.
All-Pro defensive tackle Roger Brown appeared in five Playoff Bowls, the most by any player, and was on the winning side each time (
Detroit Lions in 1960, 1961, 1962;
Los Angeles Rams in 1967, 1969). He said playing in those seemingly meaningless contests was like having "the worst
inferiority complex." He added, "I was in five of them, and to have played in it five in the ten years it was in existence is pitiful." The Lions also hold the dubious distinction of having the most victories in the Playoff Bowl, three, along with tying for the best
winning percentage, 1.000. ==Players' shares==