Super Bowl LI XXXVIII in 2004, which also featured the New England Patriots against that season's NFC South champion Carolina Panthers. It was also the third time the Super Bowl has been played in Houston, with Super Bowl VIII in 1974 having been held at Rice Stadium. With the Astros baseball team reaching the World Series eight months later, Houston would become just the fourth city to host both the Super Bowl and Fall Classic in the same calendar year, following San Diego (1998), Detroit (2006) and Arlington, Texas (2011); and the first among the four to win the Major League Baseball championship.
Super Bowl XXVI This was the first time that a major television network successfully scheduled Super Bowl counterprogramming: Fox aired a special live football-themed episode of its popular sketch comedy show "In Living Color" during the halftime show. NFL owners voted to award Super Bowl XXVI to Minneapolis during their May 24, 1989 meeting in New Orleans. Indianapolis, Pontiac and Seattle also made bids for the game. Super Bowl XXVI became the second Super Bowl to be played in a cold, winter climate city. The first one was Super Bowl XVI on January 24, 1982 at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, a suburb