Commentary: How the NFL went from podunk to the biggest show in sports
Is there any angle on the Super Bowl that someone hasn't analyzed and scrutinized? There's scholarly research into the emotional recall of Super Bowl advertising, Auto Club stats on the Super Bowl and drunk driving. And it does teach people Roman numerals, sort of - Hey, remember Super Bowl XXXIV? That was a doozy!
Now we're at Super Bowl LIII - the 53rd year, and the first Super Bowl is as distant from the current one as the end of the Civil War is from the end of the First World War. Craig Coenen's book "From Sandlots to the Super Bowl: The National Football League, 1920 to 1967," marches through the improbable ascent of pro football from a low-rent, small-town sport to the most-watched game in the country, capped by the over-the-top touchdown-and-guacamole glut that has become our unofficial national holiday.
Q. The NFL we see now, with this mega-production of the Super Bowl, must have been unimaginable when pro football first started.
A. When the NFL first started in 1920, pro football had been around for a few years and nobody really cared much for it. Football as an entity had its fan base with college football with upper-class people and middle-class people, and for working-class people, largely they had semi-professional football. And teams that played were made up of local boys who worked in the factories and pro football had no place.
In the 1920s, in the NFL alone there were scores and scores
