The locations for the next two Super Bowls have been set (New York next year and then Arizona). The finalists for the two after that have been determined (San Francisco versus Miami for Super Bowl L and the loser versus Houston for Super Bowl LI).
That leaves Super Bowl LII as the next NFL title game that is generally in play. (In English, that’s Super Bowl 52. And since I am the same age as the Super Bowl, I soon plan to refer to my age exclusively in Roman numerals.) For the game to be played in early 2018, the folks in Indiana plan to throw their hat with the ear flaps into the ring.
But Allison Melangton, the president of Indiana Sports Corp., said Tuesday that in touting the success of Super Bowl XLVI, Indy won’t point out the two slices of moldy bread surrounding the choice sandwich meat that Indy served up a year ago. Super Bowl XLV in Dallas featured an ice storm with a response strategy that consisted of hiding under the bed and waiting for everything to melt, along with a game-day seating debacle that still hasn’t been resolved in the courts. The most recent Super Bowl in New Orleans included a 34-minute power outage.
“That’s not been our style,” Melangton said of the possibility of pointing to the failures of other Super Bowls, via the Associated Press. “Typically, when we’ve been bidding on all our events, we’ve pointed out why they should come to Indy and not why they should not go somewhere else, and it’s worked for us. So why change now?”
There’s another reason not to change, in this specific situation. The NFL simply doesn’t care about the glitches that occurred in Dallas or New Orleans, or that may be looming for the first open-air NFL game to be played in the month of February in a Northern climate.
The league isn’t in the business of excluding Super Bowl host cities. Instead, the NFL wants to maximize the potential locations for the game. More cities in the mix will lead to more potential bids. More potential bids will lead to more competition to win the bidding. More competition will lead to more money for the NFL.
As long as the NFL gets paid, perfection in the execution becomes an afterthought. Especially since the periodic problems tend to result in even more attention being paid to America’s ultimate reality show.