The success of the spectacular—a one-time event—also had the unintended benefit of making NBC think differently about sports, and in particular, big football games, which were also annual events. And so NBC decided to invest heavily in promoting its broadcast of the 1958 National Football League championship game. As luck would have it, professional football turned out to be a good match for television, and the contest between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants, decided in sudden-death overtime, was proclaimed "the greatest game ever played." Attracting 45 million viewers, it established the precedent and template for what would persist as another great attention ritual: the Super Bowl.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 475