Super Bowl XVI Super Bowl XVI Super Bowl XVI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion San Francisco 49ers and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Cincinnati Bengals to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 1981 season. The 49ers defeated the Bengals by the score of 26–21 to win their first Super Bowl. The game was played on January 24, 1982, at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. It marked the first time that a Super Bowl was held at a cold-weather city. The domed stadium saved the crowd at the
Super Bowl XLIV of NFL coverage (1956–93; 1998–present). This was the 17th Super Bowl telecast for CBS, the largest total among the "big four" US television networks. CBS had also broadcast the previous Super Bowl held in South Florida (XLI). Play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz and color commentator Phil Simms were in the broadcast booth, with Steve Tasker and Solomon Wilcots serving as sideline reporters. The game was preceded by "The Super Bowl Today", a four-hour pregame show hosted by James Brown and featuring analysts Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason, Shannon Sharpe and Bill Cowher along with several other commentators, which started at 2pm EST.