The “Ice Bowl.” The “Mud Bowl.” The “Tuck Rule Game” (AKA “The Snow Bowl). Many of the NFL’s greatest games have been played in inclement weather. If there was ever any reason the NFL decided its title game should be played in a warm weather city like Tampa and San Diego, or on an indoor field like Detroit’s Ford Field, we could never figure it out.
This season, the NFL was given one more reason to re-think the policy. That reason sits on a few dozen acres of land a brief drive across the Hudson River from Manhattan in East Rutherford, N.J. It’s the $1.6 billion New Meadowlands Stadium, an 82,500-seat venue shared by the New York Giants and Jets that broke ground in 2007 and will open its gates for the first time this fall.
In what might be a one-time exemption to the NFL’s long held “50-degree rule,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced Tuesday that New Meadowlands Stadium will be the first cold weather outdoor stadium to host a Super Bowl when the Big Game comes to the Big Apple in 2014.
It’s likely to be the biggest Super Bowl ever staged. In the New Meadowlands’ pitch to the NFL, planners promised to host a party under the Statue of Liberty and link the game to Fashion Week and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. According to The New York Times, organizers pledged to offer hand-warmers and fire pits in the parking lots, and a fleet of snowplows will be on stand-by in case the weather turns nasty, which perhaps not surprisingly, many hope to happen.
“I like doing things for the first time … I hope it snows,” Jest owner Woody Johnson said, according to ESPN.
Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, hopes for freezing rain. “I’ll bet if it happens, it will be one of the most memorable games in the history of all Super Bowls,” he told the Times.
He stopped short of promising freezing rain at a future Super Bowl in Foxboro, Mass.
Photo by babyknight via Flickr.