The big news of the day is that Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014 (if it happens...) will be staged in the new Giants/Jets Stadium in East Rutherford. This news has sparked considerable debate about the merits of staging the most important sporting event of the calendar year in a city where (cold) weather might very well play a factor. I have given this topic considerable thought myself over the last couple of days. So here's what I think (discussion encouraged).
In short, I think the cold weather Super Bowl is a bad idea, but not for the reasons you might think. Some might consider this an "experiment" of sorts on how the cold might affect game attendance. Well, we already had that. Jacksonville for SBXXXIX was a toasty 45 degrees at kickoff. Miami was a monsoon for SBXLI. Tulane Stadium for both of its Super Bowls was barely above the magic number (32 if you're keeping score at home, 0 if you know what I'm talking about :-)). All of those games fared quite well with both viewership and fan attendance if I'm not mistaken. The NFL Championship game was hosted by cold weather teams for years before the Super Bowl was born (Ice Bowl in 67, Greatest Game Ever Played in 58 come to mind). Then there's the whole issue of the game being played in New York (New Jersey). If you had to choose a cold weather city to host the game, you can't do much better. Cold weather cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington have lots to offer and hosting a Super Bowl is a great way to showcase these things. (Side note-I am NOT advocating for DC getting the Super Bowl any time soon. Quite frankly I think we're better off without it, Dan Snyder not withstanding). It makes sense for an event (note the word EVENT) like this to be in a city like New York every now and then. Either way, the cold weather Super Bowl is going to work from an economic and experiential standpoint.
So why did I say the Super Bowl in the cold is a bad idea? Let's turn on the Way-Back Machine and go to 1966, the first season that would be played culminating in a Super Bowl (played that year in the LA Coliseum). Pete Roselle's original vision for the Super Bowl was to be a neutral site game played in a location where neither side would have a home field advantage. This necessitated the need for a warm-weather site for the game. The key in that last line is "home field advantage." The Super Bowl is the only professional football game played all year at a neutral site. Anybody who watches football knows that weather plays a HUGE role in what a team can do offensively to score points. Oddly enough, back in Pete Roselle's day, this wasn't really the case. Let me explain.
Prior to the 1980s and innovators like Bill Walsh and the West Coast Offense, the NFL was very much a run first league, perfectly suited to any kind of weather. Thus, cold temperatures didn't really have much of an impact on the outcomes of games since teams were mostly likely going to run the ball anyway (provided they didn't catch frostbite first). Fast forward to 2010 and football as a whole is very much different. Gone are the days of wishbone triple options and the single wing. The NFL in 2010 is all about the shotgun spread and 5-wides running 9-routes to the endzone. Defenses are forced to defend the entire 120 X 53.3. What cold weather does is purely physics. It slows things down, all the way down to the molecule (literaly...that's what temperature is: a measure of molecular motion). If molecules are not vibrating as fast, the speed receiver isn't going to run the fly pattern quite as fast or quite as often. If this is a staple of a team's offense (which in most cases it is), it drastically changes a game plan when you have to take it out of the playbook and replace it with 50 gut all the time. This could potentially give a cold weather team who is used to these kinds of elements a distinct advantage. That's OK if it's the regular season or an earned home playoff game (like the Cardinals getting housed at New England 41-7 in the snow before they got to SBXLIII). But the key in the Super Bowl (because of what's at stake) is to take those kinds of advantages out of the equation. If SBXLVIII happens to be between, let's say the Colts (dome team) and Green Bay (cold team), and the kickoff temperature is 25 degrees, who do you think will have the advantage? As we know, the Colts historically have not fared very well outdoors in the cold. They (and a lot of other teams) need weather neutrality, and that's what the Super Bowl is supposed to provide.
That's all I got. What you think?
In short, I think the cold weather Super Bowl is a bad idea, but not for the reasons you might think. Some might consider this an "experiment" of sorts on how the cold might affect game attendance. Well, we already had that. Jacksonville for SBXXXIX was a toasty 45 degrees at kickoff. Miami was a monsoon for SBXLI. Tulane Stadium for both of its Super Bowls was barely above the magic number (32 if you're keeping score at home, 0 if you know what I'm talking about :-)). All of those games fared quite well with both viewership and fan attendance if I'm not mistaken. The NFL Championship game was hosted by cold weather teams for years before the Super Bowl was born (Ice Bowl in 67, Greatest Game Ever Played in 58 come to mind). Then there's the whole issue of the game being played in New York (New Jersey). If you had to choose a cold weather city to host the game, you can't do much better. Cold weather cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington have lots to offer and hosting a Super Bowl is a great way to showcase these things. (Side note-I am NOT advocating for DC getting the Super Bowl any time soon. Quite frankly I think we're better off without it, Dan Snyder not withstanding). It makes sense for an event (note the word EVENT) like this to be in a city like New York every now and then. Either way, the cold weather Super Bowl is going to work from an economic and experiential standpoint.
So why did I say the Super Bowl in the cold is a bad idea? Let's turn on the Way-Back Machine and go to 1966, the first season that would be played culminating in a Super Bowl (played that year in the LA Coliseum). Pete Roselle's original vision for the Super Bowl was to be a neutral site game played in a location where neither side would have a home field advantage. This necessitated the need for a warm-weather site for the game. The key in that last line is "home field advantage." The Super Bowl is the only professional football game played all year at a neutral site. Anybody who watches football knows that weather plays a HUGE role in what a team can do offensively to score points. Oddly enough, back in Pete Roselle's day, this wasn't really the case. Let me explain.
Prior to the 1980s and innovators like Bill Walsh and the West Coast Offense, the NFL was very much a run first league, perfectly suited to any kind of weather. Thus, cold temperatures didn't really have much of an impact on the outcomes of games since teams were mostly likely going to run the ball anyway (provided they didn't catch frostbite first). Fast forward to 2010 and football as a whole is very much different. Gone are the days of wishbone triple options and the single wing. The NFL in 2010 is all about the shotgun spread and 5-wides running 9-routes to the endzone. Defenses are forced to defend the entire 120 X 53.3. What cold weather does is purely physics. It slows things down, all the way down to the molecule (literaly...that's what temperature is: a measure of molecular motion). If molecules are not vibrating as fast, the speed receiver isn't going to run the fly pattern quite as fast or quite as often. If this is a staple of a team's offense (which in most cases it is), it drastically changes a game plan when you have to take it out of the playbook and replace it with 50 gut all the time. This could potentially give a cold weather team who is used to these kinds of elements a distinct advantage. That's OK if it's the regular season or an earned home playoff game (like the Cardinals getting housed at New England 41-7 in the snow before they got to SBXLIII). But the key in the Super Bowl (because of what's at stake) is to take those kinds of advantages out of the equation. If SBXLVIII happens to be between, let's say the Colts (dome team) and Green Bay (cold team), and the kickoff temperature is 25 degrees, who do you think will have the advantage? As we know, the Colts historically have not fared very well outdoors in the cold. They (and a lot of other teams) need weather neutrality, and that's what the Super Bowl is supposed to provide.
That's all I got. What you think?
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