NFL Planning Contingencies In Case of Super Bowl XLVIII Blizzard
By Josh Hill
The winter storm that battered the east coast this weekend (I refuse to call it Nemo because it’s a storm and not a Pixar flick) has a lot of people worried about next year’s Super Bowl. When people aren’t shoveling their houses out of four story snow drifts, the biggest concern on their minds is what will happen is a massive blizzard hits next year when the Super Bowl is held outside at MetLife Stadium?
Never fear, the NFL is here.
The league has spent a lot of time recently hashing out contingency plans in case inclement weather strikes the East coast next year during the Super Bowl. Among the possible plans is moving the game back to Saturday or even delaying the game until later in the following week.
If the game isn’t held on Sunday though, several critical problems arise that could prove this whole cold weather Super Bowl was a stupid and complicated idea. First off, if you’re holding out for ideal conditions, you’re holding the Super Bowl in the wrong city. It’s as though the NFL was so determined to get New York a Super Bowl that they forgot it’s cold during February and are now acting like this was just discovered.
No matter if the game is moved back a day or forward a few days, problems with attendance will no doubt arise. People plan their Super Bowl trips around the game being held on Sunday, so to mess with that very complicated (and expensive) schedule at the last minute is a recipe for disaster and backlash. If the game is held later in the week, the NFL is basically asking people to either skip work to attend to accept the fact that they blew $5,000 on a ticket to a game they’ll never see live.
Then, after all that, we have the issue of cold weather transportation. Being a life-long Minnesotan, I know about driving on ice and all you need to know about it is stupid, idiot drivers plus ice times the use of alcohol equal the apocalypse.
“You know it will be a lot cooler, but there will be a lot of people and transportation issues regardless,” said Jeff Miller, NFL vice president of security. “When you have a lot of moving parts and large crowds, you are moving on transportation systems already overloaded with daily commuters, so you’ve got some issues to deal with.”
The NFL is asking for these problems, but the assumption is that they’re adult enough to deal with it. Moving the game around is as stupid an idea as holding a Super Bowl in a cold weather stadium. If the idea was to replicate the effect of “old school” football, then moving the game around to fit ideal conditions goes against every grain of the tradition.
A cold weather Super Bowl is a new idea and it’s already polarizing people. This all could end up being a massive fear campaign we all bought into, but as long as the NFL is biting it’s nails over a cold weather Super Bowl, the public is going to take that as a sign that maybe more was bitten off than could be chewed.