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The Super Bowl is an annual American football game that determines the champion of the National Football League (NFL). The contest is held in an American city that is chosen three to four years beforehand,^[1] usually in warm-weather or domed sites.^[2] Since 1971, the winner of theAmerican Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game has faced the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship Gamein the culmination of the NFL playoffs. Before the 1970 merger between the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League(NFL), the two leagues met in four such contests. The first two were known as the "AFL-NFL World Championship Game." Super Bowl III in 1969 was the first such game that carried the "Super Bowl" moniker, the names "Super Bowl I" and "Super Bowl II" were retroactively applied to the first two games.^[3] The NFC/NFL leads in Super Bowl wins with 26, while the AFC/AFL has won 22. Nineteen different franchises, including teams that relocated to another city, have won the Super Bowl.^[4]

The Pittsburgh Steelers (6–2) have won the most Super Bowls with six championships, while both the Dallas Cowboys (5–3) and San Francisco 49ers (5–1) have five wins each. Dallas and Pittsburgh have the most Super Bowl appearances with eight, while the Buffalo Bills (0–4) have the most consecutive appearances with four losses in a row from 1990 to 1993 (the Miami Dolphins are the only other team to have three consecutive appearances: 1972-74). The Denver Broncos (2–5) have lost a record five Super Bowls. The New England Patriots (3–4) and Minnesota Vikings(0–4) have lost four. The record for consecutive wins is two and is shared by seven franchises: the 1966-67 Green Bay Packers, the 1972-73 Miami Dolphins, the 1974-75 and 1978-79 Pittsburgh Steelers (the only team to accomplish this feat twice), the 1988-89 San Francisco 49ers, the 1992-93 Dallas Cowboys, the 1997-98 Denver Broncos, and the 2003-04 New England Patriots. The 1972 Dolphins' win capped off the onlyperfect season in NFL history. The only team with multiple Super Bowl appearances and no losses is the Baltimore Ravens, who in winning Super Bowl XLVII unseated and replaced the 49ers in that position. Four current NFL teams have never appeared in a Super Bowl, including franchise relocations and renaming: the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans, though both the Browns and Lions had won NFL Championship games prior to the creation of the Super Bowl.