NEW ORLEANS — (Staff and Wire Service Report) – When the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles meet in Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9 in the Caesars Superdome, New Orleans will make history by tying Miami for the most Super Bowls hosted (11).
But it’s the games themselves that have produced plenty of history for the Crescent City.
In the city’s first Super Bowl (IV), the Chiefs made their only previous title game appearance in New Orleans at Tulane Stadium, which was the site of three Super Bowls before the Superdome came along.
The previous year, the New York Jets made Joe Namath a prophet by upsetting the heavily favored Baltimore Colts and demonstrating that the AFL and the NFL were more competitive than had generally been accepted, with the merger of the two leagues approaching.
When Hank Stram’s Chiefs rolled into New Orleans and upset the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings in the last game involving the AFL, it further solidified the incoming teams’ legitimacy.
Fast forward 43 years, and the last Super Bowl played in New Orleans made history as the first one in which the two head coaches were brothers when John Harbaugh led the Baltimore Ravens against Jim Harbaugh’s San Francisco 49ers.
But it became notable for another, more bizarre reason when a power outage knocked out the lights inside the Superdome early in the third quarter.
In between the first and last Super Bowls in New Orleans, the Crescent City was the site of:
–the first Super Bowl titles won by the Cowboys and the Steelers;
–another Cowboys title in the first Super Bowl played indoors once the Superdome opened;
–the Eagles’ only previous appearance in a New Orleans Super Bowl in a loss to the Raiders;
–the Bears’ only Super Bowl title;
–the 49ers’ last Super Bowl title with Joe Montana;
–the Packers’ first post-Lombardi title;
–and the Patriots’ and Tom Brady’s first title in the first post-/911 Super Bowl.