Last Updated: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 08:26 PM   

 

 

Super Bowl Tournament: 
A 20th Anniversary Celebration


Featuring the Super Bowl Champions from the league's first twenty seasons, coming out of retirement, taking a magic pill to grant them the same abilities as they had when they won it all ... and throwing them all into a bracket challenge to see who would become .... 

The Greatest Championship Team

As the league was approaching it's 20th season online, we thought we had reached the pinnacles of pinnacles. No other league on the net had even ventured past the five season mark, considering they were all coaching leagues, moving at the speed of one game per week. We were so thrilled to have lasted a generation, that we decided we had to determine which team could be called the Greatest Champion.
 

It was a cute gimmick. You'd never see it in the real world, although back at the change of the millennium ESPN took a bunch of NFL Films stock footage and broadcasted the "Game of the Century", featuring Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers from 1970 versus Bill Walsh's San Francisco 49ers from 1986. They even married together footage from Howard Cosell in with ESPN's regular crew of Mike Patrick, Paul Maguire, and Joe Theismann. It was done really well and at times, you couldn't tell the difference between the eras.
 

For those of us in the USA Football League those days, we had no idea the league would last past thirty seasons, heck even get close to fifty seasons. So, as a marketing ploy, Commissioner Andrew Lewis dreamed up the 20th Anniversary Greatest Championship Team Tournament. The results were broadcast live each week on the wildly popular FBPRO Radio Show, hosted by Jason Tudor featuring Bill Barnwell. Both of whom were so impressed with our fledgling little operation that they came on board as Assistant GMs and began the process of learning all about the world of the USAFL.
 

Listening in to the FBPRO Radio Show, the USAFL always stood out head and shoulders above all the other leagues as we always had so much content we could funnel to the show. From highly competitive playoff results, to free agency acquisitions, to small features on our yearly champions. And now, to be able to tell the entire FBPRO community online that we were holding a tournament featuring 20 season's worth of champions, made our league the talk of the sim community.
 

It's no wonder that immediately following the tournament the league was inundated with requests to join. From that crop of new GMs came the likes of Aaron Streepy, Tim Gilberg, Dave Aiello, Todd Ricotta, Tom Edwards, Joe Malloy, and Patrick Sicher. Those seven stuck around through the end of the original era, into the second era, with Todd, Tom, Joe, Dave, Aaron, and Joe signing on for the now famous modern era (now into it's 66th season).
 

So who won this major event?
 

It did have a surprising ending ... with the diehard original GMs owning multiple championship teams, the eventual winner was a newcomer into the league ... but I am ahead of myself. Check out the stats and scores below. We had some incredible games ...
 

The teams were ranked according to a committee of veteran GMs. We had four brackets, five teams in each bracket with the two lowest teams matched-up in a play-in game. Each bracket winner came together for a final four .... until we reached our Greatest Super Bowl Champion.
 

Here are the ROSTERS of the twenty participating Super Bowl Champions.

BRACKET ONE
1ST ROUND 2ND ROUND 3RD ROUND FINAL FOUR
1. TB 2005 - 24
16. TB 2003 - 39

STATS

1. TB 2005 - 13

STATS

16. TB 2003 - 21

BRACKET ONE

20. ATL 1997 - 6

STATS

1. TB 2005
9. BUF 2013 - 13

WINNER

STATS

8. TB 2011 - 9
8. TB 2011 - 16

 

BRACKET TWO
1ST ROUND 2ND ROUND 3RD ROUND FINAL FOUR
4. DEN 2007 - 25
13. TB 2001 - 23

STATS

4. DEN 2007 - 12

STATS

13. TB 2001 - 3

BRACKET TWO

17. DEN 2004 - 10

STATS

12. ATL 2010
12. ATL 2010 - 23

WINNER

STATS

12. ATL 2010 - 26
5. DEN 2006 - 16

 

BRACKET THREE
1ST ROUND 2ND ROUND 3RD ROUND FINAL FOUR
2. ATL 2015 - 20
15. TB 2002 - 23

STATS- OT!!!

15. TB 2002 - 13

STATS

15. TB 2002 - 22

BRACKET THREE

19. DEN 1998 - 6

STATS

7. TB 2008
10. CIN 2012 - 5

WINNER

STATS

7. TB 2008 - 15
7. TB 2008 - 10

 

BRACKET FOUR
1ST ROUND 2ND ROUND 3RD ROUND FINAL FOUR
3. DEN 2009 - 3
14. BUF 2014 - 16

STATS

14. BUF 2014 - 6

STATS

14. BUF 2014 - 21

BRACKET FOUR

18. TB 1999 - 12

STATS

6. CAR 2016
11. DEN 2000 - 3

WINNER

STATS

6. CAR 2016 - 35
6. CAR 2016 - 36

 

FINAL FOUR - Greatest Super Bowl Tournament

BRACKET ONE
1. TB 2005 - 14

STATS

12. ATL 2010 - 3
BRACKET TWO BEST
12. ATL 2010 - 15

SUPER BOWL TEAM

STATS

6. CAR 2016

BRACKET THREE FROM THE FIRST
7. TB 2008 - 7 TWENTY YEARS

STATS

6. CAR 2016 - 13
BRACKET FOUR
6. CAR 2016 - 33

 

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