By Randy Galloway, Fort Worth Star-Telegram –
FORT WORTH, Texas — No. Absolutely not. Never again on another Super Bowl coming our way.
And if that’s what the NFL was telling us this week, then thanks to the NFL for doing us all a big favor.
In the selection process for a city/region to host the most high profile sporting event in this country, it became official Tuesday that we’ve been shut out until at least 2018 at the earliest, and based on several factors, it will probably be 2020.
Good.
First off, any football stadium where women’s panties are sold should automatically be removed from Super Bowl consideration. I don’t mean to go all manly here, but I think I’ve got a valid point with this one.
The real kicker, however, is this:
Until the truth is told about what caused a horrendous civic embarrassment on that Super Sunday in Arlington — Feb. 6, 2011 — then there’s no reason for us to start planning ahead, be it eight years or beyond.
More than 3,000 fans from around the country and the world had valid tickets and no seats. The fiasco, of course, centered on a massive temporary seating scheme hatched by the ego of Jerry Jones.
I don’t normally criticize the business brain of Jerry, but this time his passion to be the NFL owner who had the stadium that broke the all-time Super Bowl attendance record overloaded his brain and his butt.
Somebody needs to take the blame for a failure to deliver the temporary seats to those fans, be it Mr. Jones or the NFL. Yes, the local alibi goes, there was a screw-up, but it only involved some 3,000 seats out of a total of 88,000-plus actual seats.
But reality says that after a week of “Weather from Hell,” the final and fatal national PR blow was we couldn’t even deliver all the paid-for seats. More than half of the 3,000 unseated were placed in other seats by removing league and team people, but 1,200 never saw the game.
A friend researched and wrote a book on the entire planning process for Super Bowl XLV and his bottom line was to blame the NFL on the missing seats caused by a construction company that couldn’t safely deliver the temporary seating.
I’ve heard otherwise, however. Heard that the NFL left it up to Jerry, who promised he could have the temporary seats to break the record, and that he had the construction company hired who could make it happen. The plan, of course, was to erect temporary seats in both end zones, and run those seats all the way up to the ceiling.
But the beauty of Jerry’s Baby — the Big Yard in Arlington — was totally destroyed by this plan because he closed off the open areas at both ends. The Big Yard, with the roof also closed, had the look of just another domed stadium, although this one with more seats than any other domed stadium.
In the end, 103,219 people were said to be in the place that night, 766 fewer than at the 1980 Super Bowl held at the Rose Bowl. The 1,200 with seats who couldn’t be seated cost Jones his precious record.
The breakdown was 88,060 purchased tickets and another 3,000 watched on video monitors outside the stadium. The rest of the total supposedly came from the 12,000-plus credentialed personnel.
As someone who has been in the media horde for nearly 40 Super Bowls, I’d never heard of anyone who actually cared about the attendance record, but Jerry is Jerry.
Since local and state money from taxpayers was involved in staging our Super Bowl, and since the area took a national PR beating, how come there has never been a demand, from politicians or the attorney general, for someone to tell the truth about what the heck happened?
I admit, however, that one day in the distant future, there will be another Super Bowl here, and that’s for one reason. The money.
Feb. 6, 2011, was the most profitable day ever for the NFL when it comes to a Super Bowl. And none of the locales between now and the 2020s will be able to top that.
But obviously the NFL selection committee is no hurry to get back here anytime soon.
When the day again comes, however, an advanced and much better plan for dealing with another Ice Storm of the Century has to be in place. Weather hell was a total surprise for our Super Bowl week, and no, we weren’t anywhere close to being ready. That can be excused, but next time it has to be a high priority.
Also, when another Super Bowl returns, the logistical nightmare, some of it because of the icy roads, has to be narrowed down.
As I’ve said before, Sundance Square is the only logical spot in the area to host the three main components, that is both teams and the media masses.
Why the media? Because these are the people who are telling the nation if it’s a good Super Bowl locale or if it’s a disaster. We got the disaster treatment in 2011 and rightfully so.
But while Sundance and close-by areas have everything that makes the Super Bowl a likable event, I don’t know if downtown Fort Worth has the hotel space. Plus, hotels want the fans more than the teams and the media. Prices can be jacked up for fans. Otherwise, there’s a controlled cost for rooms.
The ice and the logistics killed us last time. But on top of those areas, the seating debacle delivered the fatal PR blow.
Until the truth is told about what happened, this is not where a Super Bowl should be held again.
