Born in New Orleans 50 years ago, the Superdome was conceived in Houston a decade earlier, when Louisiana governor John McKeithen gazed upon the new Astrodome and declared, Caesar-like: “I want one of these, only bigger.” That phrase, “only bigger,” is the Super Bowl’s unspoken motto, for it only ever increases in size, expanding exponentially like the universe.
Like the universe, the Super Bowl was conjured from nothing. Alan Page played in four of them as a defensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings, two of them in New Orleans, and remembers what a dubious idea it was to pit the champions of the NFL against their counterparts in the AFL. “From a player’s perspective it was almost comical,” Page says of Super Bowl I in 1967. “Because the difference between the two leagues was so significant. There wasn’t much better in terms of historical greatness than the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s. And they’re playing the Kansas City Chiefs? Why? Why are they doing this? What is the point here? In ’68, it was like, They’re doing this again?! I would not have predicted it would have come to all this.”
