How Have Things Changed Since Super Bowl I?

By Eric Fleming, Contributing writer

A lot of things have changed since the first Super Bowl was played back in January 1967.

Everything from the teams involved (eight teams have been added to the NFL, in addition to all the merger teams of 1970) to the cities they play in (for example, the Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles, then back to Oakland) have changed.

But some of those changes are more amazing than others.

For instance, if you wanted to get into the first Super Bowl, you could probably get tickets for less than $10. Flash forward 40 years and you'll find that the cheapest tickets to recent Super Bowls have face values of closer to $700. According to USA Today, the average ticket price for recent Super Bowls has ranged $2,600-$4,300.

Of course, if you'd been buying a ticket to the first Super Bowl, no one would have known what you were talking about. The first Super Bowl was actually called the "AFL-NFL World Championship Game" and was played between the winner of the AFL and NFL -- two competing football leagues. The game as it exists today (since 1970, actually) is the championship of the NFL, which is made up of the AFC and NFC (American Football Conference and National Football Conference).

If you were watching that first Super Bowl live from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, you would have been treated to a halftime show featuring the marching bands from the University of Arizona and the University of Michigan, according to The Arizona Republic. The upcoming Super Bowl, on the other hand, will have Bruce Springsteen. Recent Super Bowls have featured such superstars as Tom Petty, Prince, The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney.

If you watched the first Super Bowl on television, you would have been treated to a football game, and not a lot else. Recent Super Bowls have featured something else: advertising. Commercials have become almost as important as the actual football game itself, and it is estimated that one out of every 12 people watching the Super Bowl do so because of the commercials. The first Super Bowl, on the other hand, had no celebrity commercials costing millions of dollars. A 30-second commercial during the upcoming 2009 Super Bowl will cost roughly $3 million, according to Reuters.

Salaries also are vastly different now. In the 1960s, when the first Super Bowl occurred, quarterback Joe Namath of the New York Jets signed a then-record contract worth more than $400,000, according to Sports Illustrated. Contrast that to 2007, when the NFL's highest paid player was defensive tackle Dwight Freeney of the Indianapolis Colts, who pulled in a cool $30.7 million for one year, and there were more than 25 players making $10 million a season.

As you can see, a lot of things have changed since that first AFL-NFL World Championship Game was played between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs back in 1967. Players are bigger and faster, the game is more popular, and money is more a driving force than ever before. But take away all the glitz, all the glamour, the celebrities and the hoopla, and you'll find one thing hasn't changed, and that's the football. The Super Bowl is the most important football game of the year, and everybody wants to win it.