Super Bowl XLIII will be the 43rd annual edition of the Super Bowl in American football, and the 39th annual championship game of the modern-era National Football League (NFL).
The game will be a matchup between the 2008 American Football Conference (AFC) Champions and the 2008 National Football Conference (NFC) Champions. It is scheduled to be played on February 1, 2009 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, the second Super Bowl at this venue and the fourth overall in that city. Tampa was selected for the game site on May 25, 2005, beating out three other finalists: Atlanta; Houston; and Miami.
The Super Bowl XLIII logo features an abstract representation of a football stadium, with blue and green colors representing the regional waterways and landscapes of Tampa Bay. In a tradition starting with the Super Bowl XL logo, two stars – one red, representing the AFC, and one blue, representing the NFC, are flanked on either side of the Super Bowl XLIII logo. The tagline for Super Bowl XLIII is "Believe In Now".
The game will be televised on NBC, its first Super Bowl broadcast since Super Bowl XXXII, with play-by-play announcer Al Michaels and color commentator John Madden. Super Bowl XLIII will also be the final Super Bowl, and penultimate major sporting event (Fox Sports' Daytona 500 coverage on February 15 will be the last) to be telecast in the United States in the analog television format before the digital television transition on February 17.
The NFL was exploring the possibility of moving the Pro Bowl to the host site of the Super Bowl, and holding it the weekend before the Super Bowl starting in 2009, however, the league has decided to keep the game in ʻAiea, Hawaiʻi, a suburb of Honolulu.
On August 11, 2008 news leaked that the half-time show for Super Bowl XLIII will feature Bruce Springsteen.
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