Weather Smeather

There has been a lot of talk that Tampa won the 2009 Super Bowl because it has superior weather to Atlanta. While that is true, it is not the primary reason the bay area won the right to host the 2009 Super Bowl. The primary reason is the Glazers and the Tampa Bay Super Bowl committee where able to put together a package that trumped every other city's Super Bowl package.

If the owners could be scared off by bad weather then they wouldn't have agreed to hold the Super Bowl next year in Detroit, and they wouldn't have conditionally agreed to hold the 2010 in New York. The following is a list of average temperatures (in Farenheit) in February.

------------------ AVERAGE HIGH --------- AVERAGE LOW

DETROIT .............. 36 ............................... 22

NEW YORK ........... 42 ............................... 29

ATLANTA ............. 57 ................................ 37

TAMPA ................. 72 ................................ 54

To be honest when I was first making this list I expected Atlanta to be much closer to Tampa, than it was to New York. Instead it's right in between New York and Tampa. All the same, Atlanta is an indoor stadium, and Falcons owner Arthur Blank has proposed building a giant indoor atrium at the main entrance of the Georgia Dome.

Essentially, the Super Bowl experience would be insulated from the potentially harsh weather which could hit Atlanta in February. Additionally the freak ice storm that hit Atlanta in 2000 (the last time the city hosted a Super Bowl), was just that, a freak storm. The average low in Atlanta is above freezing (which is 32).

If weather did play a factor in Tampa's Super Bowl bid, it would have more to do with the owners desire to play golf than the conditions affecting the game. As I have mentioned before each owner was given an Arnold Palmer signature putter (which according to PGA.com is worth $119 for each putter) and each team was allowed its own golf tournament.

And finally, the Tampa Bay Super Bowl committee offerred $1 million in game day expenses which exceded any other teams offer. And Bryan Glazer gave an effective presentation to the other owners, which convinced many to vote for Tampa. The Tampa Bay Super Bowl committee and the Glazers are the ones who deserve the credit for bringing the Super Bowl to Tampa Bay. They where able to put together a package that, before the decision on Wednesday, was not regarded as the favorite. But in the end they pulled through with a victory for the bay area.