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Sporting News, The, Feb 5, 1996 by Dennis Tuttle

In the beginning, it wasn't even known as the Super Bowl. It was called the first "AFL-NFL Nvorld Championship Game," and if there is any doubt about the indifference of the public and sports community toward it at the time, consider that the game was played before 30,000 empty seats at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Now, 29 championship games later, Packers'35-10 victory over the Chiefs has gained an epic dignity embellished in the recounting. Yes, Max McGee caught two touchdown passes and the established NFL savored sweet victory over the brash and cocky AFL.

But the real story, the best story on January 15, 1967, was the bickering and sniping between NBC, televisor of the AFL games, and CBS, carrier of the established NFL.

"It was a unique broadcast because it was the only time two networks carried the Super Bowl," says Curt Gowdy, NBC's play-by-play man that day. "It was a big argument over who should have the rights, and Pete Rozelle, the commissioner, decided in his solemn wisdom to let both do it and get double the rights fee."

As it turned out, the first Super Bowl Week evolved into a TV turf war far better than the game. The two networks became so entwined in their competitive paranoia and behind-the-scenes shenanigans that they eventually had to be separated by chain-link fence. Announcers were being assigned and reassigned up until the night before the game, and 'network executives were running around like chickens with their heads cut off" says Ray Scott who called the game for CBS.

"I was a very important game from the standpoint of winning the ratings, and the network executives kept emphasizing this," Scott continues. "I was never a very political person, but these people, they didn't know what the heb they were doing. They couldn't just let us do our jobs. They had to get in the middle and stir things up."

CBS had won the regular-season ratings by a 2-to-1 margin because, like the NK today, the NFL was in bigger markets. NBC, which had paid $36 million in 1965 for AFL fights and thus had given the league instant stability, felt that because it didn't have a team in Los Angeles or Chicago, it had to promote an aspect of the league's coverage.

"The battle of the networks took precedent to the game," Gowdy says. "They sent me and Paul Christman, my broadcast partner, to be on `The Tonight Show,' the `Today' show and all over the dial. CBS did the same kind of thing."

"But what happened with us," Scott says, "is CBS got nervous. In those days an announcing crew followed a team the entire year, and I had been with the Packers. Jack Whitaker had covered the Giants, and CBS felt since he was known in New York (the No. 1 market), he should do the Super Bowl regardless of who won. Then, the night before the Dallas-Green Bay game for the NFL championship, I was told that if Dallas won, it was 100 percent Jack wouldn't do it and if Green Bay won, it was 90 percent I wouldn't do it. So I told them that if Green Bay won and I didn't get to do the game, I wouldn't do the last years of my contract."

Green Bay advanced, but the networks had another problem: It was decided only CBS's production would be used, and NBC would share the feed.

"We went to a couple of production meetings, and it was like sneaking into the enemy's tent," Gowdy says, laughing.

"They finally had to put up a fence between the technicians," Scott says. Even the teams showed network prejudice. Gowdy says Packers Coach Vince Lombardi wouldn't meet to discuss strategy, while Chiefs Coach Hank Stram met with Gowdy and Christman and reviewed films and mapped out the Chiefs' game plan.

"I can't say Lombardi helped us much," Scott says. "I actually got most of my pregame information throughout the year from Max McGee."

After much debate, CBS finally settled on an announcing team of Scott and Whitaker, with each calling one half of play-by-play. Pat Summerall and Frank Gifford served as reporters, as did Charlie Jones for NBC. "But right up until the last night before the game, I felt CBS was embarrassed to have me along," Scott says. "It was like, `Whitaker and who?'"

Gowdy says matters didn't get much better on game day. He and Scott say the networks never asked them to play favorites for their respective leagues -- "I would have told them to go to hell," Scott says -- but NBC executives "stayed in the back of the booth the entire game, trying to get ratings on the phone," Gowdy says.

"Down in the NBC {truck they'd try to sneak in a few (production) things of our own by clicking off the CBS production. Little things really. But they'd been having midnights meetings over this kind of stuff."

When the game was over, CBS won the ratings war by a surprisingly narrow percentage (22.6 to 18.5) of the nation's total homes with TVs. NBC felt a measure of victory, but the shared broadcast had been so taxing that Rozelle decided the networks should alternate broadcasting the game.

"Outside Super Bowl 111, when the Jets beat the Colts, it was one of the most memorable games I've ever done," Gowdy says.