Super Bowl XXXVII Raiders entered the game favored to win in their first Super Bowl in 19 years. They were also the first franchise to appear in the Super Bowl in four decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 2000s; the 1990s was the only decade that they did not appear in the Super Bowl). However, much of the media hype surrounded the Gruden trade prior to the season. This forced league commissioner Paul Tagliabue to issue a statement that he might ban all future trades for coaches involving draft choices because it might compromise the draft. A distraction for the Raiders was that starting center
Super Bowl XVII booth. Len Berman and his "NFL '82" castmates, Mike Adamle (who also covered the Vince Lombardi Trophy presentation ceremony), Ahmad Rashād and Pete Axthelm anchored the pregame, halftime and postgame coverage. NBC's national Nielsen rating of 48.6 was the second-highest for a Super Bowl broadcast, trailing only the 49.1 garnered by Super Bowl XVI on CBS the year before. NBC introduced a new theme for the game; a brass-based piece that would see usage in various forms (as game introduction; pregame introduction or bumper music) for most of the remainder of the decade. The game was broadcast nationally on radio