Sports betting enthusiasts make – and lose – a lot of money betting on NFL games, chiefly the Super Bowl. The winner of professional football’s ultimate showdown receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy. It might not have quite the stature of the Stanley Cup, but this trophy certainly rates as a more precious prize than the Lawrence O’Brien Memorial Trophy given to the NBA champion, and the trophy handed to the winner of Major League Baseball’s World Series.

The Vince Lombardi Trophy didn’t always have the name. The sterling silver creation – with a football resting on a massive, thick stem – was initially referred to as the “world championship trophy.” The first frontal inscription on the seven-pound figure was “World Professional Football Championship.”

In order to realize how the Lombardi name attached itself to this trophy, one needs to be aware of the history of professional football in the United States. In 1967, the Super Bowl came to life, but at that time, there were two separate pro football leagues, the upstart American Football League and the well-established National Football League, which came into being in 1920. It wasn’t until the 1970 season that the AFL and NFL merged, creating the unified NFL we see today. For the first four Super Bowls – from 1967 to 1970 – the AFL and NFL logos existed on the world championship trophy, and in the first two editions of America’s largest sporting event, the game was not called the Super Bowl, but the “AFL-NFL World Championship Game.” The Super Bowl name stuck in Super Bowl III, played in 1969. That was the year when the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts and gave the AFL its breakthrough victory over the NFL on the big stage. That result, followed by the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs beating the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV, created momentum for the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. That’s what occasioned the need to give this trophy a special name.

While the AFL and NFL were merging in 1970, Washington Redskins coach Vince Lombardi died. Given Lombardi’s role in winning the first two Super Bowls (or AFL-NFL World Championship Games), not to mention his hallowed place in football history, the league and commissioner Pete Rozelle called this magnificent silver art piece the Vince Lombardi Trophy. It is held aloft in triumph after Super Bowls, even now.