IRVING, Texas — Sour grapes and a “be careful what you wish for” hangover greeted New York’s victorious 2014 Super Bowl group yesterday.
South Florida’s bid officials actually went public with their conspiracy theory, highlighted by committee chairman Rodney Barreto telling Miami reporters that “the fix was in for New York.”
If the fix for the Giants and Jets was in, then the owners did a good job of hiding it. New York organizers had to sweat out four ballots, and even then had to scrape together the bare majority of at least 17 votes necessary to bring Super Bowl XLVIII to New Meadowlands Stadium.
But that did little to salve the apparent ego blow to South Florida officials, whose organizing group couldn’t even make it past two ballots before being eliminated in favor of New York and Tampa.
Barreto said South Florida, which has hosted a record 10 Super Bowls, desperately added $1 million to its commitment for operating expenses the night before Tuesday’s vote.
“We could have put $10 million on the table, and it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Barreto told reporters Tuesday. “The NFL’s cut new territory here. It’s somewhat of a gamble, especially if you have a [blizzard] come through and shut down airports.”
New York’s organizers and the NFL already were thinking about just that type of worst-case scenario yesterday, even though the owners’ history-making move was less than 24 hours old.
Putting on a Super Bowl in even the most ideal conditions is an enormous logistical undertaking, and the prospect of a cold-weather game in the biggest region of the country — not to mention dealing with two different state governments — will make that task even more difficult.
“New York has hosted a lot of big events, but even New York has never seen an event as big as the Super Bowl,” said Jim Steeg, the former longtime NFL executive in charge of coordinating the Super Bowl each year. “The only thing I would compare it to is preparing for a political convention, but even that might not do it justice.”
When you throw in the possibility of brutal February weather, it explains why preparations within the league and New York’s game organizers started almost as soon as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced the final vote Tuesday.
Frank Supovitz, Steeg’s successor as the NFL’s senior VP of events, said everyone involved realizes the potential high-wire nature of playing the game outdoors in New York.
“We’re really going to be re-inventing the wheel in this case in terms of putting on a Super Bowl due to the weather,” Supovitz said about the Meadowlands.
The task ahead for the Giants and Jets — pulling off a series of huge events in densely populated areas over two states — is so enormous that the New York bid organizers welcome the lengthy lead time.
“Would I want to do it every year? Probably not,” said Jets owner Woody Johnson, arguably the driving force behind New York’s once-longshot bid. “A lot of people have confidence in us to pull this off, but [four years away] sounds pretty good right now.”