The NFL used to pride itself on being the league of parity, but now finds itself in the least diverse period of the Super Bowl Era

My favorite thing about the National Football league is the parity. But lately, that's been missing in the biggest game of the year.

The NFL has long prided itself on being the greatest reality TV show in the world. The drama is constant, and you never quite know what's going to happen next. It's the "any given Sunday' league. It's the league where you can fall from first to last just a quickly as you can rise from last to first. It's the league where one star can change everything for a franchise. Where once you get into the playoffs, most every team has a chance to win.

That's the elevator pitch for the NFL. But for nearly the past decade, that reputation falls flat when we reach the Super Bowl. The Chiefs and the Eagles just played in Super Bowl LIX, a rematch of their 2023 Super Bowl matchup. It's the first SB rematch since... last season, when the Chiefs faced the 49ers in a rematch of the 2020 SB.

When it feels like the same teams have been playing for the SB lately, it's because they have. In the last 8 years, there have been 8 Super Bowls. That means an opportunity for 16 different teams to play in the game, or half the league. But from 2018-2025, only 7 teams have made it to the final game of the season.

Two of these 8 games have been rematches of 2 of the others. 5 of the 7 teams have been multiple times in this period, with the Eagles going three times and the Chiefs four. For the lengths of two full presidential terms, the AFC has been represented by just the Chiefs and Patriots with a brief Bengals cameo, and the NFC represented by the Eagles Rams and 49ers, with a brief Buccaneers cameo. It's been painfully repetitive.

When you split the entire Super Bowl era up into these 8 year chunks going all the way back through the 70's, you realize just how unusual it's been. In fact the past 8 years (7 different teams, 5 making multiple trips) has been the least-diverse run of Super Bowls ever, with the only era coming close being 1970-1977. During those eight years, 8 different teams went with 4 making multiple trips.

On average, every 8 years we've seen around 11 different teams play in the Super Bowl. Here's who we saw every 8 years dating back to 1970 for reference.