Sacrilegious Super Bowl?

Tuesday, the NFL owners decided that East Rutherford would host Super Bowl XLVIII. With some fan reaction and uproar, you would have thought Roger Goodell said the game was going to be in Australia and no American fans would be allowed in the stadium.

The game will be played in potentially cold weather for the first time since it was 39 degrees at Tulane Stadium for Dallas’ 24-3 beatdown of Miami in Super Bowl VI.

There have been mixed reactions on the notion of the cold weather Super Bowl. Here are my responses to some of the statements I’ve heard on this:

“It’s unfair to warm weather or dome teams to play a Super Bowl in cold weather”
Unfair? Football is the only one of the big four sports where weather can truly wreak havoc on the outcome of the game. A snowstorm, wind or rain can completely alter the makeup of a game plan. However, this variable is completely thrown out in the sport’s championship game. Weather is an element throughout the rest of the playoffs, so there’s no reason why it’s unfair that it remains one in the Super Bowl.

“Goodell just loves New York and it will get anything it wants”
The New York market is one of the largest in the NFL. Outside the game itself, the Super Bowl is about the buildup and hype of the week leading up to it. For fans and corporate folks, part of the allure is Super Bowl week. What better place to have that than in New York? I do not think there will be any complaints of people who are bored. Does spending the week in Detroit, home of Super Bowl XL, sound like a more appealing option? Yes, it has a beautiful domed stadium in Ford Field, but it’s cold there too and is not the entertainment Mecca that New York City is.

“There will be a blizzard and the Super Bowl will be a terrible, low scoring game”
Okay, it’s a possibility. But from some of the highlights and clips shown, you would think it snows every winter weekend in the tri-state area. I’m from Long Island. Yes, it does snow occasionally in New York during the winter. We do get blizzards sometimes. But this is not Buffalo. It does not snow copious amounts on a regular basis.

I personally think it would be fun to watch a Super Bowl with a field covered in snow. The biggest weather concern should really be wind. The Old Meadowlands was notorious for swirling winds that could completely neutralize passing games. I can remember a lot more games in which Eli Manning, Chad Pennington or Mark Sanchez could not throw the ball through the thick wind than games in which there was even a dusting of snow on the field.

“There will be plenty of empty seats if it’s a cold February night”
The Jets and Giants have played on plenty of cold December or January nights. It has not kept fans away. Week 17 of this past season the Jets and Bengals played in 20 degree temperatures (excluding wind chill) and the fans were still there. This is the Super Bowl. The fans will be there. The corporate ticket holders will still be there.

For the people who don’t like it, calm down. It is one Super Bowl. The NFL may start to incorporate a cold weather city into the rotation once every five or ten years but I do not see it becoming a trend. This is a special circumstance. It’s a huge market building a brand new outdoor stadium and getting a chance to showcase it.

And really, the Super Bowl is a made-for-TV event, for the fans to sit at home with a bunch of friends, watch on a big TV, eat food and watch the commercials that advertisers pay big bucks to have tons of eyes on. If it’s cold in East Rutherford, it will be like watching any other late-season game on the cozy confines of your couch. And we can only hope for some images as awesome as Tom Coughlin, Green Bay, 2007.

Props to the NFL for doing something different, and doing it in the states, not across the pond in a thriving futbol locale.