Mayo makes a good case that the league needs South Florida more than it needs the SB and that local taxpayers are the ones who'll get soaked because some fat cats attending last February got drenched. I don't disagree
excerpted from:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/...ium-mayocol-b011010-20100109,0,6955773.column
Just say no to NFL Super extortion
Pricey stadium upgrades a luxury public can't afford Michael Mayo
News Columnist
8:08 PM EST, January 9, 2010
excerpted from:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/...ium-mayocol-b011010-20100109,0,6955773.column
Just say no to NFL Super extortion
Pricey stadium upgrades a luxury public can't afford Michael Mayo
News Columnist
8:08 PM EST, January 9, 2010
My first reaction to those gawd-awful sketches of the NFL's dream Dolphin Stadium: Is that a really bad miniature-golf hole or a square bagel with toothpicks?
My next reaction: They can't be serious.
This whole notion of spending a lot of money to keep the fat cats who organize and attend Super Bowls happy and dry is wrong on so many levels.
And if anyone thinks the upgrades to the private Dolphin-Land-Shark-Joe-Robbie-Whatever-They're-Calling-It-This-Week Stadium should come from public funds, that's borderline obscene.
"I dare anyone to find a public source of funding that's available to do this," said Broward tourism czar Nicki Grossman. "And believe me, I'm someone who lusts after Super Bowls."
Like me, Grossman doesn't buy the vague threats that the NFL won't return after next month's Super Bowl without the stadium improvements.
"There are a lot of new stadiums that want to be in the rotation, but nobody is better equipped to handle a Super Bowl than South Florida," Grossman said. "Our amenities are incredible, our hotels are incredible. We know how to do this."
After next month's edition, South Florida will have hosted nearly a quarter of the Super Bowls played — 10 of 44. Does anyone really believe the NFL will abandon the sun and fun if someone doesn't cover the seats?
I'm inclined to call the league's bluff.
If we were dropped from the Super rotation, I bet the NFL and its patrons — there are few real fans in a Super Bowl crowd — would miss South Florida a lot more than South Florida would miss them. Go ahead. Make our day. If the league would rather play its premier event in a partly covered stadium in Dallas, a fully covered stadium in Indianapolis or a frigid new palace in New Jersey, then it should take a hut-hut-hike.
"I don't think you could qualify our stadium as tired," Grossman said about the 23-year-old Dolphin Stadium, which started $250 million in refurbishments before the 2007 Super Bowl.
This crazy drumbeat began last month, when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that the stadium would need improvements in order to compete for future Super Bowls.
It continued last week, with Dolphins officials showing off some artist renderings of a partly roofed stadium and local Super Bowl host committee officials floating the public-funding trial balloon. Nobody wants to talk about the price tag, but it will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"If there's no will to do this, then at least we'll know where we stand," said host committee chairman Rodney Barreto. "Let's take it to the public, let's start the debate."
Uh, let's not and say we did.
But if we must debate, start and end with this: After a week in which Miami's cash-strapped public Jackson Memorial Hospital was forced to cut dialysis treatment for needy patients, how do you keep a straight face saying the comfort of Super Bowl fans is a bigger community priority? The Dolphins don't want to pay for the upgrades, saying they don't need them. And the league doesn't want to pay, not wanting to set any precedents or disrupt the extort-the-locals formula that's been working so well.
Guess that leaves us.
So hold onto your wallets. And brace yourself for an onslaught of self-serving studies on the Super Bowl's economic impact.
Norman Braman, the Miami car dealer who opposed the Marlins' public stadium financing, has heard it all before. He used to own the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles, and he headed the Super Bowl site selection committee for five years.
In the case of South Florida, he said the impact figures are vastly overstated.
"The hotels, at least in our county, in late January and early February are already at 90 to 95 percent occupancy," Braman told my colleague Sarah Talalay on Friday. "The increase that the Super Bowl provides is marginal.
"If it's here in July, that's different. Or in a city like Jacksonville. It probably has better economic impact in Tampa. I haven't heard the NFL tell Tampa, 'If you want a Super Bowl again, you have to have a roof.' This is all nonsense."
We can only hope this push gets flushed soon.