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2014 Super Bowl May Set Precedent

Posted Mar 30, 2010 by Ira Kaufman

Updated Mar 30, 2010 at 04:16 PM

By IRA KAUFMAN
TAMPA—A one-time gift or a free-for-all?

That’s the issue confronting NFL owners as they approach a vote to award the 2014 Super Bowl to either the New York/New Jersey region or Tampa Bay.

Commissioner Roger Goodell clearly supports the New York bid, intending to reward the region for building a $1.7 billion 82,500-seat open-air stadium in the Meadowlands complex at East Rutherford, N.J. The league waived its Super Bowl weather requirements to accept the Big Apple proposal and the Bay area will be considered a prohibitive underdog when owners cast their votes in Dallas during the May meetings.

Goodell may be thinking this is a unique, one-time-only reward to the city that never sleeps, but that stance has to be articulated up front to other owners who may support the New York bid in hopes of luring the league’s showcase game to their own cold-weather stadium.

If the league breaks precedent and chooses New York as a Super Bowl site, what’s to stop Denver’s Pat Bowlen or Redskins owner Dan Snyder from standing in front of the NFL’s Park Avenue headquarters with arms outstretched, asking, “What about me?’‘

It’s a tough sell, no matter how you look at it.

Snyder didn’t land a Super Bowl after FedExField opened in 1997. Philadelphia hasn’t been in the Super Bowl rotation since Lincoln Financial Field debuted in 2003 with the Bucs opening the facility by blanking the Eagles 17-0.

Why should New York be treated any differently with a new facility?

Tampa Bay will fight the good fight in May and the Bay area is likely to come up second-best. If New York doesn’t get the game in 2014, it will be seen as a major defeat for Goodell, who is lobbying hard in private to award the game to the Meadowlands.

But in closing one door on Tampa Bay, the league may be opening the doors to every cold-weather site across the NFL landscape.

Philly, Washington, Denver, Pittsburgh ... come on down.

Heck, why not Buffalo?