Wednesday, January 14, 2009

What If...

As we wind down the final weeks of the NFL season, and teams are lopped off each week, we get closer and closer to the Super Bowl.

With the final four set with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Philadelphia Eagles, and Arizona Cardinals, every fan starts to envision a perfect Super Sunday match up.

My question is: Should there be an All-Pennsylvania Super Bowl, what if the Big Game was moved from the sunny shores of Tampa, Florida to the snowy domain of Beaver Stadium, the home of the Penn State Nittany Lions, in State College, Pennsylvania ?

Personally, I am sick of the fact that we will probably never see any Super Bowl in the snow or the cold ever again. I understand that hosting the Super Bowl in these warm climates is a nice break for the players who play in the cold week after week, but you have to break up the monotony of sunshine state Super Bowls and at least break them up with occasional games in the cold or snow.

As a coach, this type of move would mean your team would have fewer distractions in State College than they would in, say, Tampa, or Miami (the site of next year's Bowl) and more overall focus on hitting the weights and blocks, and less on hitting the beach. Besides, if your players want to hit the beach, they can wait it out until the Pro Bowl, which might as well be beach flag football.

Not only would this break the monotony, but it would also draw more attention from the fans. There would be more interest in seeing the Steelers and Eagles play in their home state, in the snow, in what would probably go down as an epic, defensive, struggle. There is also the fact that you could put more people in the stadium as well. The current site, Raymond James Stadium, holds just over 66,000 people, while Beaver Stadium holds just over 107,000 and can reach 110,000 on big game days.

Think about that: Beaver Stadium can hold almost two full Raymond James Stadiums' worth of people. Plus, at the rate that Super Bowl tickets usually go for, there is a fortune of money to be made just by selling the 110,000 seats, before any sort of parking payment, concessions, or advertisements are even factored in. Not to mention, it would also do wonders for the State College economy.

Beaver stadium would also be able to be a neutral field, positioned 3 hours away from both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, droves of both loyal fan bases would much rather make that trip than one that would require a lot of flying. You could sell 35% of the tickets in Philadelphia, 35% in Pittsburgh, and distribute the rest which ever way you wanted. That way, you would have a good number of loyal fans from each fanbase there, while still not excluding the rest of the country.

As for what Penn State gets out of this, they can receive a cut of the money made from the event, and will see the town around the university be booming economically by the large amount of people there for the biggest game in all of American sports.

While it is probably too late to be able to change anything now, plus the fact that if the locale was changed now the people of Tampa would probably not be too happy about it, this idea will go to waste. However, it is still a possibility for future Super Sundays, just change up the college stadium or pro stadium that would replace Beaver Stadium in my scenario.

Still...an All-PA Super Bowl at Beaver Stadium would be really nice...

1 comment:

  1. I'm sure that you're not at all influenced by that you'd probably have a shot at actually going to the game if it was at Penn State. But yeah, it's always more fun to watch football in the snow/rain/sleet. Agreed. Although probably the players would not.

    -Moses

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