Where Should I Send My Application?

Late this afternoon the NFL announced the location for the 2014 Super Bowl (they like to plan ahead). As expected by the people who are in the know, the announcement was the Super Bowl is going to be held in the new football stadium that is currently going up in East Rutherford, New Jersey. While it's not uncommon for sports leagues to reward teams that build new stadiums with either All-Star or championship games, this is kind of a big deal because it would mark the first time that a neutral field Super Bowl is being played in a cold weather city, in a stadium with no roof. (It is also a pretty big 'screw you' to the people of Kansas City, because they petitioned the league for a Super Bowl a couple years ago and were told the only way they would ever get the game was to put a retractable roof over Arrowhead Stadium. So much for consistency on the part of the Commissioner's office.)

I can not tell you how bad of an idea I think this is. For the last couple of days I've heard various sports writers talk about how this could be great, because it's the way football is meant to be played - in the cold and in the snow. Also, they think that a snow-filled Super Bowl would be the highest rated football game ever. Yes, that's well and good if they were to get that light, fluffy snow-globe effect snow and the game looked like a Hollywood movie ending. The thing is, I actually live in the northeast and I'm willing to bet that if they did get any weather in early February it would be of the cold, sleet/rain mix variety that no one enjoys. The players probably wouldn't have any problem with it (though, we'll get to that in a second), but the bigger issue is that the corporate people who make up most of the Super Bowl crowd these days will definitely not want to sit in that kind of weather. Having worked with the high end crowd for two years, I would never think to label them as a hearty bunch. Expect a lot of hiding out in the concourses. Also can you imagine a halftime show in the sleet? They're having a hard enough time getting good acts as it is.

Now, as for the players, yeah, they could obviously play in it, but why would you want to make them? No one wants to talk about it, because the sports media try and turn every Super Bowl into some kind of American folk tale as soon as the final whistle blows, but the rain Super Bowl between Indianapolis and the Bears a couple years back was an awful, awful game. And that was just rain in Miami. Imagine if finesse teams like the Colts and the Saints had tried to play this year's game in a snow storm? It would have been 7-6 midway through the fourth quarter and everyone would have spent the next week and a half complaining that we didn't get the offensive explosion we all wanted to see because those teams never had to play in the cold all season long. The NFL likes to talk about how big and bad their teams are, but if you stop and think about it a good number of the NFL teams in the northern part of the US are actually in domes. Making teams that have either played indoors or in warm weather all season suddenly play outside in the cold could make for a lot of dropped passes and sloppy play. Not exactly what you want to be putting out to a world-wide audience.

Honestly, the Super Bowl is great the way it is. Keep it in the warm weather and let that not only serve as a reward for the players for a good year, but is also going to be a better draw for casual fans (ask yourself if you really think Dolphins fans would want to come to New York in February... half of them are New York transplants who left because of the weather). You're going to get better play when weather isn't a factor. I know that the NFL doesn't want to ignore the biggest media market in the world, but they should have made the Giants and Jets put a roof on the new place. Also, I hate to break it to the other owners of cold weather, open-air stadiums, but I highly doubt this is going to start a trend (sorry, Bob Kraft, but I wouldn't count of bringing the Super Bowl to Foxboro).

Much like I told the NCAA not to mess with March Madness, I feel like the NFL should listen to me when it comes to making decision like this. That is why I think I should be hired as the new sports Uber-Commissioner. Think of me as the reality-check guy when someone has a bad idea that wrongly gets momentum behind it. I would get us a BCS playoff, keep March Madness from further expansion and limit the Super Bowl to a five-city rotation. Call me, guys, I've got lots of ideas for you to start working on.