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14 years ago

Don Banks>INSIDE THE NFL
Super Bowl in the New York area all but a cold, hard reality for NFL
 

Now that the idea of an outdoor Super Bowl played in the chill of early February is just days shy of making the leap from concept to, uh, cold, hard reality, it's time to take a look at what the 2014 game in the New York area might hold in store, from as many perspectives as we can conjure up.
I'll admit, when I first heard the idea of the NFL playing a Super Bowl outdoors at the Meadowlands, my gut reaction was something along the lines of "You can't be serious.'' But in time, playing the league's biggest game in the winter elements is an idea a lot of people seemingly have started to warm up to. We'll find out exactly how many of the people who count the most are in favor of it at the NFL's one-day owners meeting on May 25 in Dallas, when the vote to award the game to New York, Tampa or South Florida is scheduled to be taken.

But the way I read the tea leaves, it'll require a Giants over Patriots-like upset to keep the NFL's 48th Super Bowl from unfolding beneath the frigid night skies of a New Jersey winter in the nation's largest metropolitan area. So let's all just bundle up and deal with it, shall we? We have a little less than three years and nine months to figure out what to wear and how to layer correctly.

What's in it for the NFL?

The theme chosen by the folks putting together the new Meadowlands Stadium Super Bowl bid is a savvy one indeed. They're going with the evocative "Make Some History'' catch phrase, and that's called playing your strongest hand.

Let's face it, everyone has at least a little drive to be part of something historic, and history undoubtedly will be made when the NFL, for the first time, circumvents its requirement that Super Bowls must be played in regions where the minimum average temperature is 50 degrees for that time of year, or in roofed stadiums.

Some of the most memorable postseason games in NFL history have largely been about the weather conditions that prevailed on game day -- think the Ice Bowl in Green Bay, the Tuck Rule game in Foxboro, or that frosty 2007 NFC title game affair at Lambeau Field. Fans who braved those elements and survived wear it like a medal won on the field of battle.

When you tell people they can be part of something that has never happened before, the rarity factor adds an exponential allure and attraction all its own. I'm not suggesting the league is holding the Super Bowl in New York in an effort to boost ticket sales, because I'm fairly sure the folks in NFL headquarters are confident of a full house, short of a game-day tsunami. But in terms of creating hype and never-before-reached levels of pre-game buzz, which is something the Super Bowl pretty much invented, this Roman numeraled affair might just set the bar higher than ever.
That's a win-win for the NFL in terms of TV ratings, media coverage, and the stop-what-you're-doing-and-pay-attention factor that the league thrives on. Turning the potential negative of the weather into a positive by highlighting the uniqueness of the event is both masterful and straight out of Marketing 101.

If you're wondering if one cold-weather Super Bowl opens the door to Green Bay, Chicago and New England being added to the Super Bowl rotation going forward, just slow down and unbutton your parka for now. The league made an exception for New York this time, largely because it has a new $1.6 billion stadium to showcase, and it fits commissioner Roger Goodell's focus on trying to adopt a few new innovations for the league. The Super Bowl city's minimum temperature/roof requirement was set aside on a onetime basis only, for New York.

In the past, Washington has made it known it would like a Super Bowl, too, but the overwhelming odds are that the NFL will see how the game works out in New York before it even considers another cold-weather outdoor site. Given the three- or four-year lag time between a game being awarded and being played, we're probably at least seven or eight years away from another cold-weather Super Bowl being scheduled -- if it ever happens at all.

What's in it for the fans?

Start spreading the news ... it's gonna be cold. And there's no way around it. Providing fans with self-warming seat cushions, hand warmers, blankets and giant heaters in the stadium concourses will help, but if you're trying to sell the novelty and charm of a cold-weather Super Bowl to begin with, you can't exactly make extending the scope of creature comforts your first priority.

Fire pits in the parking lots for tailgaters is another nice touch that's planned by the host committee. But it's not really the hard-core football fans at the Super Bowl the league is worried about, since roughly half of the league's 32 teams play outdoors in some cold conditions for a good bit of the season and have fans who know how to stay warm. Rather, it's the fat-cat, big-money corporate element that has made the Super Bowl its own private event in the past two decades, and how it reacts to sitting in the elements for four or five hours?

I would imagine the scramble for the stadium's 10,000 or so club seats is going to be a furious competition in and of itself before Super Bowl Sunday, because if you have to be at the game but still want shelter from the cold, the club level is the best of both worlds. I can't wait to take a head count on game day of how many NFL team owners who voted to award the Super Bowl to New York never leave their amenity-filled suite that night. Do I see ... none?

Who knows, maybe one silver lining of a New York Super Bowl will be a couple dozen fewer stretch limos in the parking lot, and not quite so many corporate jets landing on the morning of the game at Teterboro. Maybe a few thousand more year-round football fans will actually get tickets this time around, what with the jet-set crowd scaled back by the daunting prospects of waiting in line for hot chocolate at concession stands.

My sense is fans will buy into the old-school nature of a cold-weather Super Bowl, if anything that has never been done before can even be called "old school.'' There will be a communal shared experience aspect to it, and people will try almost anything once just to see what it's like, no matter how ridiculous it sounds (Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football, for example).

But the bottom line is the only thing that will make a New York Super Bowl truly special is if the game itself is truly special. Jets-Giants go to overtime in a snowstorm? Probably too much to ask for. But if it's Bears-Ravens in a tight, back-and-forth contest, with just enough weather to know you're outside in the North in February, we'll no doubt have an instant classic on our hands.

That's when you'll have the proverbial 200,000 people telling their grand kids that they were one of the lucky 82,500 there that day to see the game (and their breath at the same time). Everyone will agree it was a swell idea whose time had come, and the NFL will quietly start investigating the idea of a Super Bowl in Iceland.

What's in it for the players?

Well, they do award rings and some playoff money to the winner of this game, so there's that. But beyond those goodies, which get handed out every year, the players with a sense of NFL history will likely love being part of the historic nature of the game. The reward of getting to the Super Bowl isn't about earning the right to a warm-weather game, it's about stamping your name on something that stands the test of time. And this game has a chance to be a one-of-a-kind type event.

True, players have come to expect to compete in the absolute optimum conditions in a Super Bowl, but it wasn't always that way and a champion still got crowned. Check out those old NFL Films highlight reels of Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, where the field at Tulane Stadium looked like a muddy, rut-filled mess, or Super Bowl IX in New Orleans, played on an overcast, wind-swept day that was anything but balmy.

And I like what Giants quarterback Eli Manning said in helping pitch the New York Super Bowl bid this week. Manning has a soft spot in his heart for New York's thrilling overtime win at Green Bay in January 2008, a game played in such bitter conditions that Tom Coughlin's face nearly froze and fell off.

"Some of my friends still talk about that game more than the Super Bowl,'' Manning said. "It's one of my all-time favorite games, being in Green Bay, in negative-20-degree weather. If the NFC Championship Game can be played anywhere, why can't the Super Bowl be played in a cold-weather atmosphere?''

Why indeed? What's one more game in the cold for a player staring at the chance to hoist a Lombardi Trophy? The year the Giants won their latest Super Bowl, they prevailed in the playoffs in three different time zones, and dealt with the heat of Tampa, the chill of Dallas and the bone-numbing cold of Green Bay, before upsetting New England in the climate-controlled air of the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. Whatever. Wherever.

In truth, it might be cold, but far from some historic freeze come game day. According to New York's Super Bowl committee, the average high temperature for the area in early February is 40 degrees, with a low of 24.1, and about 2.7 inches of precipitation. Sure, an ill-timed Nor'easter could come along and make everyone's Super Bowl Sunday a bit more tricky, but at least we'll have a good story to tell.

I'll grant you that giving some still-to-be-determined unfortunate Super Bowl-winning head coach a Gatorade shower late on Super Bowl Sunday night could be complicated by cold weather, but basking in the glow of victory -- and maybe a shorter post-game trophy presentation -- should help offset those concerns. I can think of about 32 current NFL head coaches who would love to grapple with that particular problem on a chilly February night in New York in another 45 months or so.


http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/don_banks/05/14/nyc.super.bowl/index.html#ixzz0oE28VmiB 



I say take it one step farther and award the Super Bowl yearly the same way they award the conference championships. And please don't give me this nonsense that it would be logistically unfeasible because people would need time to plan and make travel arrangements. As far as I know, the NFL is the only professional sports league that doesn't play its championship game on the field of the teams in the championship. Now I understand that other leagues play championship series, so both teams get games on their home field, and it's unfortunate that that wouldn't be possible in the NFL (unless the league went to, say, a best-of-three championship), but it only proves my point that the fans who want to be there find a way to be there.

I think the suspense of finding out who gets to host the Super Bowl should be part of the fun. Why shouldn't there be home-field advantage in the championship? If teams don't want to play in the cold, then they should play well enough to host the game in the south.
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Wade
  • Wade
  • Veteran Member
14 years ago
My thoughts were:
1. If I were a corporate type, I wouldnt be particularly interested in setting up a "major event" at the Meadowlands in late January/early February.
2. I'm a fan of "playing outdoors in the cold." But, to be perfectly honest, I never think of the Meadowlands when I think of "playing outdoors in the cold. Green Bay. Chicago. Old Metropolitan Stadium. Pittsburgh. Maybe Buffalo. But NY? Give me a break.
3. And if I'm playing $1000 bucks to watch a game, I sure as hell can't imagine sitting in the cold unless I'm a serious fan of one of the two teams. IMO its a disaster waiting to happen unless both teams playing are cold-weather/outdoors teams.
4. I can't see the NFL reducing the ticket prices for "Joe Serious Fan". If you want to sell out a Super Bowl stadium at $1000 a pop (and whatever hotels in NYC cost these days on top of it), you ain't selling to Joe Serious Fan.
5. Frankly this strikes me as nothing more than a PR move by corporate suits to gain political brownie points. And I hope the NFL falls flat on its ass. I hope they get a 10 turnover, 15 penalty game between a Browns offense and a Rams defense.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
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Martha Careful (28-Apr) : RIP Packer Safety Tim Brown
beast (27-Apr) : Yeah, but also some of the wording suggestions Jax only pranked called the QB, not the others... and if he had an open spreadsheet & 3 calls
beast (27-Apr) : Thank goodness he's not leaving the Turtle in the Red Tide
Mucky Tundra (27-Apr) : Cowboys 1st round pick Tyler Booker will indeed be bringing his pet turtle to Dallas with him
Mucky Tundra (27-Apr) : that contained all prospects info and contact
Mucky Tundra (27-Apr) : beast, according the Falcons statement Jax came across it on an ipad. If I had to guess, probably an open spread sheet or something
Zero2Cool (27-Apr) : Simmons put up an emoji with cheese.
beast (27-Apr) : Not sure anyone is interested in Isaiah Simmons... Collin Oliver might of taken his potential slot
beast (27-Apr) : I'm going with Jax Ulbrich is not telling the whole truth... he accidentally came across it? Why would a defensive coordinator have a QB #?
Zero2Cool (27-Apr) : He's not that great, but final piece of the script.\
Zero2Cool (27-Apr) : If we add Isaiah Simmons, book your Super Bowl tickets
Mucky Tundra (27-Apr) : Colts 1st round TE Tyler Warren also got prank called, was that Jax Ulbrich as well?
Zero2Cool (27-Apr) : Jax Ulbrich, Jeff Ulbrich’s son, released an apology for his role in the Shedeur Sanders prank call.
Martha Careful (27-Apr) : apparently he did not participate in practice or play on the east west shrine game nor the NFL combine. The kid was a mediocre spoiled brat
Mucky Tundra (27-Apr) : Yeah that one that was a super wounded duck that Sanders supporters are highlighting to prove a point
Zero2Cool (27-Apr) : Shough is the guy who missed guys at combine isn't he?
beast (27-Apr) : It's not official until I'm dead! I have a chance still! (Not really)
Mucky Tundra (27-Apr) : I could feel my body decomposing in real time when I read that
Mucky Tundra (27-Apr) : @MIKEYSAINRISTIL Tyler Shough will officially be the last person drafted to the NFL born in the 1900’s
Mucky Tundra (26-Apr) : saw the tweet, he meant the city
Mucky Tundra (26-Apr) : Was that for the team or the city?
Zero2Cool (26-Apr) : Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter · 3m Draft grade is in: Green Bay gets an A. The people, the city, the venue were all superb. NFL Draft’s next
Zero2Cool (26-Apr) : Matt LaFleur says Jaire Alexander is participating in #Packers offseason program, which has been conducted virtually during this first week
Zero2Cool (26-Apr) : ✅ ...
buckeyepackfan (26-Apr) : Check
Zero2Cool (26-Apr) : Matthew Golden cahanged 81 to 22??
TheKanataThrilla (26-Apr) : Sam Howell to Vikings...guess no Aaron
Martha Careful (26-Apr) : 1 round 7 min, with one extra minute if there is a trade. 2nd round 4 minutes, 3rd -3, 2 thereafter IMO
Martha Careful (26-Apr) : Agree
dfosterf (26-Apr) : Great idea imo
dfosterf (26-Apr) : 1st round to 7 minutes with one extension
dfosterf (26-Apr) : NFL comissioner wants to shorten the 2st
Mucky Tundra (26-Apr) : @jalenreagors They’re discussing if Sheduer can go back to college on NFL Network LMFAOOOOO
beast (26-Apr) : Great point Martha
beast (26-Apr) : Buddy Ryan used to say if a candy bar goes missing, there are two to blame, Rex and Rob 🤪 jk 😁
Martha Careful (26-Apr) : Bum Phillips used to say there are two ways to get better. Get better players or get players to play better. We have a new DL coach
Zero2Cool (26-Apr) : Yes. Look at the losses last year. They can win.
beast (26-Apr) : Can Packers win with their current DL?
bboystyle (26-Apr) : waiting for a pass rusher.
dfosterf (25-Apr) : 5 minutes between picks in the 3rd
dfosterf (25-Apr) : 3rd. Hate this phone
dfosterf (25-Apr) : 4rd
dfosterf (25-Apr) : 5 minutes in the 4
dfosterf (25-Apr) : 7 minutes between picks in the 2nd round
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