At the conclusion of the 1968 football season in January 1969, the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. This was the first time that a team from the American Football League (AFL) defeated a team from the National Football League (NFL) for a championship. The outcome of the game damaged the pride of the NFL. The Jets won a second straight AFL Eastern Division title in the 1969 season, but failed to reach the Super Bowl.
For 1970, the AFL and NFL merged, bringing the Jets and the other nine AFL teams into the NFL. These teams (along with the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers) were merged into the new American Football Conference (AFC) of the NFL.
In their first NFL season, the Jets won only four games and lost ten. From 1970 to 2008, the Jets lost 336 regular season games, the most among AFC teams during that period. In addition, they were the last of the 26 NFL teams existant in '70 to win its first division title (finally doing so in 1998) under the AFC-NFC format. The Jets have never reached the Super Bowl as an AFC team in the NFL.
Sports-related curses. (2009, January 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:35, January 17, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sports-related_curses&oldid=264598455
