The NFL has awarded Super Bowl XLVIII to New Jersey Interstate 95 Exit 16W, or as they like to call it, "New York City". It will be the first Super Bowl intentionally conducted outdoors at a cold-weather location. That's really no biggie to me, or the rest of the billion or so of us who will be watching the game indoors anyway. I think it's a good idea to mix a cold-weather game in the rotation every now and then. It's how football was meant to be played, and I'm sick of the Super Bowl getting batted back and forth between New Orleans and "South Florida" every year anyway. The New York City metropolitan area should be a fine host for the event. No problem from these parts with a Big Apple Super Bowl.
Of course, New York's receiving preferential treatment here that the NFL would never deign to give to St. Louis. New York in February didn't come close to the NFL's climate criteria for hosting the Super Bowl, so the NFL just waived the requirement for 2014. St. Louis has an -indoor- stadium and can't even get a sniff at hosting the Super Bowl.
Have you noticed how many cities have put up a new stadium and then quickly got a Super Bowl bid? Jerry Jones' palace in Dallas opened last year and will host Super Bowl XLV next year. Indianapolis didn't have to wait long after opening Lucas Oil Stadium; say hello to Super Bowl XLVI. Glendale, Arizona's Pink Taco Dome opened in 2006 and hosted the Super Bowl in 2008. Houston's Reliant Stadium: opened, 2002; Super Bowl, 2004. Ford Field in Detroit: opened, 2002; Super Bowl, 2006. Raymond James Stadium has already hosted twice since opening in 1998. The Georgia Dome has hosted twice since it opened. 2000, of course, and also in 1994, two years after the Falcons took up residence.
St. Louis opened the now-Edward Jones Dome in 1995; Super Bowl, never.
Has it been the weather? No, Detroit and Indy aren't exactly brimming with warm-weather fun in February. (And as many Rams fans remember, neither was Atlanta in 2000.) Is it the stadium? The NFL better not say it is considering other sites that have hosted Super Bowls since the Dome opened here. I'm looking at you, Jacksonville, hosting the Super Bowl in the glorified dump of the Gator Bowl. And the formerly hot-and-stinking Louisiana Superdome, which just seems to automatically get every other Super Bowl. (To their credit, New Orleans is giving their dome a major renovation prior to it hosting the game for the SEVENTH time, in 2013.) I also refuse to believe it was ever any issue with hotel rooms when Jacksonville could host. Or Detroit. Yeah, I bet the hotel industry's THRIVED in Motown the last decade. Indy isn't exactly the vacation and convention capital of the world, either. And don't tell me St. Louis didn't build the stadium big enough. The Super Bowl doesn't make its money on live attendance.
The Edward Jones Dome obviously isn't ever going to host a Super Bowl. Today it's well behind most of the league's other stadiums, many of them newer, bigger, higher-tech and having retractable roofs and far superior "luxury" facilities. But that New York can get a Super Bowl despite its weather, that many other cities get the event almost as soon as they open new stadiums, or that Jacksonville EVER got to host the Super Bowl, period, is just further proof of the league's institutional disdain for our city. We're the one city that couldn't get even a whiff at hosting the Super Bowl when our stadium -was- one of the league's top facilities. In the years while the Jones Dome was still new, the NFL preferred to host the Super Bowl in mediocre dual-use facilities in Miami and San Diego, in New Orleans for the umpteenth time, and in a complete dump in the form of Sun Devil Stadium, where everybody had to sit in bleachers. Then in 2000, newer stadiums like Atlanta's and Tampa's started getting to host. Everybody's but St. Louis'.
The taxpayers of St. Louis spent $280 million to, and let's not kid ourselves about the multi-use political-speak, put up a football stadium. It has hosted a Final Four, a dozen-or-so college games and a Papal mass, but never got the Super Bowl payoff the NFL has given practically every other city to build a new stadium (especially an indoor one). And with the Big Apple breaking the cold-weather cherry, Washington, Philadelphia and Boston are already muscling their way to the front of the line for their turn at a Super Bowl, and I don't know why a lot of other great cold-weather football towns wouldn't join them. I'm pretty sure all Art Rooney would have to do at this point to get a Super Bowl in Pittsburgh is ask for it.
In the end, the league screwing St. Louis over, again, is going to have the most meaningful impact on whether or not a new stadium is to be built here. The St. Louis area shouldn't pay the first sales tax penny or lay the first brick toward a new football stadium without an iron-clad guarantee from the National Football League that the city will host a Super Bowl within three years of opening the new facility.
Just like every other NFL city that builds a new stadium.
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