In Indianapolis 500 auto racing news, Danica Patrick is hot. Now on to football.
In 2014, the Super Bowl will be held at the new Stadium in New York (not New Jersey, New York!) that hosts the Jets and Giants.
I am not sure how I feel about this, but it is an unprecedented break with football tradition.
This will be the first time the Super Bowl is played in a cold weather setting.
The NFL Championship used to be played in cold weather. The 1967 Ice Bowl between the Packers and Cowboys remains one of the all time great games. That game might be why the Super Bowl trophy is called the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Somewhere along the line the Super Bowl went from being a football game to an entertainment spectacle. Halftime shows and commercials brought in more viewers, to the consternation of leatherhead purists like myself.
The 1981 season ended with the 1982 Super Bowl in Detroit. Yet the game was played indoors in the Pontiac Silverdome. Domed stadiums such as the New Orleans Superdome alternated with tropical locations such as the Orange Bowl in Miami in terms of hosting.
The Canadian Football League plays its Grey Cup in a blizzard. Yet the NFL does not.
Ironically, the path to the Super Bowl often involves freezing weather. One week before the 1981 season ended with the 49ers and Bengals, Cincinnati defeated the San Diego Chargers in bitter cold conditions.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and Oakland Raiders slugged it out in the 1975 season in the AFC Title Game on a frigid block of ice field at Three Rivers Stadium. The 2001 season saw those same Raiders play the New England Patriots in a winter wonderland.
(Yes, the Raiders got screwed in both games, but that is for another time.)
For television viewers, snow football is fantastic. Yet for fans who go to the Super Bowl, bad weather is a curse. People paying thousands of dollars want good weather.
Yet the 2006 season saw the Indianapolis Colts play the Chicago Bears in Miami in the big game. Rain came down. Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy did not mind the rain when they were holding the trophy.
Real football fans do not care about the weather. I took a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Denver in 1999 to see the Raiders take on the Broncos on Monday Night Football. In the first quarter the snow came down hard. The ground shook. Some Raider fans and I burned a Bronco flag in effigy. It was paradise. I still have that burnt flag with a hole in the horse’s head.
(The Raiders fell behind 15-0, went ahead 18-15, saw the game tied 21-21 and go to overtime, and saw the Raiders get screwed again.)
Football should be for football fans. If multimillionaires who know nothing about football go to the Super Bowl so they can brag about it, some ice and snow would do them good.
Part of me does not want to see the weather determine the Super Bowl, but the Super Bowl should not be different from any other game. The elements are part of most football games. If team sees their game plan shredded due to weather, they have to be resourceful.
Besides, the Pro Bowl is back in Honolulu, Hawaii. The players will still have their warm weather reward. Yet the Pro Bowl is not the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl is a bonus vacation. Getting to the Super Bowl is not a reward. Winning it is. If that means snow, then play in the snow.
I played snow football as a kid. I loved it. Football is a game, first and foremost.
So get your parkas, gloves, and mittens out. It is time for New York to host the Super Bowl.
If the Raiders play in that game, I will be cheering them on…
From my warm, comfortable couch.
eric
If a warm weather or dome team gets their butts kicked in a cold SB, this will be the last outdoor, northern one played.
I think this is a mistake.
JMJ
I doubt it will be done very often because a) the sportswriters will complain about being too cold and B) less fans will actually attend.
I remember throughout the 70’s the Rams every year would have a great team but would get to the playoff to face the Vikings in Minnesota and wilt under the extreme cold. Except the one year they got home field against the vikings and there was a terrible rain storm in LA. Bad luck. The Vikings dominated teams in cold weather only to get to the Super Bowl 4 times and lose every time. They have not been back to the Super Bowl since they moved indoors and surrendered their big home field advantage (Bud Grant wouldn’t let them have a heater on the bench to keep them tough) and wanting to be in the game)
I remember the ’81-82 winter. My family drove back to NY during the record cold snap that occurred that January to celebrate my sister’s engagement and my Grandfathers 75th Birthday. It snowed and was well below 0 in every state we traveled except California. Even in California there was a major mudslide on the Waldo Grade on the north side for the Golden Gate Bridge (which I commuted over every day for college). All the environmentalists and climate experts were telling us that this was Global COOLING and was a result of fossil fuels and human pollution and we would have a new ice age by the end of the Century. Funny those same folks recently have been warning of Global WARMING using the same reasoning. Is it any wonder I am a skeptic on all these predicted global catastrophes I have lived through.