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Playoff Bowl was the colloquial name for a postseason game formerly played in the National Football League. Its official name was the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl.
From 1960 through 1966, the game matched up the teams that finished in second place in the two conferences (Eastern and Western) that the league had at that time; starting in 1967, and continuing for two more years after that, the losers of the Eastern and Western Conference championship games met in it (the conference title games having become necessary because in 1967 the conferences were further split up into two divisions each, the first-place finishers from which competed in these games).
All ten games in the series were contested at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida.
When the NFL and AFL merged effective with the 1970 football season (the corporate merger having been consummated three years earlier), there was some discussion about continuing the Playoff Bowl, with the losers of the AFC and NFC Championship Games playing therein, the game to be held during the idle week between these games and the Super Bowl. However, this was not ultimately proceeded with, and the Playoff Bowl came to an end.
One vestige of the Playoff Bowl does remain today, in that the head coaches of the two teams that lost the AFC and NFC championship games do become the head coaches of the AFC and NFC Pro Bowl teams, which play one another one week after the Super Bowl.
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