A Cold Day in Heaven

What better place for a Super Bowl than in "football weather?"

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An idyllic setting for a Super Bowl.

It goes without saying that the Super Bowl is the mountaintop. It's Everest. Tenzing Norgay has shepherded your team up the magnificent rock and, cheating death the whole way, they're suddenly, and historically, at its summit.

But, for some reason, it's warm.

Two of the most iconic games in NFL history were huge contests waged in bitter cold weather. There was the Ice Bowl, played in bitter cold Lambeau Field, and (programming alert!) The Greatest Game Ever Played, played in late December in Yankee Stadium. The point being: in both cases, the cold weather didn't take away from the experience. It served to make the game even more memorable. Those games were enhanced by "football weather", not the other way around.

So why don't we give our Super Bowls a chance?

Without exception, the Super Bowl has been hosted in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas or some ridiculous dome since I've been alive. The World Series is regularly decided in a colder venue than the Super Bowl, and in October no less. We could do more.

Teams with histories that define the NFL, histories that, in no small part, define American culture, will never see a Super Bowl in their stadiums: the Steelers, the Packers, the Bears, the Jets, the Chiefs, the Redskins and more recently, the Patriots. Under the current precepts, some of the U.S.'s greatest cities, most notably New York, Washington and Chicago, will never host. Our proclivity for "warmth" (metaphorically speaking, we've never felt warm in Jacksonville) and our incredible apathy have lulled us into thinking this is normal, that we shouldn't change this tradition.

The problem is two-fold:

1. In any given February, who's going to be more comfortable, more in their element in Jacksonville, Glendale, Tampa Bay or some other city I will hopefully never visit? The Dolphins or the Packers? The Bills or the Cowboys? (I think we already know that answer.) George Hamilton or Ernest Shackleton? Who's more comfortable in a dome scenario? The Rams or the Ravens? The Vikings or the Browns? This could go on and on, but there's no point. Playing the Super Bowl in America's domes and hot zones is some perverted marriage of advantageous and disadvantageous conditions for the minority of teams accustomed to them … and then the rest of the NFL, respectively.

2. How many of the 32 teams in the NFL actually play on fields and in temperatures that the Super Bowl Committee finds unacceptable? Well, considering the Super Bowl has only been played in 12 locations*, it appears to be a vast majority. It's an injustice that spits black phlegm in the face of the way this game should be played.

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Warm Super Bowls can still be sloppy.

The competing arguments are:

1. Super Bowl conditions should be ideal; no one wants to travel to a cold-weather locale in February (previously January).

2. The Super Bowl should be a destination.

But we counter with these:

1. Conditions are impossible to control unless you are playing in a dome (I've never heard anyone advocate a dome-only Super Bowl platform). Would you rather have cold weather or a slop-fest like the Colts and Bears played in Miami?

2. Real fans will follow their team into hell, let alone Chicago.

3. The Super Bowl remains a destination, or perhaps becomes an even more compelling destination when it's played in our greatest cities and grandest arenas, and in conditions that have surrounded so many of the greatest games.

4. Theoretically, Super Bowl weather seems as though it might be inversely proportional: if it rains at Dolphin Stadium, boo-hoo; if it snows at Arrowhead, hip hip hooray; if it's hailing at Lambeau we're collectively witnessing something quite unique.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? The Super Bowl is scheduled through 2012 and there's nary a forecast of even the slightest flurry.

But what ought to be can be, and no one can say it cannot. If we're today living in Post-Racial America perhaps we can one day live in a post-"warmth" and a post-"destination" National Football League.

*Since inception, the Super Bowl has only been hosted in South Florida (nine times), New Orleans (nine times), the greater Los Angeles area (seven times), Tampa Bay and San Diego (three times each), Houston, Detroit, Atlanta, and the Phoenix area (two times each), and the Bay Area, Minneapolis, and Jacksonville (once each).

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