Playoff Bowl

Playoff Bowl (defunct)
Bert Bell Benefit Bowl
Stadium	Orange Bowl
Location	Miami, Florida
Operated	1961–1970   (January); NFL game for third place

The Playoff Bowl (officially, the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl) was a post-season game for third place in the National Football League (NFL), played ten times following the 1960 through 1969 seasons, all at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida.

Bert Bell was the commissioner of the NFL from 1946 until his death in October 1959. He was a co-founder of the Philadelphia Eagles as well as a co-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers during much of the 1940s. His death occurred while attending an Eagles-Steelers game in Philadelphia. Over the decade in 1960s, the game contributed more than a million dollars to the Bert Bell players' pension fund.

All ten games in the Playoff Bowl series were contested at the Orange Bowl in Miami. The games were played in January, the week following the NFL championship game (and the collegiate Orange Bowl game on New Year's Day), except for the final year, when it was played the day before the NFL title game. The NFL's Pro Bowl (all-star game) was played the week after the Playoff Bowl.

After the 1959 season, NFL owners faced competition from the newly formed American Football League and wanted a vehicle through which to showcase more of its supposedly superior NFL professional football product on television. At the time, unlike the AFL, which had a contract with ABC-TV for nationally televised games, often double-headers, few NFL games were televised nationally during the season and there was only one scheduled post-season game, the NFL Championship Game. The Playoff Bowl was devised to match the second-place teams from the NFL's two conferences (Eastern and Western). This doubled from two to four the number of top NFL teams appearing in post-season play on national television.

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