The Super Bowl is now almost regarded as an unofficial national holiday in the United States and results in some of the highest viewing statistics for television of the year. This is because tickets to a Super Bowl are very hard to come by and the vast majority of fans simply have to watch from home, friends' homes or sports bars. Tickets for this event bring many, many times the face value of the ticket.

Teams get to the Super Bowl by way of a series of playoffs that rewards good regular seasons and punishes those who lose. The first round is the Wild Car Round where teams with middling win/loss records play the Division winners with the two lowest records in their Conference. The winners of this round play in the Division Championships where they play the teams with the best records in the Conference, who have had an extra week off since the regular season to heal.

The winners of the Division playoffs play in the Conference Championship game. Those who are able to prevail win a Conference trophy and two weeks to heal up for the Super Bowl. The NFC Champion team has been awarded the George Halas Trophy since 1984, the same year the AFC Champion has been awarded the Lamar Hunt Trophy. Mr. Hunt was the founder of the AFL and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. Mr. Halas was the owner of the Chicago Bears and helped to found the NFL.

When the National Football League merged with the American Football League (AFL) they created a Conference system where the former AFL teams (plus some NFL teams to balance the conferences) would send two Conference Champions into the final game to determine supremacy in professional football. Since then some 40 Super Bowls have been played with the result that the NFC teams hold a slight edge in wins over the AFC.