Posted on Mon, Jan. 29, 2007
Arlington, are you sure you're prepared for this?
GIL LeBRETON
In My Opinion
Star-Telegram
Gil LeBreton
In Detroit, the wind chill on Super Bowl Sunday, 1982, was 27-below.
On the roads to the Pontiac Silverdome there was a mammoth traffic jam, caused in part by the motorcade of the then-vice president, George H.W. Bush.
Detroit, we thereby concluded, is a lousy place to host a Super Bowl.
Miami? A friend got mugged at a freeway exit.
Atlanta? An icy, Super-sized mistake.
You see, you can't win hosting a Super Bowl. If the weather doesn't sabotage five years of planning, the visiting media surely will.
Thus, some of us swallowed with bittersweet milk the news last week that Roger Staubach will chair a committee that will attempt to bring Super Bowl XLV to the Cowboys' new Arlington stadium, the Jethrodome.
Nothing against Roger, and certainly nothing against Arlington.
But some of us have been to more than 20 of these Super Bowl things, and we've seen it happen. Prices triple in the Super Bowl city. Nobody you know gets tickets. Your favorite restaurant shuts down for the week because it's being "rented" by NBC-TV.
Bored by the matchup, the media starts opening your city's closets and interviewing the skeletons. Next thing you know, Jay Leno is doing "Fort Worth" jokes.
Are you sure you're ready for this?
The Super Bowl is a grand event, its game-day atmosphere unsurpassed. But it's an extravaganza best viewed from somewhere other than one's own backyard.
You won't get tickets, even if the Jethrodome's capacity ends up pushing 100,000, as Owner Jones has promised. The two Super Bowl teams each get 17.5 percent of the available tickets. The NFL lays claim to 25.2 percent, to be spread among the rights-holding TV networks, the players union and various league sponsors. Each non-participating team gets about 800 tickets to distribute. And the host team receives 5 percent.
Just do the math. Even at the Jethrodome's largest, the hosting Cowboys likely would receive no more than 5,000 tickets. And there's nothing in the NFL bylaws to compel Owner Jones to sell any of them to his season ticket-holders.
Whether you live in the game's host city or in rural Montana, your best chance of landing a Super Bowl ticket is through the NFL's annual lottery. One thousand lucky fans will be invited to pay $600 for each ticket.
But don't fret. If you complain about not getting tickets, a visiting newsman will be delighted to interview you, probably as part of a week-long The-Home-Fan-Gets-Bamboozled series.
The series, of course, will be narrated by the area's new spokesman: the cab driver. Most Super Bowl writers, you see, are too lazy or haughty to prowl the streets and chat with real residents. Thus, they extensively quote Douglas the Taxi Driver, who was a university professor back in Nigeria but now drives a Cowboy Cab at the airport.
If the new stadium lands the 2011 game, as Staubach hopes, be prepared for seven days of stories about the Kennedy assassination, why we all wear boots and drive pickup trucks, the Arlington skyline, etc., etc.
Expect to hear that some camera crew from Great Britain has mounted an expedition to visit Lee Harvey Oswald's grave.
No doubt, they're going to trash Arlington. The Super Bowl media always rips into the host city, unless it's San Diego or New Orleans. They'll compare Arlington to some of the other great sporting hosts of the world, like, say, Paris and Los Angeles. Expect a bad rash of Six Flags puns.
Safe prediction No. 1: At least 10 writers will do a feature on the geographical importance of the Whataburger.
Safe prediction No. 2: The media shuttle bus ride from Dallas to Arlington will be described as 15 miles of "endless prairie."
Staubach's organizing committee won't debunk the stereotypes, of course, because Garth Brooks will be invited to sing the National Anthem, and Willie Nelson will perform at halftime...
with Kellie Pickler.
Fortunately, our January weather is always warm and sunny. Forget I said that.
NFL teams build new stadiums just because they've been promised a future Super Bowl or two. Often, it's the NFL's way of "paying back" voters who approved the stadium's construction.
It's not about the money, because there are studies that claim that the NFL's estimate -- a $300 million economic windfall for the host city -- is about 75 percent too high.
Are you sure you're ready for this?
Roger Staubach apparently is. The rest of us can start reciting our own Hail Marys.
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7760
glebreton@star-telegram.com
