Do Colors In Super Bowl Logo Predict Participants?

When the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles meet in Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9 (6:30 p.m. ET on FOX), it’ll mark the fourth straight season in which the logo features a color from each participant.

This trend started when the NFL added colorful backgrounds and local flavor to its otherwise templated design with Super Bowl LVI in Inglewood, California, which saw the Los Angeles Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals.

That logo incorporated palm trees and a yellow-to-orange gradient background inspired by the Southern California sunset, which – of course – matched one color from the Bengals’ orange and black and Rams’ blue and yellow scheme.

The following year, the logo for Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona, featured a red and purple desert landscape design with green and teal beams of light on the horizon that replicated the design of the Arizona State Flag.

That game pitted the Chiefs and the Eagles, with the former winning their first of two straight titles before knocking off the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas.

The logo for Super Bowl LVIII, meanwhile, featured buildings along the Las Vegas Strip against a purple-to-red sunset, which is where we can begin to poke holes in the theory that the colors used in the logo determine the participants.

If that were truly the case, the Baltimore Ravens or the Minnesota Vikings would have advanced to Super Bowl LVIII rather than two teams with red in their color scheme playing for the title.

There’s also the fact that the Green Bay Packers could have replaced the Rams in Super Bowl LVI without disrupting the trend or that nine teams that made the playoffs in 2022-23 use a color featured in the Super Bowl LVII logo.

Then there’s the logo for Super Bowl LIX, which includes more burgundy than shades of light green that better match the Washington Commanders than the Eagles. Or that the Buffalo Bills could have easily replaced the Chiefs as the team with red in its scheme.

Photo courtesy of @Eagles on X/Twitter.