CLOSE WINDOW   HOME

What is the best pre-merger league at winning the big game?
Think back. Think way back.

The National Football League playoffs are on the horizon and Super Bowl XLII looms. Should an AFC team win this upcoming edition it will tie the NFC at 19 wins each. This might not mean much for younger football fans who don't remember the bitter rivalry between the old NFL and the upstart American Football League in the 1960s. The first four Super Bowls were split between the two leagues 2-2.

While the conferences are pretty even-steven to date, how well does it reflect the old AFL v. NFL before and after the merger? What some will recall, three of the current AFC teams once were in the NFL. The Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts, the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers were switched to the AFC from the old NFL. If those teams had stayed in the NFC how would the old rivalry tilt for the 41 Super Bowls played so far?

In fairness to the old AFL, whenever a former NFL team represents the AFC in the Super Bowl it means an old NFL team must win. To adjust for that I invented the power rating. The league is now 32 teams. I derive the power rating by dividing the percentage of Super Bowls won by the percentage representation:

Some of those expansion teams haven't been around the whole time so let's eliminate them and have the 26 team league as at the 1970 merger:

By this reckoning returning the Colts (2 SB wins), Steelers (5 SB wins) and Browns (0 SB wins) to the NFC it looks like the old NFL is the most successful of the old independent leagues. But is it? Old-timers and football historians may beg to differ if you include another of the old independent leagues, the All-America Football Conference.

Never heard of it? The All-America Football Conference began just after the Second World War. Three of those teams joined the NFL in 1949, the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers. Between them those three teams have won seven Super Bowls.

Let's recalculate for the current 32 team league accounting for the old AAFC:

Let's reformulate for the 26 team 1970 merger league:

However the NFL expanded between the time of the NFL-AAFC merger in 1949 and the AFL-NFL merger. So let's figure it on the teams that existed then with no AFL at all and no post-merger expansion teams, specifically no Dallas Cowboys who won five Super Bowls.

As you can see, any way you slice it the AAFC and not the AFL or NFL is the greatest Super Bowl winning league of all time.

Then there's the strange case of the Baltimore Ravens which were an expansion team created in 1996 when the Cleveland Browns players and team owner moved to Baltimore, taking everything but the team records and name. Officially the Browns suspended operations from 1996-1998 and resumed operations in 1999 as a non-expansion team, though it was essentially an expansion team, but not according to NFL record keeping. So, where do you count the Baltimore Ravens who won a Super Bowl? Are they really the former Browns, formerly of the NFL, formerly of the AAFC or what?

If you want to consider the Ravens the old AAFC Browns, that brings the total wins up to 8, increases the percentage won to 19.5%, and gives the league a .78 power rating on the last chart.

Just to make it more confusing, the NFL in 1949 had a team called the New York Yanks, which became the Dallas Texans. But that franchise doesn't exist any more so we'll just pretend it never happened. Plus a number of AAFC teams went defunct not making it into the NFL. We conveniently ignore that, too.