
Last week, we had a fun “Question of the Week” from Mike Chamernik, and he’s back today with his latest QOTW.
Enjoy!
Question of the Week
by Mike Chamernik
The Chiefs and Eagles won their conference championship games and will be traveling to New Orleans for the Super Bowl two Sundays from now.
This will be the eighth time the Super Bowl has been played at the Superdome. Counting the Tulane Stadium days from the 1970s, it will be the eleventh time the game has been hosted by New Orleans, tied for the most with the Miami area.
It just feels right that the Super Bowl is in New Orleans and at the Superdome. OK, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing stadium, but many historic moments took place there, including the blackout, Tom Brady’s first title, Desmond Howard’s return, and the 1985 Bears crowning their spectacular season.
What are the most memorable Super Bowl host stadiums and cities? What makes a good Super Bowl venue? Was there any stadium that wasn’t good? Are there any bygone venues that you miss? Are there any stadiums that you would want to see host the game?
If you’ve ever been to a Super Bowl, what was the experience like?
Thanks, Mike — great question again.
Can’t wait to hear the readers’ responses! OK guys…fire away!
Watching the Super Bowl when it was played in the Rose Bowl was always great looking. Miss seeing that.
I guess the NFL has a rule where they only want the Super Bowl to be held in cities with an NFL team, so the Rose Bowl was dropped from the rotation after the Rams and Raiders left. And now with So-Fi, I’m guessing it’ll never return to the Rose Bowl.
Also, reading the wikipedia, the Seahawks were planning to move to LA in the mid-1990s? I missed that one!
I grew up a few miles from the Rose Bowl and agree that it was the best for Super Bowls.
I also didn’t know about Seahawks plans to move to LA. I grew up in the 80’s as a Raiders fan so that would have been really weird to suddenly root for the Seahawks because I hated them since they were a divisional rival to the Raiders.
SoFi has way more amenities than the Rose Bowl in terms of luxury boxes, club seating, etc. Plus, Pasadena has a limit on the total number of events that the Rose Bowl can host per year. So yes, you almost certainly won’t see a Super Bowl in Pasadena now that SoFi is in place.
My favorites were always at the Rose Bowl. Generally speaking, unless my team is playing’ I don’t watch indoor football. I seldom watch games on artificial turf. Needless to say, I will not watch the Super Bowl as I didn’t watch the National Championship. The look of games in N.O., Atl or Detroit are terrible.
Hey, guys, I’ve posted a comment three times and nothing happens, not even a moderation notice. What gives?
Hmmm. Every one of those comments ended up in the trash filter. Not sure why. But your comment has been freed.
The best Super Bowl venues are the roofless, open-air stadiums. Watching football in a dome or other type of covered field is like watching it in a warehouse. It’s sterile and fake.
I also miss the daytime games. Ah well . . .
Agree, with others here, outdoor is king. Rose Bowl was great, the sunset on the west coast certainly helps the outdoor ambiance even more. I’ve always founds the Superdome lighting especially depressing, so that is the worst venue from the perspective of how the game looks on TV, conversely I am sure it is one of the best host cities.
Really the rotation at this point should be Miami, Tampa, LA, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Arizona. Oddly I was under the impression that part of the selling point for “needing” a new stadium in Nashville was that a roof would allow them to host Super Bowls, but I just saw the capacity is only 60,000 and I doubt the NFL would hold it here, even though Nashville would be a great host city.
Not Houston?
I like the classic venues, like the Rose Bowl and the old Orange Bowl. Any open-air stadium with grass is fine, though. The older, dankly-lit domes all stunk, which is why this year’s game being in the Superdome isn’t ideal.
Don’t ever volunteer or work at a Super Bowl, volunteering to sell Cheese Steaks as a fundraiser for my daughter’s HS band at SB XLIII was like…
– Got there at 9AM for a 6:30 Kickoff
– Was a little lost getting to my post and was nearly body-slammed by security for inadvertently getting too close to Matt Lauer doing the Today Show
– Concession Mgt. did not let us sit down or be seen not working the entire day, they also re-arranged the booth constantly
– Ran out of Cheese Steak in the second half and had to face an angry mob
– Had some no-name player flash his NFLPA ID and say “Do you know who I am” when I wouldn’t sell him beer in the 4th quarter.
But…. At the 2nd half 2 minute warning I took the cue of some younger co-volunteers, went to the stands and got to see Santonio Holmes’ toe tap catch live. What could they do? Fire me?
Sounds like an experience that is worth it exactly one time.
Agreed
While I didn’t go to the game itself, I lived in Jacksonville for XXXIX. If you thought it was ridiculous for the city to get the team, it was even more ridiculous to host the Super Bowl.
If I were king, it would be the Rose Bowl at 1 pm PST every year and color vs color if possible.
Bill Simmons wrote a Super Bowl diary from Jacksonville and complained about the experience nonstop. The city is massive and difficult to get around.
I remember that and it was 100% accurate.
For those who didn’t read it (or never got to experience Paul’s old stomping grounds of Page 2), here is the link.
link
That was when I read Simmons religiously, and loved all those pop-culture references he worked into his columns. Twenty years later, I don’t even remember half the references he made in those first few paragraphs.
Yeah with Simmons, it’s tough to re-read old stuff. Like the Book of Basketball is great, but I’d now want an edited version that removes all the 1990s/2000s pop culture jokes
I miss Super Bowls with weather and Air Force flyovers. And I’m not a fan of how the NFL’s insistence on holding the Super Bowl exclusively indoors has led teams to go indoors.
Yeah it’s sad that the Bears and Browns have been pitching domed stadiums, just so they can maybe host Super Bowls and Final Fours.
And they’ll only ever get to host it once and that’ll be it, so not worth the public building them money on stadiums the public will never get the money back from. There’s not talk of it going back to Detroit anytime soon.
Outdoor is king, and real grass on top of that, so the best “regular” venues are Miami, Jacksonville, and Tampa. There are a few indoor venues I don’t mind as much, I thought Vegas looked good, Minneapolis was surprisingly good-looking, and Houston is solid enough as well.
I’ve given up any real hope that the NFL will try another cold-weather outdoor Super Bowl, but the silver jackets of Super Bowl 48 really did have a striking individuality to them that I thought worked, and maybe as climate change gets worse, they’ll consider it (I’m kidding) (mostly).
At this point, I just wish the NFL would go a little more outside their normal comfort zone, would a Super Bowl in Charlotte really be so bad? Can it at least finally return to the indoor northern venues like Indianapolis, Minnesota, or Detroit? All three are good cities, with great stadiums!
I’m surprised the cold weather Super Bowl in NJ just kinda came and went. It’s never talked about, and it’s (probably) never going to happen again.
Went to Atlanta for SB28 (Buffalo/Dallas Part II) and SB34 (Titans/Rams in the snow) and hung out during the week with friends . . . just remembering how cold it felt atmosphere wise since XXVIII was a rematch – and you could not find a Bills fan anywhere until Saturday . . . and XXXIV was a weather nightmare (snow/ice in GA – need I say more LOL) . . .
Agree with everyone who says the Super Bowl should be in an outdoor stadium (grass, please and thank you) played during sunlight hours – with real team fans, not the corporate sponsors . . .
I live about a 15-minute drive from Levi’s Stadium. The venue is fine, but the neighborhood surrounding the stadium (if you can call it that) is surrounded by tech companies. Classic Silicon Valley. And then take a jog (literally, you don’t need to go far) and you’ll run into residential areas. Perhaps the worst place to have a stadium if you’re after the “activation” that all the big, new stadiums are after. I made the mistake of driving near the area the morning of Super Bowl 50 and the traffic was insane. I mean obviously there was going to be traffic, and obviously there were going to be National Guardsman posted in the middle of the street directing traffic, but I feel like this was way worse than what it should have been.
I mean are there restaurants and bars within walking distance? Yes. But you have to cross a couple of big thoroughfares on some big overpasses. Or walk a mile along a busy intersection. Not walkable at all
Levi’s sounds like the opposite of the ballpark village trend.
The SB is coming back to Santa Clara next year.
More important than where, is when. The SB should be at 3:30 pm EST every year. It should be played in the daylight.
Why should 2/3 of America’s population have to stay up two hours past their normal bed time on a Sunday Night? Also my same argument for starting any non-NFC West/AFC West Night games BY 7pm EST on Thurs, Sun, and Monday
Don’t worry. In another couple years (maybe even less?), the NFL will move to an 18-game season, pushing everything back by a week. That’ll land the SB on Presidents’ Weekend, with many folks having the Monday holiday off (including kids). That’s how they will justify having the game start when it does. “Well, since you don’t have to go to work/school tomorrow…”
I have zero research or facts, but I’m guessing all the Super Bowl lead-in programming is easy ratings and ad revenue for the NFL and the networks. So they’re not motivated to make the game earlier.
I have zero research or facts, but I’m guessing all the Super Bowl lead-in programming is easy ratings and ad revenue for the NFL and the networks. So they’re not motivated to make the game later.
One of the worst was Sun Devil Stadium. It’s a horrible stadium, even with its improvements now, and I’m glad that the Cardinals built their own stadium.
The New York/New Jersey Super Bowl was a horrible idea. I want the Super Bowl to be in warm weather sites. I don’t even like it at the 49ers Santa Clara site, because a winter rain storm could roll in.
I’d rotate it from the Southeast (the Florida teams and occasional Atlanta), West Coast (LA Sofi, Arizona, and Vegas) and Gulf (New Orleans, Houston, Dallas).
It was crazy that the Cardinals played at Sun Devil Stadium for 17 years
A NY/NJ Super Bowl wasn’t a horrible idea, it was a risky idea. I think the next cold weather outdoor Super Bowl might be in a new RFK in Washington.
I hope you’re wrong.
I never plan to attend a Super Bowl in person, so I would have no problem with it being played in a cold weather town. I would relish the complaining from fans if it snowed.
The Rose Bowl was always my favorite Super Bowl location, because of the historic and beautiful locale, grass, etc.
My dark horse number two is Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. I thought the Super Bowls they played there looked great. I miss that place.
Yes! It was only in San Diego three times… felt like it was more.
It’s crazy that the Chargers moved to LA. They could have stayed in San Diego in the same Mission Valley area with a new stadium, but their owner only wanted a location down by the Padres stadium. Now they’re second banana in LA. Actually 3rd banana, because the Raiders are still the favorite team in Southern California.
Pasadena has always been my favorite football site, for Super Bowls and Rose Bowl Games. Growing up in the Midwest and with cold weather the norm in January, the warmth of the sunny early afternoon games played on grass and the San Gabriel Mountains framing the bowl are just spectacular in themselves.
The games played in San Diego offered that special layer of warmth as well.
The next Super Bowl at SoFi will be in two years, and I hope we get to see how its environs hold up as a neutral site; the Rams definitely had a home advantage in SB 56.
I’m going to echo many of the comments here: outdoors, on grass, and a mid to late afternoon local starting time. There are two exceptions though to the outdoors requirement: even though Las Vegas and Arizona play in domes, the grass surfaces still look good indoors. I’m not a fan of the domed stadiums with synthetic turf. I don’t know if it’s the turf, the lighting or a combination of the two, but it just doesn’t look the best on TV. It was even worse when the game was played on the old astroturf regardless if it was indoors or outdoors.
I agree with everyone on outdoor natural grass and having daylight. Which is why the Rose Bowl and Jack Murphy were the best. Besides the modern sterile domes of today, the most puzzling and worse stadium to host was Stanford Stadium for XIX.
Rice Stadium?
I too miss the Rose Bowl as host. A simple stadium design (football field inside of an oval, basically) and some tremendous views. I always thought it odd that Stanford Stadium hosted a Super Bowl. One of the worst was SB XVI at the Silverdome. Even though it was a dome the weather that day was miserable.
Rose Bowl/Outdoors. PIease. And for any games played on the West Coast, shift the kickoff a little earlier in order to get some sunlight in the first half.
I went to several of the NFL Experience events in Phoenix in 2023. They turned out well for me because I was able to go when the crowds were thinnest.
I actually went to the 1992 game in Minneapolis (Buff-Wash). The Metrodome was a horrible stadium so there was never going to be anything redeeming about it. My highlight was seeing the sea part as Muhammad Ali walked through the concourse. The chants were deafening. Still gives me chills.
As far as a Super Bowl stadium that was not good, Super Bowl IX at Tulane Stadium probably wins. The game was supposed to be at the brand-new Superdome, but it wasn’t ready for the game. The Steelers made a video this year celebrating the 50-year milestone of that game, and all the players complained that Tulane Stadium was in bad shape.
I loved watching games at Jack Murphy Stadium and love the Super Bowl highlights from there. I wish one more Super Bowl could have been played there. I also would love to see one more held at the Rose Bowl, but understand that so much money and energy was spent building SoFi that will never happen again. How about a Chargers and Rams hosting championship games the same day and one would have to be moved to Pasadena? Wouldn’t you want to go as a casual fan to see the NFL back in the Rose Bowl?
I was in Detroit for Super Bowl XL, and they did a pretty decent job putting that game on. I think they should get another one in the next ten years.
Like I said above, I think the Super Bowl should be played in cold weather stadiums too. I love snow games and would love to have some fan base forever bitter because they didn’t prepare for the weather.