With Super Bowl XLV Dallas style now complete, all eyes are on Indianapolis for Super Bowl 46. After the way North Texas handled this last big game, Indy won’t have to try hard to shine.
So many problems with so few answers from the North Texas Super Bowl Committee. Everything about Indianapolis will make their year special. The only problem that could arise would be congested streets and crowded restaurants because fans, teams and media alike are in the same 2 mile radius.
The farthest most people will travel is about six miles north to Broad Ripple. The J.W. Marriott just opened, which features over 1,000 rooms where the media will stay. If the Indiana Pacers were smart, they would ask the NBA for at least one home game during that week to showcase the team and Conseco Fieldhouse.
Also, about 400 people were forced to give up their seats and instead had to watch the game on monitors or use standing-room platforms in corners of Cowboys Stadium. A total of about 15,000 temporary seats were added for the the Super Bowl and about 1,250 were deemed not safe to sit in. After years of knowing the big game was coming, the host committee didn’t once test out the seats well in advance?
Those 400 fans without seats were given a ticket refund of three times face value, free food, soft drinks and merchandise. And then this morning, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said each of those fans will receive a free ticket to Indy’s Super Bowl, as a guest of the NFL.
Dallas sure whiffed on this one.
Sports Illustrated’s NFL expert Peter King has written a weekly ‘Monday Morning Quarterback’ column that is read by thousands for 14 years now. In today’s column, King noted in his ‘Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week’ section how bad everything surrounding the Super Bowl really was. Below is an excerpt of this thoughts.
I figured this was not going to be your typical Super Bowl week when I got off the elevator at the Sheraton Dallas and saw my breath. Faintly, but there it was. Among the many things about Texas, one is this: They simply don’t heat their buildings well here.
Now, I’m not one of those who say there should never be a Super Bowl in City X because there was a rotten week of weather. But here, I’d actually think about it. One meteorologist on the local news said this was a once-in-20-years weather event. Kevin Kolb, who lives an hour or so west of the city in a small town, came to Dallas and said, “I was fishing in short sleeves five days ago.”
All that being said, and understanding that this was a freakish storm, it’s hard to fathom for an event that was this ballyhooed, by a region that is dying to get in the regular Super Bowl rotation, that they don’t have many (any?) plows down here, they don’t salt the roads when there’s an ice storm (and there was a doozy Tuesday morning), and their energy grid is ill-equipped to handle the drain on the resources the region faced late in the week.
But the good news is, the governor here is really bright. In the middle of a four-day weather crisis, Rick Perry was in sunny southern California, apparently working on his national profile. Now that’s some great timing.
The highlights of our week in Antarctica, after a severe ice storm coated every road Tuesday and five inches of snow added to the mayhem Friday morning:
• Went to four stores on I-30 between Dallas and Fort Worth looking for a real winter coat on Tuesday and Wednesday. Sold out everywhere.
• As the AFC pool reporter for the Pro Football Writers of America, I was assigned the Steelers practice in Fort Worth. (One reporter watches practices for both teams and writes a daily report of what happened, not delving into great football detail, but giving the 4,000 media people some idea that they’re here for a football game.) From door to door, from my hotel in Dallas to the TCU campus in Fort Worth, the trip was 39 miles. On Friday, the road connecting the two cities, I-30, was what I’d imagine driving on the moon is like. Windswept, blowing snow, just trying to stay on the road by following big vehicles in front of you in low visibility. And a bunch of idiots driving 25 mph too fast for conditions, three of whom spun off into ditches or the median. Luckily, my Chevy was a beast for the conditions, and I’ve spent my life driving in this crap, and I got the job done pretty easily.
• Ice cascaded from the roof of the stadium Friday, injuring seven, including one critically.
• Three days I peeked into the school bookstore at TCU, wanting to buy a Horned Frogs hoodie. Three days, closed. Campus closed. The NHL could have played the Winter Classic on about three locations on campus. The place was a rink, from end to end, and it never even began to melt the entire time the Steelers were there, from early Wednesday to Saturday noon.
• At one point on Wednesday, it was 17 degrees warmer in Juneau than in Dallas.
• On Saturday morning, beginning at about 10 and stretching to Sunday morning at 4:23, fire alarms ravaged the hotel. False ones, apparently from a short somewhere in the system. Swarms of people had to walk down 20-something flights of stairs for one of the pre-dawn alarms Sunday.