NY bids for Super Bowl
Published 2:19 am Thursday, May 13, 2010
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Blankets, seat-warmers and earmuffs could compete with hats and T-shirts as must-have Super Bowl souvenirs if the owners of the New York area’s two NFL teams woo football’s ultimate game to the region in 2014.
“We’ll be lucky if it snows,” Jets owner Woody Johnson quipped Wednesday at a news conference marking the official signing of the bid package that will be delivered to the league’s other 30 owners.
The theme of the new Meadowlands Stadium’s bid is “Make Some History,” and if the stadium is awarded the game, it will be the first Super Bowl to be played outdoors in a cold-weather locale. Miami and Tampa, which have hosted 14 Super Bowls between them, also are submitting bids. The owners will pick the Super Bowl site at the NFL meetings in Dallas on May 25.
Johnson, stadium chief executive Mark Lamping and New York Giants co-owners Steve Tisch and John Mara extolled the advantages of playing the game in the New York area, but they also acknowledged they will have to get other owners to revise their vision of the Super Bowl as a game that can only be played in bikini weather or in a climate-controlled dome.