History of TV scheduling for Super Bowl rematches

In the 2016 regular season, the Denver Broncos will host the Carolina Panthers in a rematch of Super Bowl 50. This marks only the 7th time that a regular season rematch of the prior Super Bowl has occurred. The NFL schedule will be revealed this spring and presumably this rematch will get prominent TV placement.

But this leads to a few questions... Where has the NFL placed the previous Super Bowl rematches on its TV schedule? How frequently have such rematches been aired in prime time?

Here is a summary of how the previous six Super Bowl rematches were scheduled for TV purposes (all times ET):

1970

In the first year after merging with the AFL to form a 26-team league, the NFL kicked off its 1970 regular season with a rematch of Super Bowl 4 as the Chiefs and Vikings squared off in Minnesota. NBC assigned its top crew of Curt Gowdy and Kyle Rote to this matchup which was the featured 4 pm doubleheader game on opening Sunday.

1977

The next such game was a Super Bowl 11 rematch between the Vikings and Raiders in Oakland during week 13 of 1977. This game was the primary 4 pm Sunday doubleheader game on CBS with Vin Scully and Alex Hawkins in the booth. This is the only time a Super Bowl rematch was not covered by the top broadcasting crew of the network airing the game. CBS sent its #1 team of Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier to call a Saturday game that weekend. At that time, CBS and NBC aired national Saturday afternoon games late in the season.

1979

Two years later, the Cowboys faced the Steelers in Pittsburgh in a rematch of Super Bowl 13. The game was in week 9 on CBS which had the doubleheader that day. However, the NFL scheduled this game at 1 pm making it the only rematch played in the early Sunday afternoon window. CBS did assign Summerall and Brookshier to handle that telecast in a rare case where the #1 crew called an early game when its network had the doubleheader.

1993

In week 2 of 1993, the Cowboys hosted the Bills in a rematch of Super Bowl 27. NBC featured it as the main 4 pm doubleheader game with its #1 team of Dick Enberg and Bob Trumpy on the call. So far, this is the only rematch on the same network that had televised the prior Super Bowl. Enberg and Trumpy were in the booth for that game as well.

1997

The NFL scheduled the Super Bowl 31 rematch between the Packers and Patriots in Foxboro for Monday Night Football in week 9 of 1997. Al Michaels, Frank Gifford, and Dan Dierdorf had the announcing duties that night on ABC at 9 pm. In an odd twist, a stadium conflict with the Florida Marlins (who hosted World Series game 7 on Sunday) caused the NFL to move the Bears-Dolphins game from Sunday afternoon to Monday night. That game started also started at 9 pm and ABC televised it to Chicago and Miami. So while Packers-Patriots is the only Super Bowl rematch thus far to be played in prime time, it wasn't televised to the entire country.

2014

The most recent game on this list took place in week 3 of 2014 when the Broncos traveled to Seattle to face the Seahawks in a rematch of Super Bowl 48 - some 17 years after the last rematch. CBS assigned its #1 crew of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms to this contest and spotlighted it as the main 4:25 pm doubleheader game.

Summary notes

• Of the six Super Bowl rematches so far, four were scheduled as the primary late Sunday afternoon doubleheader game. Only one has been scheduled for prime time (Monday night) while the other game was the main early Sunday game on the doubleheader network.
• Because of the circumstances surrounding the 1997 Monday night game, none of the rematches has been a full national telecast. 
• From a calendar standpoint, three games took place in September, two were scheduled in late October, and one was played in December.
• Only one rematch was not called by a network's #1 announcer crew.
• No TV announcer has called more than one Super Bowl rematch - a streak that will continue if Fox gets the 2016 matchup). 
• Super Bowl rematches have been rarer than expected. Using a basic probability model and assuming random chance, I calculated that the expected number of such rematches since the 1970 merger would be 12, but the 2016 game will only be the 7th. 

Some thoughts on the NFLN "re-broadcast" of Super Bowl 1

I found the NFL Network special on Super Bowl 1 to be an enormous letdown. A few quick observations:

NFLN hyped this show as a "re-broadcast" which was a grossly misleading characterization. The term "re-broadcast" means to repeat the broadcast of a program. But this was nothing of the sort. The presentation had only a few clips from the original telecast and was primarily footage from NFL Films. While the show did contain original radio clips, a large percentage of that audio was drowned out by the cast on the NFLN set.

<UPDATE 1/18/2016 - NFL Network now plans to re-air the Super Bowl 1 assembled footage, but this time with the original uninterrupted radio audio on Friday 1/22 at 8pm ET.>

The most positive aspect of the show was the inclusion of the original CBS footage of Ray Scott doing some pregame player introductions and Pat Summerall conducting a postgame interview. But the NFLN program didn't mention that these were original CBS TV clips, never identified Scott, and had the studio crew talking over parts of the Scott footage.

The seemingly constant banter from the studio panel ran concurrent with a dampened version of the radio audio in the background. This setup was extremely distracting and seemed disrespectful to radio play-by-play announcer Jim Simpson. With a 3-hour show, NFLN could have easily utilized its commentators between segments of game footage.

I cannot imagine that either Ed Sabol or Steve Sabol would have been pleased with this NFLN presentation.

During the show, host Chris Rose discussed the fact that neither CBS nor NBC saved a copy of its original telecast. But that segment completely ignored the fact that a tape containing most of the CBS telecast was discovered in 2005 and restored by the Paley Center. That tape even contains original commercials (which one of the panelists expressed an interest in seeing).

Not surprisingly, the reaction from viewers was overwhelmingly negative. I don't recall seeing a single positive tweet about this show either during or after it aired. I honestly don't know what NFLN was thinking with this production or how anyone in charge at the network could have expected praise for it.

Prior to the airing, an NFLN producer amazingly uttered the following quote in a New York Times preview story:

“We’ll make sure we don’t ruin anything with the chatter,” Larone said. “If we have the right people together, it will be like a viewing party.”

The first half of that quote is a complete insult to everyone who viewed this disappointing special. NFL Network spoiled the party.

CBS radio broadcast clip from Super Bowl 1

Here is a portion of the CBS radio broadcast of Super Bowl 1 between the Packers and Chiefs, courtesy of RadioTapes.com. The clip of about 17 minutes was recorded by WCCO-AM in Minneapolis. It mostly covers the pregame, but also contains a few plays of game action along with a postgame recap.

The announcers are Jack Drees and Tom Hedrick. During the clip, Hedrick refers to the game as the "Super Bowl", mentions the pointspread, and tries to rationalize the fact that there were numerous empty seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum that day.