DMBcrew36
05-26-2010, 10:25 AM
A Win for Fans of the Chilly Stuff
After Years of Sun-Belt Domination, an Outdoor Super Bowl In New Jersey Sounds Fabulous
By DARREN EVERSON (http://billszone.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=DARREN+EVERSON&bylinesearch=true)
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AV104_SP_COL_G_20100525230512.jpg
Fans in Orchard Park, N.Y., including one particularly hardy soul, watch a Bills-Colts game this past January.
The forecast for Feb. 2, 2014, the potential date of Super Bowl XLVIII, calls for a temperature in the low-30s, with strong winds, a possible snowfall and a 100% chance of shivering, whimpering fat cats.
We can't wait. There's been some hand-wringing in some quarters—mostly warm-weather ones—about New York/New Jersey landing the 2014 Super Bowl, which it officially did Tuesday, outrunning Tampa, Fla., and South Florida in four rounds of voting at the NFL owners meetings near Dallas. To which we say: enough.
The NFL has chosen the new Meadowlands stadium as the location of the 2014 Super Bowl, making it the first cold-weather Super Bowl. New Yorkers weigh in on the choice.
Enough with Super Bowls in Tampa and Jacksonville. Enough with an NFL playoff setup that always ends by giving the advantage to warm-weather teams. And enough with this nonsensical idea that the weather—which affects games all season long—shouldn't have any effect on the blessed sanctity of the championship game.
It's easy to understand why the NFL has, until now, put the Super Bowl in a warm place. The league wanted to make sure people would go. But those days are over. It's time the pampered corners of the country buck up, at least for once, and invest in a parka. Again: just once. Not asking much here.
It's astounding that after a half century of one Sun Belt city after another—Miami (10 Super Bowls), New Orleans (nine), the Los Angeles area (seven—although none since 1993), Tampa (four)—there still was debate about whether it made sense to play one game outside in the chilly stuff.
Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said this year that, while New York is great for hosting big events, "I don't know if I want to sit in the open air in the middle of February." Tampa Bay Buccaneers co-chairman Joel Glazer, who is from snowy Rochester, N.Y., has said he believes the Super Bowl should be played in conditions that don't decide the game's outcome.
Overlooked is the fact that, while this Super Bowl will be played on a cold-weather team's terms, most every other Super Bowl has been held in neutral conditions in a dome, or outside on a grass field in the sort of warm air that only a handful of NFL teams ever get to breathe much beyond October.
The same imbalance exists in college football, where teams in the Midwest and the Plains play the meat of their schedules in the cold, then must play their bowl games against Southern and Western teams in locales like Miami, New Orleans, Glendale, Ariz., and Pasadena, Calif.
Every Big Ten Conference fan alive (or dead) has wished that, just once, they could face the Pac-10 champion in their traditional season-ending matchup in a wintry locale. For the first time in recorded history, Midwesterners and New Yorkers have something in common.
A word of caution, however: New York-backers may have overstated a bit just how warm it could be come game time, pointing out the couple of times in the past few years the city has seen temperatures on Feb. 2 above 50.
The average high temperature for East Rutherford, N.J., on Feb. 2 is 37 degrees. That's true—but that's the high. The sun sets at 5:15 p.m. that time of year. We admit it's likely not going to feel like 37 by kickoff time at around 6:30, let alone in the fourth quarter.
But there had better not be any complaining.
Beyond the obvious unfairness of having never had a Super Bowl in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia or Boston, arguably the four most sports-crazed cities in the country, it had become unseemly that other sports had begun to embrace cold-weather games more than football.
The NHL's Winter Classic, an annual outdoor hockey game that has been played on New Year's Day in places like Boston's Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field, has become one of the highlights of the season. The World Series, which can stretch into November, is constantly played in cold weather. Even college-hockey teams are catching on: Michigan and Michigan State are expecting a crowd topping 100,000 for a game on Dec. 11, which would surpass the hockey world attendance record.
And haven't you people heard of the Winter Olympics? Do you think those crowds of people who stand for hours along the ski runs are all Norwegian?
We might be less ornery about all this if the endless Sun Belt Super Bowls were at least being held annually in dynamic destinations like Miami, which hosted it this year, and New Orleans, which has it again in 2013. But pardon us if Glendale, which had the 2008 game, Jacksonville (2005) and Houston (1974, 2004) aren't so thrilling.
That said, don't expect to see us in the stands in 2014. After all, pen ink has a way of clotting in the freezing temperatures.
After Years of Sun-Belt Domination, an Outdoor Super Bowl In New Jersey Sounds Fabulous
By DARREN EVERSON (http://billszone.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=DARREN+EVERSON&bylinesearch=true)
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-AV104_SP_COL_G_20100525230512.jpg
Fans in Orchard Park, N.Y., including one particularly hardy soul, watch a Bills-Colts game this past January.
The forecast for Feb. 2, 2014, the potential date of Super Bowl XLVIII, calls for a temperature in the low-30s, with strong winds, a possible snowfall and a 100% chance of shivering, whimpering fat cats.
We can't wait. There's been some hand-wringing in some quarters—mostly warm-weather ones—about New York/New Jersey landing the 2014 Super Bowl, which it officially did Tuesday, outrunning Tampa, Fla., and South Florida in four rounds of voting at the NFL owners meetings near Dallas. To which we say: enough.
The NFL has chosen the new Meadowlands stadium as the location of the 2014 Super Bowl, making it the first cold-weather Super Bowl. New Yorkers weigh in on the choice.
Enough with Super Bowls in Tampa and Jacksonville. Enough with an NFL playoff setup that always ends by giving the advantage to warm-weather teams. And enough with this nonsensical idea that the weather—which affects games all season long—shouldn't have any effect on the blessed sanctity of the championship game.
It's easy to understand why the NFL has, until now, put the Super Bowl in a warm place. The league wanted to make sure people would go. But those days are over. It's time the pampered corners of the country buck up, at least for once, and invest in a parka. Again: just once. Not asking much here.
It's astounding that after a half century of one Sun Belt city after another—Miami (10 Super Bowls), New Orleans (nine), the Los Angeles area (seven—although none since 1993), Tampa (four)—there still was debate about whether it made sense to play one game outside in the chilly stuff.
Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said this year that, while New York is great for hosting big events, "I don't know if I want to sit in the open air in the middle of February." Tampa Bay Buccaneers co-chairman Joel Glazer, who is from snowy Rochester, N.Y., has said he believes the Super Bowl should be played in conditions that don't decide the game's outcome.
Overlooked is the fact that, while this Super Bowl will be played on a cold-weather team's terms, most every other Super Bowl has been held in neutral conditions in a dome, or outside on a grass field in the sort of warm air that only a handful of NFL teams ever get to breathe much beyond October.
The same imbalance exists in college football, where teams in the Midwest and the Plains play the meat of their schedules in the cold, then must play their bowl games against Southern and Western teams in locales like Miami, New Orleans, Glendale, Ariz., and Pasadena, Calif.
Every Big Ten Conference fan alive (or dead) has wished that, just once, they could face the Pac-10 champion in their traditional season-ending matchup in a wintry locale. For the first time in recorded history, Midwesterners and New Yorkers have something in common.
A word of caution, however: New York-backers may have overstated a bit just how warm it could be come game time, pointing out the couple of times in the past few years the city has seen temperatures on Feb. 2 above 50.
The average high temperature for East Rutherford, N.J., on Feb. 2 is 37 degrees. That's true—but that's the high. The sun sets at 5:15 p.m. that time of year. We admit it's likely not going to feel like 37 by kickoff time at around 6:30, let alone in the fourth quarter.
But there had better not be any complaining.
Beyond the obvious unfairness of having never had a Super Bowl in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia or Boston, arguably the four most sports-crazed cities in the country, it had become unseemly that other sports had begun to embrace cold-weather games more than football.
The NHL's Winter Classic, an annual outdoor hockey game that has been played on New Year's Day in places like Boston's Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field, has become one of the highlights of the season. The World Series, which can stretch into November, is constantly played in cold weather. Even college-hockey teams are catching on: Michigan and Michigan State are expecting a crowd topping 100,000 for a game on Dec. 11, which would surpass the hockey world attendance record.
And haven't you people heard of the Winter Olympics? Do you think those crowds of people who stand for hours along the ski runs are all Norwegian?
We might be less ornery about all this if the endless Sun Belt Super Bowls were at least being held annually in dynamic destinations like Miami, which hosted it this year, and New Orleans, which has it again in 2013. But pardon us if Glendale, which had the 2008 game, Jacksonville (2005) and Houston (1974, 2004) aren't so thrilling.
That said, don't expect to see us in the stands in 2014. After all, pen ink has a way of clotting in the freezing temperatures.