I recall those cold Super Bowl games when I was a kid. Low scoring and boring. Guys freezing their asses off and trying to play with a rock hard frozen ball. Players got frostbite at the infamous Ice bowl in Green Bay.
It was such a relief when they moved the games to covered stadiums or further South to warm weather.
Moving the Super Bowl to NJ is beyond stupid. It’s flat out asinine imho.
I won’t be watching if it’s snowing or sub zero weather. I’ve seen too many boring games in the snow and ice. It’s just too sadistic and unfair to the players.
I don’t think it is sadistic and unfair to the players. They have to play regular and playoff games in the same cold-weather stadiums after all. I don’t think it will affect ratings either. The people at home aren’t the ones that will be freezing their asses off.
However, I do wonder why the NFL has moved away from rotating the Superbowl between the warm weather cities because they are still be best venue overall especially for the fans at the game. New Orleans and Miami are the perennial fan favorites and they have lots of experience hosting it. Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix and Dallas will also do in a pinch (although Dallas had a fluke ice storm the last time it hosted one). I would keep it with the proven favorites and steer clear of place like New Jersey and Indianapolis that time of year.
It’s been 25 or more years ago since I recall a outdoor cold Super Bowl. They went into covered stadiums in the mid 70’s.
The 1967 Ice Bowl is the most infamous. I was just starting elementary school when that was played. Or endured. There were several cases of frost bite.
I can’t recall which other Super Bowls were outside in the cold. It’s hard to separate playoff games and Super Bowl games in my memory.
Did Dallas’ Cowboy Stadium host the Super Bowl in the 70’s? That big hole in the roof lets snow in.
The 2001 divisional playoff game between New England and Oakland was pretty damned exciting. The reason the Ice Bowl was boring was because football was boring back then - at least compared to the offenses these days.
And the Patriots and Broncos didn’t seem to have much trouble scoring points last night in sub-freezing weather.
The modern passing offense suffers a lot in freezing cold weather. Getting a nice spiral on a frozen ball is nearly impossible. Receivers drop more balls when their hands are freezing. Their feet are slipping on the ice.
Maybe I’m not a rabid enough football fan. But I rarely waste my time watching a playoff or championship game in the snow. It’s too low scoring and boring. I just switch the channel to another game, watch basketball, or do something else that day.
What he said. The first Super Bowl was played after the 1966 season, and the first four Super Bowls (which occurred before the NFL / AFL merger was finalized) pitted the winner of the NFL Championship Game against the winner of the AFL Championship Game.
The Ice Bowl was the 1967 NFL Championship Game, in which the Packers beat the Cowboys. Those Packers then went to Super Bowl II, at the Orange Bowl in Miami, where they beat the Oakland Raiders (winners of that year’s AFL Championship Game).
In those days, the NFL (and AFL) Championship Games were usually played at the home stadium of the higher-seeded team, which is why a number of them were played in cold / crummy weather. The modern analogues to those games are the NFC and AFC Championship Games, which are still played at the home stadium of the higher-seeded team.
The Super Bowl, OTOH, has always been at a “neutral” site, and, until this year, has always been at a warm-weather site. About the only time that weather has ever really come into play at a Super Bowl was in SB XLI in Miami, where it poured rain for much of the game.
At any rate, I don’t think that it’s likely that the location of the game this year will have a big impact on ratings. A lot of people watch the Super Bowl for the ads, anyway.
If it’s snowing, or bitterly cold, that may make things more interesting for many viewers. If it’s a blowout, that’s what’s historically led to lower TV ratings in the second half of the game.
Mea culpa. I got my playoff games and Super Bowls mixed up. Sorry.
I still think football in freezing and snow conditions is a very bad idea. Theres too much at stake. Players may only get one or two shots at the Super Bowl in their entire NFL careers. A lot of great players never played in a Super Bowl. To have that game ruined by ice and snow makes no sense.
It’s like moving the NBA games to outdoor courts. Real tough men play outside. Cold doesn’t bother them. Right. It would ruin the NBA and get a lot of great players injured.
I think every city that has a team should have the opportunity to host a Super Bowl. I think this is great. Seeing two teams tough it out in the cold will not be boring to me. Certainly no more boring than a blowout.
Frankly, that was always at least part of the NFL’s stated reasoning for keeping the game in warm-weather cities (or in domes) – they didn’t want weather to be the deciding factor in the game.
However, given the amount of money tied up in the “corporate hospitality” side of the Super Bowl, I suspect that the real reason is that they don’t want all of the high rollers who attend the game (and all of the parties and such in the days leading up to it) to be cold and miserable.
The idea of a Super Bowl in NY/NJ was first floated after 9/11 (as a way to support the city), and slowly gained momentum. If it goes well, I imagine the NFL will entertain doing something similar again, but if it goes poorly…
One lurking issue which I recently read about is just how long game attendees will need to be outside, in the cold. Due to security lines, etc., fans are already told to arrive at a Super Bowl hours ahead of time. Add to that a game which takes 4+ hours to play out, and the lines to leave, and you have people who will be outside in cold weather for (potentially) 8-10 hours or longer.
Unfortunately, I suspect that Green Bay would never get one – it’s actually primarily an issue of available hotel rooms. The Super Bowl host city has to be able to provide an enormous number of “quality” hotel rooms within a reasonable distance to the game. A game played in GB would have attendees staying in Milwaukee (2 hours away) or further, and that likely wouldn’t fly.
Well Detroit has hosted twice, and Minneapolis and Indianapolis have each hosted once, so that’s not quite right. Indianapolis made pretty extensive outdoor plans for the Super Bowl village, and will likely win another chance to host because XLVI got rave reviews. One of the helpful factors there, though, is that the stadium, Super Bowl village, and all the major hotels are within walking distance of each other.
No you don’t remember any Super Bowls like that, because up to now, ALL Super Bowls have been played in neutral warm-weather cities or domed stadiums.
Now, you HAVE seen many playoff games and even NFL championship games played in miserable weather. The famous Ice Bowl between the Packers and the Cowboys, for instance. But that wasn’t the Super Bowl- the Packers went to the SUper Bowl AFTER winning that game. Of course, at that time, the perceptionb was that the NFL was much stronger than the AFL, and I’m sure the Packers regarded their win in the Ice Bowl as the “real” championship game.
The Ice Bowl was miserable for the players and for the fans who were present, but it’s now regarded as a classic game. There’s no reason a bad weather game can’t be fun to watch.
The Patriots couldn’t host one very well either. Up until a few years ago, Gillette stadium looked exactly like someone dropped a football stadium in a cow pasture. Most of the parking was just fields that landowners opened up for the game and some of them were a long walk away. There were no large hotels nearby or much else of note for that matter. It is a little better now that they built a large shopping and entertainment complex beside it (Patriot Place) but it is still in a very suburban/semi-rural area that can barely handle regular game traffic let alone the added overhead and expectations required for a Superbowl.
I go to Indy for GenCon (a big gaming convention) every year. I agree, they have an extremely good set-up for a big event, with a huge number of hotels all connected to the convention center by walkways (and the convention center is next door to the stadium).
Yes, the league has done the game in colder cities, but they do get some push-back from the corporate sponsors over it, and putting another game in the Twin Cities or Detroit isn’t the no-brainer that a game in New Orleans or Miami is.
There were several cases of frost bite.