Countdown to Super Bowl XLVI - Indy is ready - Ingles

Journalists are trained skeptics who often are criticized for being, well, too critical.

It goes against our nature to look at the glass half full, to see the beauty without noting the blemishes, to appreciate the roses without warning about the thorns.

So in sizing up a city that's about to have the eyes of the world turned upon it, that is about to put decades of its civic credibility on the line, that is about to be tested in ways it's never been tested before, the temptation is to reserve judgment -- to hedge your bets on whether we can actually pull it off.

But after spending the past few months kicking the tires of this city, after listening to the humility and attention to detail of the key people leading the charge, after watching a Downtown that was already a source of pride blossom into a place with a surprise around every corner, there seems to be no other conclusion.

Indianapolis is ready to host this Super Bowl.

How does one know?

With what is quite possibly the most important week in the city's history just beginning, maybe we can't know. At least, not for certain. But in the smallest details, there are encouraging signs.

Consider that on Wednesday, I tweeted that the V on the giant XLVI display on Monument Circle looked like it had been beaten up, that it had fallen off the truck somewhere along the way. Within 24 hours, the V had been given a makeover. The blemishes were gone. All that was left was the cool. Connection to my tweet? That might be a tad presumptuous. But somebody noticed the issue. And somebody took care of it.

Consider, too, that about a block away in a studio office three floors above South Meridian Street, there's a bank of computers -- about 20 in all -- staffed by a geek squad whose sole purpose will be to monitor Super Bowl-related social media. If trends erupt on Twitter or Facebook that there are traffic tie-ups, ticket problems or whatever, these folks will sound the alarms. The idea is to put out the small fires before they get out of control.

Then there are the more visible signs -- the things that have been transformed around town in the past couple of years in anticipation of this event.

It's hard from this vantage point to remember that a short time ago we had a much smaller Indiana Convention Center that couldn't have handled what's before us now. But there it is, hosting an NFL Experience that already has broken the record for presold tickets.

And remember the western skyline before the JW Marriott carved out its big blue niche along West Street? That wasn't so long ago. But now the city has a slick bookend to its Downtown, a new 1,000-room hotel and a jazzy place to paste a 30-story image of the Lombardi Trophy.

Remember how Georgia Street looked a year ago?

It was a wide river of concrete with beaten-up parking meters that was about as inviting to pedestrians as a strip-mall parking lot. Yes, the lengthy makeover hurt businesses there. But now the place is a real destination and a focal point for this week's events. How special is it? Cascading snowflakes of light and color will be dancing on the sides of the buildings that line the street, giving the place a magic that it never had when it was more dismal than Disney.

There are other things, too, less sparkly, but things that are important to visitors.

Wider, more pedestrian-friendly sidewalks. An expansion of the network of indoor walkways between hotels. Signs to guide drivers around town. And handy tools -- an iPhone app with a 3-D interactive map, easy-to-fold 2-D paper maps -- to help visitors find their way.

It's that kind of preparation that has the city's leaders already walking with a swagger and a pride that we're not always comfortable putting on display.

"I think we're going to put on the kind of show that will show the world that this is a great place to have the Super Bowl," said Al Kite, owner of the Conrad Indianapolis and someone who knows a thing or two about hospitality.

That sort of confidence permeates the city right now.

"I expect us to absolutely nail this thing," Mayor Greg Ballard said last week.

We have confidence where it matters most -- such as with Super Bowl Host Committee President Allison Melangton. It's a confidence seasoned with a humility recognizing that the unforeseen could bite us, a recognition that there's still much work to do.

At the beginning of last week, Melangton confessed to having a to-do list that was still 105 items long. By Friday, it was down to 52. She said she and her staff are putting in 20-hour days. And she was sober enough in judgment to acknowledge that stuff happens, and it's possible that some pages in the playbook could be stronger.

What's our weakest link? Our most important stress point?

Probably transportation.

The huge question to be answered is whether our chief asset -- a compact Downtown -- will be so overwhelmed and so strangled that we're left with gridlock. Will the city's calculation hold true that our eminently walkable Downtown, fleets of corporate shuttles and a mere 700 taxicabs will be enough to get 150,000 visitors everywhere they want to go?

"I think it is impossible for us to predict if it is going to be adequate or not," Melangton said. "What I do know is that we have spent a lot of time in extensively training cabdrivers in sharing Super Bowl information. So with the cabs that we do have, I think they are going to be prepared and ready."

And what about the weather?

Right now, long-range forecasts for next weekend are looking about as good as we could hope -- above-average temperatures, below-average precipitation, according to the National Weather Service in Indianapolis. But you never know.

What if, in this quirky La Niña winter, we get hit with an ice storm that coats the city in a frozen glaze?

Our labyrinth of indoor walkways will help. But people staying in hotels along I-465, or in the doughnut counties, will still have to find a way into town. It will present a great challenge. But unlike Dallas, which hosted the Super Bowl in an ice storm last year, we know what a salt truck is. And the host committee seems to have accounted for every other kind of weather this side of locusts.

"When we have a problem, we tackle it," Melangton said.

"No one is freaking out about anything. I just don't think that's going to happen with the temperaments we have around here."

That sense of embracing who we are -- a cold-weather city in the Midwest -- is an important choice, according to sportscaster Dan Patrick, who has covered Super Bowls for 30 years and will present the Super Bowl trophy to the winners during NBC's broadcast next week.

Dallas wasn't prepared for what came its way last year, he said. Minneapolis, which hosted the game in 1992, was ready. And Patrick, a native of Ohio, considers Minneapolis one of his favorite host cities. "They didn't make any apologies that it was a cold-weather city and there was snow," he said. "But I thought it was really well done, that they prepared for everything."

Patrick said he thinks Indianapolis, with its Midwestern friendliness, will do well. But he warns that the city's success in hosting Final Fours isn't a guarantee of Super Bowl success. "I think you have to understand the magnitude of it and just be yourself," he said. "That's for sure."

The stakes, of course, are enormous.

Fall on your face like Dallas, and you're fodder for late-night comedic ridicule. But even Dallas, with its place in football lore and its behemoth sports palace, is likely to see another Super Bowl someday. Same goes for obvious tourist destinations such as Miami and New Orleans. Fail in Indianapolis and, even Melangton agrees, you may never get a second chance. It's hard to say, too, how it might hurt the city's reputation.

Succeed and the possibilities are endless.

Some, like Patrick, say a Super Bowl may not come back to Indianapolis anyway -- that this game is just our reward for building a new stadium. But others, such as the Conrad's Kite, suggest that a strong showing this week could land Indianapolis another game relatively soon.

More realistically, Ballard says a successful Super Bowl week could mean more convention business, more corporations willing to consider expansions here, even more families willing to relocate here.

In other words, there's a lot riding on this.

Ballard and others like to cite the city's experience in hosting the Indianapolis 500 -- an event with even more in-the-flesh spectators than the Super Bowl -- as evidence of our readiness for this big moment. But an event that's been held in the same location for 100 years -- with many fans driving the same route, using the same parking and the same seats for decades -- somehow seems an inadequate comparison.

Certainly, there's no comparing the media scrutiny Indianapolis will face this week. It will be far, far bigger than the 500, bigger than all the Final Fours.

"It is the biggest challenge we've ever had and the biggest opportunity we've ever had," said P.E. MacAllister, a businessman and civic leader who was among the city fathers who laid the groundwork for this game in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

MacAllister says one of the secrets to the city's success now is what it has been for decades: an army of volunteers, people who care enough about their city to come out of the woodwork and give their time and energy to successfully pulling off a big event. There are more than 8,000 involved in the Super Bowl XLVI production.

Those masses, along with city leaders who had the vision to nurture our Downtown into the jewel it is presently, are the reason Indianapolis landed a Super Bowl -- and did so even before cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago.

"We work together," MacAllister said. "I think people are going to see that when they come here and appreciate the fact that it is just a little different community. It's a relatively small town to be hosting something like this."

So when will we know if we pulled it off?

We'll get an early sense of our fate in the next couple of days, based on what's said about Indianapolis from Radio Row, and what's written and aired in the national media.

For some, the final verdict will be delivered by NBC announcer Al Michaels, or perhaps studio host Bob Costas, when they utter the words every Super Bowl town yearns to hear -- what a great host city this has been.

For Melangton, president of the host committee, the job won't be done then. She will wait another 24 hours before she celebrates -- after the last visitor has boarded a flight out of town. And, hopefully, thinking happy thoughts about a Super week in Indianapolis.

(source Indianapolis Star)