Whether the Weather Will Wither the Super Bowl

Anyone who thinks this is a bad thing is missing the point. The weather will not affect fan turnout, and football fans will not care if the weather affects the game.

First off, never mind the gloom-and-doom predictions of guys like Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, who suddenly sees two-foot blizzards everywhere. The NFL has already had a Super Bowl in a cold weather city, and civilization as we know it did not end.

Remember Detroit? The NFL had a Super Bowl in Detroit recently, presumably because Fallujah was booked that weekend.

Seriously. Detroit. Not only does the Motor City bear the distinction of being extremely wintry during the winter months, there was also the problem of the city being an example of virtually every urban nightmare feared by white people across the nation. Runaway unemployment, voter fraud, mayoral malfeasance, the collapse of the Big Three automakers, police corruption, and the city's perennial campaign to be known as the Murder Capital of America combined to make Motown about as attractive as a landfill in Chernobyl.

Still, the league and the city pulled it off. Homegrown hero Jerome Bettis ended a very good career in the city of his birth with a championship and the tentacled horrors of the Lovecraft Dimension were once again held at bay by the forces of crass commercialism.

But Detroit has a domed stadium, you say.

Yes, and the fans still had to make it safely from their waaaaay-outside-8-Mile-Road-hotels to that domed stadium and back, through neighborhoods that look like the back lot of a John Carpenter film.

They did it, not because they were some sort of weirded-out urban adventurers, but because it's the Super Bowl.

Paraphrasing "Field of Dreams," if you play it, they will come.

Football fans understand that adverse weather is part of the game. They simply bundle up (or, in Green Bay, go shirtless and curse Odin to do his worst!) and consume vast quantities of overpriced snacks and cheer for a little over three hours. Anyone not wanting to go to a Seattle Super Bowl for fear of getting rained on will find no shortage of takers for his ticket, even if his asking price was in the thousands. If Steve Bisciotti is that concerned about the weather intimidating fans, he should simply refuse to aid Baltimore's bid for the Super Bowl...and when neighboring D.C. (featuring the deep pockets of one Daniel Snyder) bids for and wins the right to host a Super Bowl, he'll be welcome to stay in his snuggly, warm house while the District has a big ol' party.

Besides, a cold weather Super Bowl might save us from ever, ever having to see any more halftime 'wardrobe malfunctions' like Janet Jackson's or, more recently, Pete Townsend's. (The author pauses to rub rock salt into his eyes after reliving both of those horribly vivid moments, while digressing...).

As far as the game itself goes, we've already set the precedent where weather is concerned. No one seems to care that the AFC and NFC championships are occasionally hosted in cold weather outdoor stadiums. In fact, when a team like Green Bay or New England runs up a gaudy regular season record, they are accorded a weather advantage in the playoffs. Warm weather teams traditionally struggle in the colder climes during the playoffs, but not so much that the cold weather host has an insurmountable advantage; one recalls a playoff game in Foxborough that the Patriots barely won, the infamous "Tuck Rule" game. The Raiders very nearly won that game, playing in the same snow that was supposed to give the Patriots the edge.

This is also the final point: football is not always an aesthetically-pleasing pass-fest, no matter how much defenses are hamstrung by the rules in favor of video game scores. Every game can't be a 51-45 aerial display like the one Ken O'Brien and Dan Marino once put on in a now-legendary Monday nighter. Some games are 6-3 mudders. Some are grinding, brutally cold 14-10 wars of attrition. Sometimes the rain, wind, mud, and snow will combine to adversely affect a football game.

That's just football...but we already knew that.

If anything is certain, it isn't bad weather keeping fans at home in cold-weather cities: it's bad teams. It wasn't rain and snow that made Browns and Lions fans dress like empty seats, any more than a love of the outdoors is what keeps Foxborough Stadium packed to the rafters with Patriot fans who know better than to be outdoors during a nor'easter.

So, to all the naysayers: shut up, put on your long-handles, and put a little something extra to ward off the chill into your thermos. It's football.

And if you really can't be bothered to go to a New York Super Bowl (!!), please please PLEASE send your ticket to me.

I'll be the shirtless idiot with a team logo painted on my belly.