At the NFL Spring meetings today in Dallas, in what was an event even more dramatic than a pick at the NFL draft, the owners have voted on the site of the 2014 Super Bowl, which will be held at the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. This will be the first Super Bowl held in a cold-weather city. This is a great decision for the people New York/New Jersey area, the NFL, and the game of football.
For those of you whining about how the Super Bowl will negatively impact the game itself, please sit down. Some of the greatest games ever played were played in bad weather. The Ice Bowl, the Tuck Rule Game, and the 2007 NFC Championship games are 3 classic examples. We let playoff games be impacted all the way up to the Super Bowl, so why should the Super Bowl be any different? We let warm weather teams go to cold weather cities to play Conference Title, Divisional, and Wild Card games year after year. This is football, the players can handle it.
The league has waived its rule of having the Super Bowl in a city where the average temperature is below 50 degrees. This will not bode well for other cities in the country where the temperature is insufficient for a Super Bowl. I believe the league will not regret this decision, and will end up pocketing an enormous amount of money from this game.
The city of New York has more than enough of the resources necessary to carry out events leading up to, during, and after a Super Bowl. They have 3 major airports, and another 2 in the surrounding 30 miles. They have the necessary amount of Hotel rooms, and they have the Javits Center to hold all the necessary events the week of the game. The experience for the people who fly in will be spectacular. There is Radio City, there are museums, there are tours, there are restaurants, there are clubs, there is Central Park, there is more than enough to keep every single person occupied and entertained for at least a week.
The city handles these types of events all the time without anybody even knowing it. They hold conventions and retreats, and the United Nations even holds conferences without the city even blinking an eye. The transportation is second to none to any city in the world. Subways, buses, and taxis will be even better in 2014 than they are now.
The only thing that will be a slight problem are people going to the game itself who are not used to being exposed to those types of elements for a long period of time. Not your everyday football fan attends the Super Bowl, mostly corporate people and celebrities get into that game, only a select few fans from the teams make their way in. The Super Bowl is 4 hours minimum with commercials and concerts and all the hoopla that goes on with it. And if by chance the weather is not comfortable, the people will have to be prepared and the Stadium will have to accommodate some sort of a setting where people who are outside can get warm.
Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment