NFL

Miami: Time for an extreme makeover

By RICK STROUD
Published March 22, 2005

KAPALUA, Hawaii - The Super Bowl may get a super makeover.

The Miami Dolphins will propose to NFL owners today to rotate the league's title game every few years to one or two permanent sites, including the team's stadium in South Florida.

The concept includes constructing an entertainment complex that would host the pregame and halftime shows, as well as playing the Pro Bowl between the conference championships and Super Bowl.

"It really is an exciting vision of where the Super Bowl could go in the next 15 to 25 years if we had a permanent facility or two as part of a rotation that would also include other cities that didn't have such a facility," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Monday.

"A lot of it is thinking out of the box. It's very visionary, very interesting."

Dolphins Stadium - formerly Pro Player Stadium - will host Super Bowl XLI in 2007 and South Florida is competing against Tampa Bay, Atlanta and Houston for Super Bowl XLIII in 2009. The team is considering renovations to Dolphins Stadium, including the possibility of a retractable roof.

"All our feeling is that a Super Bowl in Miami makes a lot of sense and that's why they granted one in 2007," said Joe Bailey, the Dolphins chief executive officer. "Our thinking is what else can you do with the Super Bowl? That's all it is. Just a concept more than anything else.

"There just sort of seems to be a little bit of sentiment for it to be coming back into a rotation of some sort."

Such a plan could conceivably include Tampa Bay, which has a state-of-the-art facility in Raymond James Stadium and has hosted Super Bowl XVIII, XXV and XXXV.

"This has been discussed before. The problem is that it doesn't take into account certain places like Phoenix building a stadium, other people like New York building a stadium, so it's hard to get into that rotation," said Bucs executive vice president Bryan Glazer. "But I think there are favorite places the league likes to go, which are generally warm-weather sites. I think if you polled the fans and the business people that attend the games, they'd enjoy to go to certain places over and over. New Orleans, Miami, Tampa."

Owners will vote on the site of the 2009 Super Bowl at the league's meetings in late May. Dick Beard, the chairman of Tampa Bay's 2009 Super Bowl Task Force, said he'd need more information on the proposal before he could endorse it.

"There are people building new stadiums all over the country and it would depend on what they really mean by rotating (the Super Bowl)," Beard said. "The current system is competitive and it's difficult and you never know what's going to happen."

No vote on the Miami proposal will be taken at these meetings, but it's uncertain what, if any impact, it would have on South Florida's bid to host the 2009 game.

Tagliabue said the league would continue to reward cities that build new stadiums with Super Bowls, just as it has recently in Houston (2004), Detroit (2006) and Arizona (2008).

The only Super Bowl item on the agenda for this week's owners meetings is possibly to award the 2010 game to New York, contingent on the city building a retractable roof stadium for the Jets.

The Chiefs also have proposed the possibility of awarding the game to Kansas City "no sooner than 2012 and no later than 2022." That proposal also would be contingent on the city building a retractable-roof stadium.

"Inside the stadium would be sacred turf," Tagliabue said of the Dolphins proposal. "It would only be the game and none of the game-day entertainment would be inside the stadium.

"In those years when the Super Bowl was going to be in that facility, you might have a two-week celebration of football that could start off with some kind of youth football weekend. And that would bring a lot of kids and families to this complex to focus on football and play maybe some type of series of games. Then maybe the following week, you have the Pro Bowl in this facility the week before the Super Bowl."

As the Dolphins were attempting to beef up their effort for the 2009 game, Falcons owner Arthur Blank announced the team's plan to invest up to $150-million for enhancements in the state-owned Georgia Dome to help the city's proposal for the 2009 Super Bowl.

"Every city that hosts a Super Bowl, including Jacksonville, would like to be included in a permanent rotation," Blank said. "I don't know that, given the realities of today's game, that a permanent rotation is going to work right now. (Awarding Super Bowls to cities with new stadiums) is a factor. The ownership feels that's one of the ways to thank a community for its support."

Atlanta, which hosted the Super Bowl in 2000 that was marred by an ice storm the week of the game, is considered Tampa Bay's biggest competition. The improvements outlined by Blank include new stores, restaurants and themed entertainment. The Falcons also plan to increase the Georgia Dome's capacity of 71,250 by 500 to 2,000 seats.

"The window is very, very tight," Blank said. "Obviously, behind us there are bids for new stadiums in Houston, Detroit and Arizona and in front of us are bids essentially for L.A., for Dallas (2011) and for Kansas City (2012) and the Colts' arena being built. There's a whole bunch of stadiums (that) are going to be behind after 2009. Probably the next Atlanta Super Bowl bid will be beyond my lifetime. It's going to be difficult to submit (a successful bid) for a number of years.

"We want it a lot and we're working very hard on it."

[Last modified March 22, 2005, 01:22:12]