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Why are the Bengals the home team at the Los Angeles Super Bowl?

Before last year, the NFL had gone 54 years without a team playing a Super Bowl in its home stadium.

LOS ANGELES — The Cincinnati Bengals are the home team Sunday in the Super Bowl — technically. The home-field advantage belongs all to the Los Angeles Rams.

That's because the home team for the Super Bowl alternates each year between the NFC and AFC champions.

The NFC champions (15-5) will dress and work out of their usual locker room after spending the night before the big game in their usual hotel. The Rams’ logo is plastered all around and inside SoFi Stadium even with the banners making it clear this is the Super Bowl.

Yes, the Bengals (13-7) are represented inside the stadium with their name and “Who Dey!” mantra opposite the Rams.

This is the second straight Super Bowl where the home team has gotten to play on its own field after Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won a championship a year ago in Raymond James Stadium. Before that, the NFL went 54 years without a team playing a Super Bowl in its home stadium.

As the home team, the Bengals got to choose what uniforms to wear. 

But as the road team, the Rams will get to call the coin toss to open the game, and in overtime if necessary. 

Super Bowl 56 could make history at kickoff before either the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals begin the opening drives.

Credit: AP
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) warms up before the NFL Super Bowl 56 football game against the Los Angeles Rams, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

The temperature two hours before kickoff was 85 degrees with the chance for the gauge to go even higher by the time the ball is kicked off. That would make this the hottest Super Bowl ever, topping the record of 84 set on Jan. 14, 1973, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

California has been dealing with a heat wave with eight locations in the region posting record temperatures in the upper 80s and low 90s earlier this week.

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