Cold-Weather Advantage

Most of the recent Super Bowls have had pretty solid weather. The one I remember with rough weather was Super Bowl XLI when the Colts beat the Bears. Super Bowl XLVIII may end up as bad as and if not worse than the 2007 championship in Miami. Today, the owners voted for the 2014 Super Bowl to be played at the new Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey. The new stadium will be the home for the Jets and Giants during the 2010-2011 season. This will be interesting because it's the first Super Bowl in an cold-weather, open stadium.

Now this has it's positives and negatives. While the New York area is possibly the largest sports market, I feel that there is more bad than good. When you think about it, this could be a very unfair advantage. The point of having the Super Bowl on a neutral site is so that playing conditions are neutral. Putting the game at a cold weather site gives more of a disadvantage to a team that plays in warm weather than a warm weather game would give a team that plays in cold weather. For example, let's just say Super Bowl XLI was played in New York. The Bears are used to playing in brutally cold conditions, while the Colts play at least half of their games each year inside. If that game had been played at the Meadowlands, we may have seen a different outcome.

With that aside, it would be a great idea to have the Super Bowl in the Big Apple, but it's not. The New York Giants and New York Jets should be called the New Jersey Giants and Jets because they don't play in New York. There's nothing special about New Jersey, making this Super Bowl nothing out of the ordinary besides the fact that it's going to most likely be in the 30s and may snow. We'll see what happens in four years, but I just have a feeling it is going to be somewhat of a disappointment compared to what people are expecting.