Is Pittsburgh big enough to host a Super Bowl? Steelers President Art Rooney II thinks so.
After New Jersey managed an outdoor Super Bowl, other cold-weather cities with open-air stadiums say it’s their turn, too. And that includes Pittsburgh, where Rooney says the city would thrive as a host.
“I think it would be great for our city,” Rooney told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “This, in some people’s mind, is the birthplace of professional football. We certainly have a great tradition of being a football kind of town. I think it would be a great thing for us to do at some point.”
The big question facing Pittsburgh is whether it has enough hotels for all the out-of-town visitors. The NFL says the Super Bowl host city needs to have at least 30,000 hotel rooms, and you can only fit 30,000 visitors in hotels in Pittsburgh if you’re putting some people up to 90 minutes away in Ohio and West Virginia. Another option would be bringing in cruise ships and housing some of the Super Bowl visitors on the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers.
Those obstacles make Pittsburgh a long shot to host a Super Bowl, but the mayor says Pittsburgh will explore the idea of making a bid. As will, it seems, almost every NFL city, now that the NFL has hosted one outdoor Super Bowl in a cold climate.