The location of the Super Bowl is chosen by the NFL well in advance, usually 3-5 years before the game. Cities compete to host the game in a selection bidding process similar to ones used by the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup. To this date, the chosen venues have either been located in the southern regions of the United States where the wintertime weather is expected to be mild, or in domed stadiums where weather is not an issue.
Over half of the Super Bowls have been played in one of the following three cities: New Orleans, Louisiana (9 times), Miami, Florida (8 times) and Los Angeles (7 total, 5 times at Pasadena's Rose Bowl stadium and twice at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum). Miami has been selected to host two future games: Super Bowl XLI in 2007 and Super Bowl XLIV in 2010. After Hurricane Katrina damaged the Louisiana Superdome and the city, the game might never return to New Orleans. And the last time the Los Angeles area hosted the game was Super Bowl XXVII in 1993; the area is currently not considered a possible venue after the league's two teams vacated the city in 1995: the Raiders moved back to Oakland, California and the Rams moved to St. Louis, Missouri.
Coincidentally, no NFL team has ever played the Super Bowl on its own home turf. However, Super Bowl XIV (which involved the then-Los Angeles Rams) was played at nearby Pasadena's Rose Bowl stadium; and Super Bowl XIX (which involved the San Francisco 49ers) was played at the nearby Stanford Stadium on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto.
The designated "home team" alternates between the NFC team in odd-numbered years (the Philadelphia Eagles in 2005), and the AFC team in even-numbered years (the New England Patriots in 2004). The home team is given the choice of either wearing their colored jerseys or their white ones; this started with Super Bowl XIII. Prior to that, the home team always wore the dark jerseys. The Dallas Cowboys wore their rarely-used blue uniform tops in Super Bowl V, and lost to the then-Baltimore Colts, which has led to the widely-held belief that the Cowboys do not play well in their blue shirts. While most home teams in the Super Bowl choose to wear their colored jerseys, only the Cowboys in XIII and XXVII and the Washington Redskins in XVII have worn white as the home team.
The television network showing the game changes from year to year. In the United States it is currently shared between three of the four major television networks - ABC, CBS, and FOX. Super Bowl XXXVIII was shown on CBS, Super Bowl XXXIX was shown on FOX, and Super Bowl XL will be shown on ABC, which will be the final NFL game broadcast on that network for the forseeable future.
With the new television contracts beginning in 2006, NBC, which last telecast Super Bowl XXXII in 1998, will take ABC's place in the network rotation starting with Super Bowl XLIII in 2009
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