Given a few seconds to jog the memory, Ralph Papa can remember the particulars of the 28 Super Bowls he attended between 1981 and 2011.
“Mostly I remember the nice, warm ones,” said the Bethel resident and longtime Philadelphia Eagles season ticket holder. “If it were up to me, I’d like to see them build a state-of-the-art stadium in Las Vegas and either hold it there every year or put it in a small rotation with San Diego, Miami and maybe Glendale.”
Though he prefers to pack sunscreen and golf shoes, Papa, 63, has also trekked to cold weather destinations to take in the nation’s preeminent sports spectacle.
“One year – I think it was Detroit – my buddy got us into an NFL party on a Thursday, and we got to have dinner and see a lot of players, which was pretty cool,” said Papa, who has operated a mortgage business for 43 years. “We did the same thing in Minnesota, which was good because there is only so much you can do in those cold weather cities.
“You still get pumped up for the game and meet a lot of nice people ,but it’s not my first choice.”
Despite his balmy bias, Papa enthusiastically supports the idea of bringing the Super Bowl to one more frosty outpost.
“If New York can host it then Philadelphia should absolutely have one,” he said. “Between Center City and Cherry Hill and Atlantic City and Wilmington, there are plenty of restaurants and bars, plenty of hotels, plenty of parking – plenty of everything. It would be awesome.”
In May 2010, on the very day the NFL announced Super Bowl XLVIII would be held in East Rutherford, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie made his intentions clear.
“Hosting the Super Bowl here in Philadelphia would be a great experience for our fans across the city and region,” he said in a prepared statement. “We certainly have an outstanding combination of assets including an expansive infrastructure built to host large events and conventions … (I)f the league supports more northern games, we would pursue.”
While Lurie and Eagles CEO Don Smolenski have repeatedly expressed interest in hosting a Super Bowl ever since, the talk has died down a bit in recent months. When contacted last week, an Eagles spokesman said no one was available to discuss the issue and a follow-up request for a statement was ignored.
“Assuming that the NFL is willing to go to a cold-weather site again, there is no reason why Philadelphia can’t contend,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told the Daily Times on Thursday. “We’ve got a state-of-the-art stadium, enough hotels, including luxury hotels, plenty of great restaurants and a history of hosting big events.
“That’s why the Pope is coming here. That’s why the Republican National Convention came here and why the Democrats are considering it, and why we have hosted international music festivals and all the other events on the (Benjamin Franklin) Parkway. There’s no doubt we can do it.
“If Jeffrey wants to pursue it, he really should,” Rendell said.
The New York pick came after four rounds of voting by NFL owners. The selection has been alternately described as a tip of the hat to the Mara family, who founded the Giants franchise in 1925, and a reward for the construction of MetLife Stadium, the $1.6 billion home of the Giants and Jets.
While some ridiculed the NFL for exposing the most-watched television event in U.S. history to the possibility of crippling snow and ice, the game went off seamlessly thanks to unseasonably high temperatures. (Heavy snow arrived a day later.)
“The New York Super Bowl was a success,” said Allen St. John, author of “The Billion Dollar Game: Behind the Scenes at the Biggest Day in American Sport, Super Bowl Sunday.”
“The weather wasn’t an issue and the challenges of moving people around a city are going to be easier in any other cold weather host city, like Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., or Denver.”
St. John believes one of those cities will land a Super Bowl in the next few years.
“I think it’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when,'” he said. “I think the idea of a cold-weather venue was sort of put on hold until last year’s game was played and everyone saw that it was doable. It takes a while for a team to pull together a Super Bowl bid, so this spring’s bids for the 2019 game will be the first where a cold-weather team would likely make a serious bid.”
After tonight’s game in Glendale, Ariz., the next three Super Bowls will be held in San Francisco, Houston and Minneapolis. The vote for the 2019 and 2020 host cities will be held in May 2016.
“Lurie said they’d be making a bid – and more to the point, has committed to a major renovation of the facility with a Super Bowl in mind,” St. John said, referring to the Eagles $125 million renovation project that got underway in 2013. The improvements included the installation of 1,600 additional seats, which brought Lincoln Financial Field to within 1,000 of the 70,000 the NFL requires for Super Bowl stadiums.
While the NFL claims the Super Bowl is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the host city, many economists believe the true figure is much lower and note that much of the money that changes hands is spent on tickets, merchandise and other NFL-related items and not at local businesses.
Philip Porter, an economics professor at the University of South Florida, believes Super Bowl host cities come out even at best.
“These are known facts – reality not perception,” he said. “One: Monthly sales activity in host counties never reflect any significant change when there is a Super Bowl. Two: Monthly hotel occupancy does not change. Three: Average hotel prices show a significant upward spike.”
Porter said whatever big business comes to local retailers on the weekend of the Super Bowl is offset by dead periods before and after the game.
If true, then why do cities like Miami, New Orleans and Glendale keep bidding on the game?
“Politics determines a region’s desire to host the Super Bowl, and politics is about perception, not reality,” Porter said. “Hosting the Super Bowl appears to be good for the local economy. After all, 100,000 people come to witness the event.”
Rendell believes the ancillary benefits for a host city go well beyond the cash register.
“Any time you have a national or international event in your city it raises the profile,” he said. “When businesses and young people are thinking about locating or relocating, they want to go places where things are interesting and exciting and where new and surprising things are always happening.”
Rendell, who famously coined the term “nation of wussies” after the Eagles postponed a 2010 game due to a snowy forecast, said weather is the least of his concerns for a Philadelphia Super Bowl.
“You know where I stand on football in cold weather and bad weather,” he said. “One of the best games I’ve ever been to was the snow game against the Detroit Lions (in 2013). There was a camaraderie and level of fun in the stands that was beyond anything I’ve experienced before … People say they want to see the best athletes play in the best conditions, but do you remember that rain-soaked game in Miami (Super Bowl XLI)? They played in a monsoon.”
Papa’s Super Bowl streak started in New Orleans with the Eagles loss to the Raiders in Super Bowl XV and ended after Super Bowl XLV in Dallas due to hip replacement surgery.
“Next year is Super Bowl 50, and I’m hoping to God I can go,” he said.
And if the game were ever to be played in Philly?
“It all comes down to whether the NFL wants to give in and do it,” he said. “If they do, it would be absolutely incredible.”
