The Super Bowl is what everyone involved in the NFL wants to win. After 54 editions of the championship game, there is some storied history behind the gridiron.
Football doesn’t get any bigger than this, but how have Super Bowl LIV finalists, the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, previously fared on the sport’s grandest stage?
Oddsmakers have the Chiefs as narrow betting favorites to pick up a third Super Bowl success at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. KC are one from two previous appearances, but fans of the Missouri franchise have had to wait 50 years for the team to get back there.
Kansas City contested the first-ever Super Bowl way back in 1967 where they were well-beaten 35-10 by the Green Bay Packers in Los Angeles. Three years later, however, the Chiefs ran out equally dominant 23-7 winners over the Minnesota Vikings in New Orleans.
After half a century of failed attempts to get another shot, the Super Bowl prop bets involving KC, put forward by football experts this year, suggest this is the Chiefs’ time. This prediction follows their victories in the playoffs over the Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans in the AFC Championship game.
For what it is worth, the 49ers have a lot more Super Bowl experience than Kansas City. San Francisco are five from six appearances in the big match with their first victory coming back in 1982 over Cincinnati Bengals in the Pontiac Silverdome on the outskirts of Detroit.
A home state success in Super Bowl XIX saw the 49ers win again in 1985, thrashing the Miami Dolphins 38-16 on native Californian turf in Stanford. San Francisco have also triumphed in the Sunshine State, where this year’s match takes place twice before.
The first of those and a third Super Bowl win came in 1989 against old rivals, the Bengals, in another close contest between the two NFL teams. Despite legendary coach Bill Walsh leaving the 49ers after that, they still doubled up with a consecutive victory under successor George Seifert the following season.
San Francisco ran riot at Super Bowl XXIV with an emphatic 55-10 win over the Denver Broncos in New Orleans. That record margin of victory still stands to this day.
A fifth Super Bowl – again in Florida in 1995 – went to the 49ers when they beat fellow California NFL franchise, the San Diego Chargers 49-26. Their first ever defeat on the big stage came in 2013 by just three points.
The Baltimore Ravens inflicted that on San Francisco at Super Bowl XLVII. This past season the topped the NFC standings and came through the playoffs, eliminating the Vikings and Packers to set up a seventh Super Bowl appearance.
Given their history of winning in Florida, it is interesting that the 49ers are viewed as slight underdogs in this battle to be crowned NFL champs. Like KC, their postseason performances have been convincing, and they did beat the Chiefs away in the preseason in Kansas City.