Denver deserves to host Super Bowl - Ingles
Once in our lifetime, the greatest sporting event in America needs to be played in the best sports city in the country.
Bring the Super Bowl to Denver.
"We are a city worthy of hosting the Super Bowl," Broncos president Joe Ellis said Wednesday. "It's definitely something we're looking at."
While it should be noted that the No. 1 priority of the Broncos is getting back to the NFL championship game, regardless of where it's played, having the world's biggest football party in the backyard of franchise owner Pat Bowlen would be a fitting tribute to this sports-crazy town and his decades of commitment to the league.
Before a formal bid is formulated, the Broncos would need to measure interest from civic leaders and the costs involved. But what is the biggest challenge to Denver as host of the Super Bowl?
"The climate is an issue," Ellis said, talking to me as he traveled down the highway to Denver International Airport, with a view of snow on Mount Evans over his left shoulder.
Ten years ago, it would have been a crazy pipe dream to envision a Super Bowl played with the Rocky Mountains as the backdrop. But during the past decade, it seems as if the NFL's marquee event has made almost as many tour stops across the nation as U2.
From a Motor City trying to get economic traction to a parking lot somewhere off a freeway in sprawling Houston, from a house as big as the ego of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and back home again in Indiana, the Super Bowl has been everywhere, man.
Twenty years ago, when Minneapolis played host to the championship game, the Super Bowl lost its fear of being a winter carnival. But league policy mandates the host city have an average game-day temperature of at least 50 degrees or a dome to provide a roof over the heads of star quarterbacks.
What Ellis hopes will allow Denver to get a foot in the door is the exception the NFL granted to the New York metropolitan market to play the 2014 Super Bowl in a new outdoor stadium. The Broncos will actively monitor league reaction to championship football played in elements that the late, great Bronko Nagurski would have loved.
A game in the snow could make for such compelling television that the commercials might again become secondary to blocking and tackling. But for the CEOs and starlets who fly on private jets to see and be seen at the Super Bowl? The beautiful people might not like slush leaving stains on those UGG boots.
"How the league would feel about a Super Bowl played in a driving blizzard when fans are paying thousands of dollars to attend the game remains to be seen," said Ellis, aware that if the big game were in Denver this week, New England coach Bill Belichick might be scowling at a winter storm warning in the forecast. An expanded, 18-game, regular-season schedule in the league's future might help push the dream of a Super Bowl in Colorado closer to reality by moving the championship further from the dead of winter.
Super Bowl sites are evaluated by a six-person committee that currently includes Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, the host of this year's event, as well as representatives from the Cincinnati Bengals, Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills. Hey, it snows in all those cities, doesn't it?
It's clear the Broncos believe they could make a compelling sales pitch. But putting together a bid would not be taken lightly.
"There's a lot of money invested on the come to bid on this game and not win it," Ellis said. "I know our fans are more interested in the team spending money to acquire good players for the Broncos rather than spending money to acquire the Super Bowl for Denver. And we agree."
With sites awarded three years in advance and the experiment of an outdoor venue in New Jersey 24 months away, the earliest we could realistically see the championship game in Denver would be late in this decade. But look on the bright side. That timetable would allow Tim Tebow to mature fully as a quarterback. Am I right?
The Super Bowl could make Colorado the center of the sports universe for a week, without as much fuss, the massive infrastructure expenses or all the mud tracked around the state that a successful bid for the Winter Olympics would bring.
"Who wouldn't want the Super Bowl?" Ellis said. "I think it would be great for Denver, and our city deserves an event like that."
This article was written by Mark Kiszla and appeared in the Denver Post.
Posted by Necesitamos Mas Football
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