Naturally, Miami is where NFL100 really should end.

As the NFL wraps up a season-long celebration of its first 100 years, it makes so much sense for South Florida to host Super Bowl LIV. No place has staged more Super Bowls than Miami, gearing up for its 11th such bash – one more than New Orleans -- on Feb. 2 with the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs.

And no place does a Super Bowl quite like Miami.

“They should have it here every year,” Dan Marino, the Miami Dolphins icon insisted to USA TODAY Sports. “Maybe I’m biased, but this is the perfect place to have a Super Bowl.”

Especially now, Dan.

Sure, the beaches, nightlife and exotic vibe of a multicultural region are alluring. But just think of the history that has occurred in this place – first at the Orange Bowl for five Super Bowls, then at the venue now known as Hard Rock Stadium. No, it’s guaranteed, as Joe Namath would put it, that you can’t write the NFL’s history without the Miami Super Bowls.

"Namath, we're going to kick your ass!"

Namath’s guarantee that the AFL champion New York Jets would upset the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III is the most famous Miami Super Bowl moment of them all. It came at a banquet three days before the game when Joe Willie accepted a player of the year award from the Miami Touchdown Club.

A Colts supporter heckled Namath to interrupt his acceptance speech. “Namath, we’re going to kick your ass!” the man blurted from the back of the room.

“Hey, I’ve got news for you,” Namath responded. “We’re going to win the game. I guarantee it.”

Whoa! The Colts were favored by 17 ½ points.

“I was angry,” Namath recalled for USA TODAY Sports during an interview in 2018. “We had been hearing it for a week-plus. You kept hearing it in the streets, you heard it from the writers. To so many people, it was a foregone conclusion that we didn’t stand a chance.”

The Jets backed up Namath’s guarantee with a 16-7 victory that also legitimized the AFL as being in the same league as the long-established NFL.

Willie Lanier was there. A year before helping the Chiefs win the crown, Lanier went to Super Bowl III with fellow Chiefs Hall of Fame defenders Buck Buchanan and Emmitt Thomas. It was a side trip before they played the next weekend in the AFL All-Star Game in Jacksonville.

“The Jets were staying at the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel in Fort Lauderdale,” Lanier recalled for USA TODAY Sports in a 2018 interview. “After the game, we were headed north, back to Jacksonville, and stopped to maybe see some of the players as they came back to celebrate. We were standing in the parking lot when the buses with the players pulled up. Namath saw us and came over. We all gave that congratulatory hug. We were happy for them because it was central for the AFL to beat the Colts.”

Empty seats angered commissioner

Super Bowl III was the first officially dubbed as a “Super Bowl” – the Green Bay Packers won what was called the “AFL-NFL Championship Game” the previous two years, now retroactively I and II – but it wasn’t the first Miami Super Bowl. That came a year earlier, when Joe Browne was in the early stages of a 50-year career as the longest-tenured NFL employee ever.

Browne, who retired in 2016, remembers how embarrassed then-Commissioner Pete Rozelle was by the 30,000 empty seats for Super Bowl I at his hometown Los Angeles Coliseum. He said Rozelle issued his own guarantee in firm tones in at least two meetings, imploring, “We will never again have an NFL Championship Game that is not sold out,” Browne recalled this week for USA TODAY Sports.

“We, the staff, got the message,” Browne added. “Although I was low on the totem pole in the office, having just graduated a year earlier, I was as much into selling tickets as the senior staffers.”

Those first Miami Super Bowl tickets? They went for $12, $8 and $6, with the middle tier price cut from $10 the previous year. Yes, the game sold out – like every Super Bowl since, including LIV, with tickets on the secondary market selling for $4,800.

Cowboys come up empty

In the last one in Miami, XLIV a decade ago, New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton made the gutsiest call in Super Bowl history. He surprised the Indianapolis Colts with an onside kick to open the second half. It worked! New Orleans recovered, drove for a lead-swinging touchdown and rode the momentum to a Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Miami is where, too, the Dallas Cowboys couldn’t win a Super Bowl in three tries during the 1970s (sorry, can’t blame Jerry for that). They lost the first rematch in Super Bowl history (XIII) three years after the Pittsburgh Steelers -- highlighted by Lynn Swann’s circus catch -- beat ‘em the first time (X). Dallas also lost Super Bowl V to the then-Baltimore Colts on Jim O’Brien’s 32-yard field goal in the final seconds on the day linebacker Chuck Howley became the only Super Bowl MVP ever from a losing team.

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It was also the place where 49ers QB Steve Young got the monkey off his back by throwing for a Super Bowl-record six touchdowns (XXIX) in a rout of the San Diego Chargers. And where John Elway rode off into the sunset (XXXIII) with a victory in his final game with the Denver Broncos.

Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith make NFL history

And it’s the place where Tony Dungy made history as the first African-American coach to win a Super Bowl (XLI), with Peyton Manning as his wingman. History was coming, regardless. With Lovie Smith on the Chicago Bears sideline, they were the first two African-Americans to guide teams to the Super Bowl.

During Dungy's postgame news conference, he paid homage to Jimmy Raye and Sherm Lewis – two longtime African-American assistant coaches who never had the opportunity to become NFL head coaches – and legendary HBCU coaches Eddie Robinson and John Merritt.

“Lovie and I both had decided that whoever won would do it,” Dungy reflected for USA TODAY Sports. “There had been 40 Super Bowls before that, and there had never been an African-American head coach. It’s a shame, because we knew we weren’t the first two who were qualified to be there.”

Coach Sam Wyche cried

Miami, too, is where Eugene Robinson was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer on the eve of XXXIII – hours after the Atlanta Falcons safety received the Bart Starr Award from Athletes in Action for outstanding character (the charges were ultimately dropped; Robinson returned the award).

A decade before Robinson’s adventure, Cincinnati Bengals running back Stanley Wilson left an infamous mark with a cocaine relapse on the eve of XXIII. Former Bengals linebacker Reggie Williams remembers coach Sam Wyche crying as he broke the news to players at a team meal. Wilson, after being found strung out in his room, broke away from team officials and ran out of the hotel.

“He disappeared,” Williams recalled for USA TODAY Sports. “So you had this hanging over your head.”

The Bengals lost the following day against the 49ers, victimized by a last-minute, 92-yard touchdown drive engineered by Joe Montana.

Purple Rain

Then there’s Marino’s favorite Miami Super Bowl memory. It came during halftime of XLI, when he worked the game as a member of the broadcast team for CBS Sports and got as close to the stage as possible.

“Seeing Prince singing ‘Purple Rain’ in the rain,” Marino said, “it doesn’t get any better than that.”

Maybe not. Or maybe.

There was the time, the afternoon before XXIX, when she instructed me to pull over and check the box office at the Miami Arena – even though the marquee read: "Stevie Wonder. Sold Out."

Turns out, the timing was right. The VIP returns had just come in. They had a handful of tickets. And we watched Stevie perform a whale of a show – from the front row. At face value.

Yeah, Miami, guaranteed to provide Super memories.