Part I
With Super Bowl XLVIII coming up this Sunday night, I hope this post will be of interest, especially to some of our international members who might not be familiar with the important relationship between shaving product advertising and American sports.
Back in the day, some of the biggest American football stadiums were called "Bowls" because of their elongated shape. Most have been replaced by modern facilities, but a few of the old ones, like the Yale Bowl, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, California (below), are still in use.
The biggest annual college football championship games were traditionally named for the "bowls" in which they were played: the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl (Miami), and Cotton Bowl (Dallas). Over the years, almost all American football championships, college and professional, adopted "Bowl" as part of their name as a way to promote the game and enhance it's importance.
The first Super Bowl was held in January 1967, between the Green Bay Packers, 1966 season champions of the National Football League (NFL), and the Kansas City Chiefs, champions of the upstart the American Football League (AFL). The game was originally a made-for-TV "bragging rights" contest, and very few people believed that any AFL team could possibly be competitive with the best of the powerhouse NFL. All that changed in January, 1969, when Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the heavily-favored Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts in Super Bowl III.
The leagues remained separate for only one more year. After the 1970 Super Bowl, the NFL and AFL merged. Ever since, the Super Bowl matches up the champions of the NFL's National and American Conferences, which, with addition of some expansion teams, and a few swaps of teams from one conference to the other, basically mirror the old NFL/AFL alignment. The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched sporting events worldwide, perhaps second only to the World Cup.
So what's all that got to do with shaving? Most American stadiums, like many in other countries, are now named for corporate sponsors. Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts (opened 2002, capacity 69,000) is the home of the NFL's New England Patriots, who were Super Bowl champions in 2001, '03 and '04. Like the Jets, the Patriots were members of the old AFL, and were originally known as the Boston (home of Gillette) Patriots. In the Pat's early days, they shared Fenway Park with baseball's Boston Red Sox. Gillette Stadium is also frequently used for soccer matches, concerts, and other large events.
Maybe we should call it "The Shaving Bowl."
With Super Bowl XLVIII coming up this Sunday night, I hope this post will be of interest, especially to some of our international members who might not be familiar with the important relationship between shaving product advertising and American sports.
Back in the day, some of the biggest American football stadiums were called "Bowls" because of their elongated shape. Most have been replaced by modern facilities, but a few of the old ones, like the Yale Bowl, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, California (below), are still in use.
The biggest annual college football championship games were traditionally named for the "bowls" in which they were played: the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl (Miami), and Cotton Bowl (Dallas). Over the years, almost all American football championships, college and professional, adopted "Bowl" as part of their name as a way to promote the game and enhance it's importance.
The first Super Bowl was held in January 1967, between the Green Bay Packers, 1966 season champions of the National Football League (NFL), and the Kansas City Chiefs, champions of the upstart the American Football League (AFL). The game was originally a made-for-TV "bragging rights" contest, and very few people believed that any AFL team could possibly be competitive with the best of the powerhouse NFL. All that changed in January, 1969, when Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the heavily-favored Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts in Super Bowl III.
The leagues remained separate for only one more year. After the 1970 Super Bowl, the NFL and AFL merged. Ever since, the Super Bowl matches up the champions of the NFL's National and American Conferences, which, with addition of some expansion teams, and a few swaps of teams from one conference to the other, basically mirror the old NFL/AFL alignment. The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched sporting events worldwide, perhaps second only to the World Cup.
So what's all that got to do with shaving? Most American stadiums, like many in other countries, are now named for corporate sponsors. Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts (opened 2002, capacity 69,000) is the home of the NFL's New England Patriots, who were Super Bowl champions in 2001, '03 and '04. Like the Jets, the Patriots were members of the old AFL, and were originally known as the Boston (home of Gillette) Patriots. In the Pat's early days, they shared Fenway Park with baseball's Boston Red Sox. Gillette Stadium is also frequently used for soccer matches, concerts, and other large events.
Maybe we should call it "The Shaving Bowl."
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