Thread: Super Bowl: Why not in Chicago?

Super Bowl: Why not in Chicago?

Adjustments necessary, but we could make it work

David Haugh In the Wake of the News January 30, 2011


As I pack layers for a chilly week covering Super Bowl XLV in North Texas and leave the shorts and sandals at home this year, one thought comes to mind: Bolo tie or no bolo tie?

Not really. I immediately think it could be worse. I could be packing boots, and not the cowboy kind — though that might be just as unsettling. I could be spending a week covering the big game in the New York area, which just added 19 inches to its record month of snowfall.

New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., will welcome the Super Bowl in 2014. Indianapolis and its Midwestern climes host the event next year. Even bloody London has been rumored as a potential Super Bowl venue.

You know where I'm going with this, and it isn't Kansas City or Foxboro, Mass. — other football towns curious about hosting a Super Bowl since the New York decision opened the door a crack to all cities.

Why not Chicago?

We missed out on the 2016 Olympics, but there's no reason the masses here can't enjoy an equally compelling sporting event with international appeal this decade. Chicago's next mayor immediately would have a project worth pushing that would please voters and potentially pump a half-billion dollars into the local economy. The league and the NFL owners who vote on such things easily could sell the idea of awarding the event to the NFL's second-largest market that's the home of a charter franchise.

Anybody who rides the "L'' can come up with reasons it wouldn't work in Chicago: winter weather, Soldier Field currently is 8,500 seats shy of the 70,000-seat minimum the league requires for Super Bowl stadiums, traffic, Oprah's exit, etc. On the other hand, imagine how satisfying it would be for whoever develops creative solutions to problems standing between Chicago and the marquee sporting event it deserves.

Soldier Field's size looms as the trickiest potential impediment. With owners making an exception because of Chicago's market strength a pipe dream, the question comes down to how feasible it would be to add nearly 10,000 seats to the NFL's smallest stadium.

Depends who you ask, because even two of the main architects involved in the 2003 renovation of Soldier Field differ.

"If you do it, and structural work has to be done on the north side to add those seats, that's a major expense and that wouldn't be temporary so you wouldn't do that for one game and rip it out again,'' said Dirk Lohan, a noted Chicago architect. "If there had been an easy way to do it, it would have been done because the Bears had that interest too. But the bowl was completed to bring everybody as close to the field as possible.''

Yet Carlos Zapata, the Boston architect who co-designed the "new'' Soldier Field with Lohan, sounded more optimistic. It's worth remembering that Zapata heard from peers that Soldier Field couldn't be renovated as a modern NFL stadium before he and Lohan did just that.

"If this were the case, the capacity of Soldier Field could be temporarily increased to meet the NFL standards (for one game),'' Zapata answered in an e-mail.

Another architect who was heavily involved in the design asked not to be named but said: "Personally, I would never rule out a Super Bowl in Chicago.''

Structural issues aside, Step 1 of any stadium changes should involve replacing Soldier Field's natural grass with a safe, synthetic playing surface. Step 2 would be ensuring the NFL remains open to the concept of a cold-weather city and stadium. Since awarding Super Bowl XLVIII to New York in May, I have yet to hear the league isn't.

"New York-New Jersey was viewed as unique because it's a two-team market and stadium and it's New York,'' NFL vice president of public relations Greg Aiello said in an e-mail. "(But) there has been no determination made about Super Bowls in other northern cities.''

When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell broached the Super Bowl topic with reporters earlier this month in Kansas City, Goodell proceeded cautiously with a response that, unintentionally, probably encouraged more Midwesterners in Chicago.

"We want to see what the experience (in New York) is,'' Goodell said. "But the issue is having the infrastructure to host these games … 26,000 hotel rooms … the ability to move people who come in for these games."

That's where Chicago's size and a convention center ideal for such a happening such as McCormick Place become appealing.

The city's weather question remains unanswerable. As Goodell hinted, the league may not be receptive to a Chicago bid until after seeing how New York fares. But remember if the schedule expands to 18 games, the Super Bowl might not be played until mid-February when the average Chicago temperature is tolerable in the upper 30s.

As for the Bears, the organization "would be open to the idea,'' according to team spokesman Scott Hagel, but recognizes the unknowns surrounding the seating question and weather issues.

I get everybody's cautiousness.

I understand all the reasons a Super Bowl can't come to Chicago.

But I dare somebody in The City That Works to find a way it can.