San Francisco was awarded Super Bowl 50, while Houston received Super Bowl 51 in the decisions handed down by the NFL on Tuesday afternoon. It will definitely be a special night for the 50th edition of the Super Bowl, with the 49ers’ new stadium to be completed by that season.
The NFL has also gone back to the tradition of warmer climate cities for the time being, as next year’s Super Bowl will be played up north in East Rutherford, New Jersey in MetLife Stadium. The playing of Super Bowl XLIII will be the first time that an outside stadium up north will host the Super Bowl following the 2013 NFL Season. The 49th Super Bowl was already voted on a couple of years ago, and will be held in Phoenix.
The playing of this upcoming Super Bowl though could have one of the most significant impacts on the NFL that we’ve seen as it relates to the Super Bowl.
Whether or not the event during the week, including the game, is successful in a cold weather city during late January and early February could bring all 32 stadiums in the NFL in play when it comes to choosing a site for the big game.
There is a lot of pressure on MetLife stadium and the host city committee that is in charge of the game. Of course, there is nothing that the Super Bowl committee can do about the weather, only to hope for reasonably good conditions. We can all but assume that it will be very cold. But if the weather holds out with no big snow storms or anything along those lines, it could probably be deemed a success.
Detroit is the only other cold weather city to host a Super Bowl, but of course the stadium is indoors, so once the game kicked off weather was a non factor.
Lest we forget though that the Super Bowl is a week-long event in which there is a celebration of the NFL. It’s not just about the game, it’s about the events surrounding the game throughout the week. There are events, parties, concerts, and more that go on. The fact that cold weather could come into play and have a significant role is something that the NFL will be paying close attention to.
They won’t have to do that when it comes to the San Francisco Super Bowl, and probably not with Houston either. Though remember a couple of years back when the Super Bowl was in Arlington at the Cowboys Stadium some freak weather caused it to be very cold all week long.
For now, the NFL has gone back to the traditional sites and locations though. Maybe by February 2014 we could see the opening of many different ones.