Line of Scrimmage: N.Y.C. Super Bowl detractors don't get it

Football Betting Lines

05/25/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - I'm someone who subscribes to the notion that you shouldn't live your life in fear.

Although fear-mongering has become a cottage industry in the U.S., especially among political commentators, I don't find it especially helpful to stare at the sky and wait for it to fall.

Don't get me wrong, it very well might fall. I'm just not egomaniacal enough to believe that I can do much about it.

So forgive me if I'm not lining up behind Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to bemoan the potential Armageddon that will come with Super Bowl XLVIII being held at the new Meadowlands NFL facility in February of 2014.

It seems that the normally pragmatic Bisciotti, one of the dissenting voices in the league's decision to move the game to an outdoor climate, is already calling for snow. Take notice, Al Roker and Old Farmer's Almanac, Bisciotti is saddling up the huskies for the veritable Iditarod to come.

"I'm not sold on it," Bisciotti told the New York Daily News of the plan. "The idea of cold weather certainly doesn't scare us. The idea of a two-foot snowstorm does. After what we've been through in Baltimore in the last three months, you really have to wonder if logistically it's possible the darn thing could get postponed. I don't think you could get people into the Meadowlands, 70,000 people into the Meadowlands, in a two-foot snowstorm in New York."

Look, as someone who was once stuck in a traffic jam on the West Side Highway at 3am (it's a long story), I can attest to the fact that getting 70,000 people anywhere in the New York Metropolitan Area is what could be called, for the sake of brevity and refinement, a cluster.

But it could be 60 degrees and sunny on Super Bowl Sunday 2014, and I'd still lay the odds at 6:5 that getting to that game is going to be an epic struggle. Give me one rube trying to back up out of the EZ-Pass lane at exit 16W, and I'll paint you a portrait of a potential Lord of the Flies-style scenario.

Snow shouldn't scare Bisciotti any more than unlicensed cabbies speeding stadiumgoers through the Lincoln Tunnel at the end of a 53-hour shift should.

In truth, as long as the TV trucks can get to the Meadowlands at some point during Super Bowl week 2014, everything's going to be fine. The only people complaining about New York as a Super Bowl site are the out-of-towners who will be there, and when you total up all the team, league, and game personnel, media, fans, and corporate types, it still equates to a tiny fraction of those who will actually be witnessing the game around the world.

That larger group only cares that the quality of game play won't be affected by the elements, and while there are certainly no guarantees, anyone lamenting this factor should be required to watch a tape of "The Ice Bowl" followed by one of the 49ers' 55-10 thrashing of the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV. Clearly, Denver was affected adversely by the elements in that game. Which was played in the Superdome.

Plenty of great contests are played in rough weather every season - some are great BECAUSE they are played in rough weather - and Super Bowl XLVIII will carry that same potential.

Those that have a problem with New York as a Super Bowl city from a social standpoint, well, I might argue that they've never actually been to New York City. Miami and New Orleans are great Super Bowl towns, but apart from those, if you can't have more fun in New York than in Tampa, San Diego, or Phoenix - temperature be damned - then you're not trying. There's really no need to bring up Detroit, Jacksonville, or Indianapolis in this discussion.

If you're into that sort of thing, the parties and celebrity events surrounding the Gotham Super Bowl figure to be better than you'd see almost anywhere else. In case you're not familiar with New York's reputation, this is a city that, in addition to never sleeping, knows how to party.

And as far as corporate orgies go, you could throw a Nathan's hot dog, Ken O'Brien-style, and hit about six actual corporate orgies on Wall Street on an average Wednesday afternoon. So sleep well America, the NFL will still be able to entertain its corporate sponsors on Super Bowl week, and probably a larger swathe of them too.

I understand, mind you, that it's late May, and in the absence of Super Bowl- winning quarterbacks molesting psych majors in bar restrooms (allegedly), and mock furor over 250-pound rookie linebackers who take banned substances in an otherwise squeaky-clean league (insert eye roll), people need something NFL- related to raise to the level of a substantial topic.

And when the subject relates to tinkering with an event that, for many people, quite literally trumps all religious holidays in terms of importance, that debate is bound to get feistier. Which allows the irrational naysayers in our society, those who have just made Steve Bisciotti their king, to be heard.

But the sky will not fall in February of 2014, Chicken Little. You'll just need to pack an extra sweater, and it's high time you stopped whining about it.