Super Bowl Needs a Southern Strategy

1/31/2012

Is it just me, or do other people think the Super Bowl has a moral obligation to take place in a warm climate?

On Sunday they will hold the Super Bowl in Indianapolis. The weather forecast is for a high of 42 degrees, with showers predicted.

That sounds about right for February in central Indiana. When I lived in Louisville, I could always count on the temperature warming up a few degrees as I headed south on I-65.

This is no region for the Super Bowl. I know, the game is going to be held in a dome. And I have no stake in personal comfort, since I am not going.

But still, doesn’t the National Football League have a responsibility to present a warm, sunny spectacle, all week, to the millions of winter-bound fans in the United States and Europe and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere?

The N.F.L. is trying to spread the game and the riches, but this is a grim, limited vision. They’ve got the Super Bowl coming to New Jersey in 2014. The weather has been gorgeous this winter – I was working out in shorts the other day – but a blizzard is guaranteed for 2014.

Homebound Super Bowl viewers deserve to turn on the game and see fans in comfortable outfits, outdoors, enjoying themselves. This sight warms the soul, makes us realize that spring will be arriving.

What’s the best bowl of all – the granddaddy of them all, as Keith Jackson put it? The Rose Bowl, of course. Even if it’s chilly in Pasadena, it’s still southern California; it makes us feel good.

As it happens, I covered three of the coldest Super Bowls ever.

Super Bowl XVI in a dome in Pontiac, Mich., in 1982 was marked by Vice President George H.W. Bush choosing to arrive near game time, snarling traffic. The media bus driver had to let us off, to scramble across a frozen field to get to the dome.

Super Bowl XXVI in Minneapolis in 1992 was not terribly inconvenient, since the dome is right downtown. My vivid memory of extracurricular activity that week was watching people carve ice sculptures with power saws at a winter carnival in St. Paul.

Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta in 2000 was a farce. The roads were icy, and our friends had to cancel a house party because nobody could drive to the suburbs. We spent one day before the game sitting by the window in our hotel room, watching Southerners try to drive on ice – they would go too slow up the hill, then accelerate coming off the hill, and crash into light stanchions and fences along the interstate. This, too, is spectator sport, probably no more dangerous than the brain-bashing that goes on in the actual game.

Nasty weather at Super Bowl sites is inconvenient for the people in the Super Bowl town, and for fans who spend fortunes to attend. Who really cares about the travails of visiting sportswriters?

But the N.F.L. should think of the people back home. In the yawning time before the actual game, the TV audience deserves to see shots of warm and happy fans, strolling the streets, giving us hope that one day soon we, too, can wear shorts outdoors.

The N.F.L. needs to go back to a southern strategy – Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and California – not so much for the people attending but for the people watching.

Do you agree? Comments welcome.

Hansen Alexander

2/1/2012 06:42:29 am

George,

You are absolutely right. The charm of winter baseball deals is that they usually happen at warm location meetings, letting us vicariously warm up in cold New York. My favorite New Year's Day Bowl is sunny Jacksonville and I'll take the Orange Bowl at night. But you're right, Atlanta will probably not get another chance after its hosted the game, however indoors, with ice bowl conditions inside. Dreary Indianapolis does not cheer me up thinking about it. I want to be reminded of my teenage years as I froze on our farm in the Adirondacks and watched those beautiful USC cheerleaders doing somersaults in Pasadena.

Since the NFL likes to change its rules every year anyway, they should pass a rule next year that a city must be able to guarantee 81 F weather to even qualify for a Super Bowl. After all, it's not the Canadian Football's Gray Cup, which is played in November anyway.

warmly,
Hansen

George Vecsey

2/2/2012 04:08:37 am

Hansen, quite right. I remember watching the Jan. 1, 1971, Rose Bowl on television in a gas station in Hyden, Kentucky, where I had just covered the funeral of a guy who had blown up a mine, killing 38. It was pretty grim, a big snowfall being cleared. And over our heads was Ohio State vs. Stanford -- parade, cheerleaders, Santa Anita mountains. That is the responsbility of post-season FB. None of this dreary dome stuff. I've been in Indy in Jan-Feb. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
“I don’t think people understand how Covid affects older Americans,” Mr. Caretti said with frustration. “In 2020, there was this all-in-this-together vibe, and it’s been annihilated. People just need to care about other people, man. That’s my soapbox.”
---Vic Caretti, 47, whose father recently died of Covid at 85.
---From an article by Paula Span, who covers old age for the NYT, which currently has 2646 comments, the majority criticizing the American public – and public officials – for acting as if the pandemic is “over.”
Classic wishful thinking, at a lethal level.
Please see:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/health/covid-pandemic-seniors.html

Super Bowl Needs a Southern Strategy

Categories

Buy the Book