Immediately after word broke that the new L.A. stadium will have its opening delayed by a year, the leak/spin cycle began to sell the idea that the NFL could waive its rule requiring a stadium to be open for two years before hosting a Super Bowl. As the leak/spin cycle continues, an important point is being lost in the shuffle: The folks in L.A. should want to delay the stadium’s first Super Bowl by a year.
The reason for the rule (which the leak/spin cycle most recently described to Peter King of TheMMQB.com as an “unofficial policy,” which makes it even easier to disregard) is obvious. The NFL wants to be sure that all kinks have been worked out of a new stadium before it hosts the NFL’s premiere annual 100-million-plus-viewer event.
As King notes, the leak/spin cycle points to the fact that, with the Chargers and Rams sharing the venue, it will have hosted as many NFL games as the new stadiums in Minnesota and Atlanta will host before staging a Super Bowl. The counter to that, however, is that an already hectic and stressful year, with 20 preseason and regular season games in five months, should not be made even more hectic and stressful via the extra work and effort and time and money and everything else spent in order to host a Super Bowl.
Security concerns remain paramount at the Super Bowl. From design to construction to operation of the stadium, new challenges will emerge regarding the process of letting the right people in and keeping the wrong people out. Last year in Minnesota, at the end of the first year of the new stadium’s life cycle, mischief-makers were able to make mischief with equipment they never should have been able to sneak through the doors.
While similar issues problems have happened at older stadiums (like the one in Charlotte), deviating from a rule/unofficial policy/whatever invites a big, fat I-told-you-so if anything happens that shouldn’t during Super Bowl LV.
Then there’s the possibility of further construction delays. Already behind by a full year, what if more unanticipated delays emerge? It would make much more sense to push the Super Bowl back by a year now in order to avoid having to scramble at a time when it may be much harder to reserve thousands of hotel rooms and the various large halls and other spaces needed to pull off the full Super Bowl experience.
For those reasons, the folks building the L.A. stadium shouldn’t be trying to keep their current Super Bowl in place; they should be clamoring to get it delayed. As King notes, the new venue will host multiple Super Bowls. Whether the first one happens to cap the 2020 or 2021 season shouldn’t matter.