Questions brought up by all-but-12-year-old flodjunior, while watching a taped broadcast of the AFC Championship game last night…
Last year some people talked about the possibility of an “All-Pennsylvania Super Bowl”, if the Pittsburgh Steelers would win the AFC title and the Philadelphia Eagles the NFC. Obviously that didn’t happen. In fact it appears there never was an all-one-state SB, although it could have happened with teams from California (Oakland or San Diego v. San Francisco or Los Angeles when they still had the Rams), Texas (Houston v. Dallas), or New York (Buffalo or NY Giants v. NY Jets). Has a Single State SB ever come that close to happening before, with two teams from a single state in the NFC and AFC Conference championship games?
No team has ever had any sort of home field advantage in the Super Bowl, since the host city has never been home to either of the teams. Has it ever been a realistic possibility - that is to say, has the team from a SB host city ever made it to the playoffs?
Thanks in advance to the resident NFL trivia buffs, from me and my son…
Super Bowl XXIX featured the San Francisco 49ers and the San Diego Chargers for an all California Superbowl.
Super Bowl XIX featured the San Francisco 49ers playing the Miami Dolphins in the Stanford stadium, which is just 20 minutes drive away from Candlestick Park, still classified as being in the SF bay region. I would count this as a home field advantaqge situation.
When the Giants first won the Super Bowl they wanted a ticker tape parade on lower Broadway (“The Canyon of Heros”). The mayor of NYC told them to have their stupid parade in New Jersey.
Super Bowl XIV was played in Pasadena, CA (a suburb of Los Angeles) between the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers. That and the SB XIX example given above by TwoTrouts are the closest a team has ever had to a home-field advantage.
The Houston Oilers met the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1978 and 1979 AFC championship games. Had the Oilers won the '78 AFC title game, they would have played in an All-Texas Super Bowl XVIII against the Dallas Cowboys.
One thing going in Stanford Stadium’s favor was its size. It sat around 84,000 or so, whereas the local pro stadium (SF’s Candlestick Park) sat around 60-65,000.
The Rose Bowl (UCLA’s home stadium) got out of the loop once Los Angeles lost its two frachises in 1995. It last hosted a Super Bowl in 1993.
They were played there because Stanford Stadium & the Rose Bowl were big stadiums in warm weather locations in late January. Stanford will never again hold the Super Bowl because they’re currently tearing the place down and rebuilding it on a more intimate scale. The Rose Bowl probably won’t host the game again (without major upgrades to the stadium) because it doesn’t have enough luxury boxes for all the corporate folks that the NFL brings in. It last hosted Super Bowl XXVII. Basically NFL now expects amenities beyond what any strictly “college” stadium has nowadays.
If LA ever gets a team again, they’ll get a new stadium with plenty of luxury boxes and likely be put into the regular Super Bowl site rotation. San Francisco was promised a Super Bowl back when the 49ers made their initial push to get a new stadium, but with the internal turmoil within the franchise, the new stadium is practically a forgotten issue.
Not sure if Detroit will be in the Super Bowl rotation now with their new stadium, but I’m quite certain that the main reason the game is being played there is that the NFL promised at least one Super Bowl in exchange for govenment help/approval in getting the stadium built.
In my six short football seasons here in the US, the need for a warm weather Superbowl is one thing i have come to hate about the NFL.
Personally, i think a Superbowl played in driving New England snow or frigid Green Bay temperatures would be cool (heh heh) to watch. It’s not like people would refuse to attend, and it’s not like folks would switch off their TV sets. Hell, there’s something sort of comforting about sitting in a warm loungeroom and watching a bunch of guys play football in the snow. That AFC Championship game between the Patriots and the Raiders a few seasons ago was fantastic.
For the most part the people who attend the Super Bowl aren’t the nutty fans who would gladly sit in the freezing cold to see their team play in the game, but are instead rich big wigs who expect and demand not to be exposed to the risk rain, let alone of frostbite, while watching the game. Therefore the game will not be played outside in wintery weather for the foreseeable future.
If, if, if. If the Kansas City Chiefs had remained as the Dallas Texans, Dallas would have never met Dallas in the Super Bowl. But the year KC won and several of the years the Cowboys won, the other team had made the playoffs. So for the week between the regular season and the first playoff game, there would have been a number of years where a Dallas-Dallas Super Bowl would have been possible.
I’m well aware of the selfish reasoning behind the NFL’s policy; it doesn’t mean that i have to like it.
Personally, i think the Superbowl would also be more interesting if more of the people in the crowd were, in fact, “the nutty fans who would gladly sit in the freezing cold to see their team play in the game.”
This makes the question about home-field advantage somewhat irrelevant. It doesn’t matter much if the team if 20 minutes from home if their fans aren’t in the seats – they’re being occupied by the top selling salesman for Consolidated Widgets’ Upper Northwest Division.
Is this really true? Green Bay has hosted NFC championship games, and Jacksonville (over 700,000 people but rather spread out) had the Super Bowl last year. The metro area is about 195,000 people.
I should think that once you scare away the people who don’t want to watch a football game in cold weather accomodating real fans & necessary media shouldn’t be so tough. I think it’s more a case that the NFL doesn’t want to see things go in this direction rather than it being physically impossible.
As a side benefit a nice 20-below day might encourage a less ludicrous halftime show and refocus things on… oh, I dunno… football.
I think the owners are to blame for that policy, because they decide where the Superbowls are going to be. Example from SuperBowl.com: “The site of the 2008 Super Bowl [Glendale, AZ] was decided at the owners’ meetings in Chicago on Oct. 29-30, 2003.” I also found these bits in another (albeit “old” and unofficial) article: “… the current NFL policy, which excludes open-air venues in northern cities from hosting the annual title game. In the past, the game was hosted by either a warm-weather city or a northern city with a domed stadium, such as Minnesota and Detroit. … [A potential host city must receive] 24 of 32 (three-fourths) votes from the owners.”
As much as I want to say that I agree with you on the pansy-ass-ness of only playing Superbowls in warm and/or controllable climates (especially since the Pro Bowl, just one week later, is always in Hawaii), I also have to say that I kind of agree with the owners here, at least a little bit. If it were, say Buffalo and Philadelphia in the Superbowl, that would be one thing - they’re at least used to playing in temperatures under 30°F occasionally. But other teams just don’t have to do it very often - like Arizona and San Diego. It’s kind of cruel to watch the unaccustomed (koffDrewBledsoekoff) flounder around and try to keep their wits about them while they’re slowing freezing their fingers off.
In Drew Bledsoe’s case, though, it’s kind of fun, just the same.
