Just Play it here, Forget the Weather

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Don't worry about the weather, if Jets and Giants win Super Bowl bid, New York will be big winners

Mike Lupica

Monday, May 24th 2010, 4:00 AM

Bonifacio/News

The new stadium in the Meadowlands, home to the New York Giants and Jets, will find out Tuesday afternoon if the 2014 Super Bowl will be played there.

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The big-city legend is that Tim Mara spent $500 in 1925 to start up the New York Football Giants as he called them, instead of investing money in Gene Tunney. Mara was a promoter and legal bookmaker and had a head full of ideas, but this one was about pro football in New York.

Mara said at the time, one more part of the legend, that "an exclusive franchise for anything is worth $500 in New York."

The Giants play their games in Jersey now, not the Polo Grounds or the old Yankee Stadium. They partner in a new stadium with the Jets. All this time after Mara decided pro football could be a big game in New York, we find out Tuesday if the biggest game - the Super Bowl - comes here in 2014.

The game would be played in Jersey. The rest of the action of the week leading up to the game would be in New York. If the Giants and Jets win this bid, the city wins. They would finally stop playing the biggest game there is out of town.

"On a personal level," John Mara said over the weekend, "there would be something very special about playing a game of this magnitude in this area, nearly 90 years after we started playing games in the Polo Grounds."

The Tisch family owns half of the Giants. But on the Mara side, this is still as great a story of a family business as we have in sports in this country. John Mara is Tim Mara's grandson, Wellington Mara's son. His father and grandfather were there to see the Giants' first home game, October of '25, against a team called the Frankford Yellow Jackets.

That year, the biggest game for the Giants, the one that felt like a Super Bowl and saved pro football in New York, was Red Grange coming to town and 70,000 going to the Polo Grounds to watch him, on a day when another 20,000 were turned away.

"My father," John Mara said, "used to go to school with pockets full of tickets to hand out so they could get some bodies in the stands. The game has come a long way since then, obviously. Now [the Super Bowl] is the most-anticipated sporting event of the year in this country. Let's play it on the biggest stage in the world."

Biggest game, biggest stage. Jersey has been a partner to the Giants for a long time, but John Mara isn't talking about East Rutherford.

People worry about the weather for a Super Bowl Sunday here. Giants and Jets fans laugh at that; weather never stops them. If people from out of town are worried about the elements, they can sit in an empty stadium and wait for the game to go back to Florida.

The Super Bowl coming here is no sure thing. Mara knows that. So does Woody Johnson of the Jets. They are up against Tampa and Miami, warm-weather places where the game has been played before. But if the NFL is finally going to play a cold-weather Super Bowl outdoors, it has to be here.

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"It would create a tremendous level of excitement for New York and New Jersey, especially in difficult economic times," said John Mara.

Giants and Jets fans already know about difficult economic times, having to throw their own money at this new stadium to get the thing built, in the form of professional seat licenses. A Super Bowl coming here four years from now doesn't help them very much.

But this would still be such good news at a time when we can use some. So many good reasons, particularly on the New York side of the Hudson. We see the parade of bindle stiffs New York keeps sending to Albany, the ones who are supposed to look out for the city and turn out to be grubby hustlers only looking out for themselves. We hear about budget cuts to the most crucial services in town, the threat of more to come.

So much bad news over the last couple of years, from Wall Street to a car full of bombs in Times Square.

Does one football game, across the river in the place another great promoter, Sonny Werblin, used to call 13th Ave., change that? Sports never does. It would just bring a lot of excitement into town and new money, maybe as much as half-a-billion dollars. It would be another way of announcing that New York is still here.

We've owned the World Series, hosted heavyweight championship fights, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup, the Triple Crown. Now let's see how the Super Bowl plays.

Biggest game, biggest stage. Let everybody else worry about the weather. Like that has ever stopped anybody here. Like anything can.

[Thai Jet]

Today's the day !! We're keeping our fingers crossed .

[Bob]

The NFL would be crazy to put that game in Jersey. So much of the Super Bowl event revolves around the stuff that goes with the game. It's like a vacation for thousands of people and a big corporate entertainment event. Who takes February vacations to NY/NJ?

I'll be watching on TV regardless of where it is, so it makes no difference to me.

[#27TheDominator]

The NFL would be crazy to put that game in Jersey. So much of the Super Bowl event revolves around the stuff that goes with the game. It's like a vacation for thousands of people and a big corporate entertainment event. Who takes February vacations to NY/NJ?

I'll be watching on TV regardless of where it is, so it makes no difference to me.

This argument sounds silly to me. First of all, who takes a vacation to Detroit, ever? It