NFL owners will be gathering in Boston this week for a meeting that has one primary item on the agenda: Awarding two Super Bowls.
First, it’s Miami versus San Francisco for Super Bowl L. Then, the loser takes on Houston for Super Bowl LI. The votes will happen on Tuesday.
Via Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury News, supporters of the South Florida Super Bowl raised $36.5 million to support their bid, which is more than twice the amount previously believed and $6.5 million more than Bay Area supporters raised.
For the powers-that-be in San Francisco (yes, we know the stadium is in Santa Clara), the broader goal has becomes cracking the Super Bowl rotation, which would put games periodically in the new venue instead of making a title game a one-shot, quid pro quo for building it.
“Owners remember successful Super Bowls,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told Rosenberg.
The bar will be higher for Super Bowl L. “It’s a bigger deal,” NFL senior V.P. for events Frank Supovitz told Rosenberg. “Super Bowl L has to be above and beyond even that curve of improvement.”
That could make it even harder for Miami to win Super Bowl L, given the failure of an effort to secure public funds to upgrade Sun Life Stadium. After hinging future Super Bowls to renovations at the place where the game is played, the not-so-subtle threat will come off as hollow, especially if Miami gets the 50th edition of America’s premier sporting event.
Miami could still finagle Super Bowl LI. At times, the game is as much about the events preceding it as the game itself, and South Florida remains an ideal location for the seven days of events that come before kickoff.