Minnesota Awarded Super Bowl, Pittsburgh next?

[SteelerAl]

You guys have to get it through your head that Pitt can't handle the Super Bowl. They do not have the hotel rooms needed for the Super Bowl among many other things. Pittsburgh will not get it the league learned from Jacksonville that the small cities are disasters for the superbowl

This is completely false. The Super Bowl in Indianapolis was widely praised and Indy has nothing on Pittsburgh.

http://triblive.com/sports/dejankov...423848-74/bowl-super-pittsburgh#axzz32SEof5OV

 

[Vader]

The only issue in Pittsburgh is the traffic. I've been to Indianapolis and Pittsburgh and there is no comparison on easy to move around. Indianapolis is huge at 375 square miles. Lucas Oil Stadium is well located and doesn't have 3 Rivers pinning it into a small triangle.

However, Pittsburgh should still get the SB if they are allowing Minnesota and NY to have it. Of course by that time the Steelers would have moved away from power football and transitioned all the way with smaller, faster players.

 

[steel pirate]

There's no beltway circling the city. Lack of hotel rooms. The Trib article said there's only 24,000 rooms in the whole county while the city of New Orleans nearly sold out 50,000.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

This:

There's no beltway circling the city. Lack of hotel rooms. The Trib article said there's only 24,000 rooms in the whole county while the city of New Orleans nearly sold out 50,000.

The only issue in Pittsburgh is the traffic. I've been to Indianapolis and Pittsburgh and there is no comparison on easy to move around. Indianapolis is huge at 375 square miles. Lucas Oil Stadium is well located and doesn't have 3 Rivers pinning it into a small triangle.

Indy (been there twice) and most or all of your Sunbelt cities are flat. Traffic is on a grid and beltway system which is impossible to do in Pittsburgh because of the terrain.
Granted the stadium sells out every Sunday anyway and there won't be many more people in it for a Super Bowl but virtually everyone will be an away fan and need places to stay, eat, and drink. Like I said, I work part-time in ground transport at the airport and over the weekend we had 3000 people come in for a quilting convention at the DLCC (I kid you not) and it was busy as hell.

 

[Xc944]

This is completely false. The Super Bowl in Indianapolis was widely praised and Indy has nothing on Pittsburgh.

http://triblive.com/sports/dejankov...423848-74/bowl-super-pittsburgh#axzz32SEof5OV

It's 100% fact. Indy has large conventions and is geared to having a large amount of people coming into town. Once again you guys can cry all you want Pittsburgh will never get it and it would be a absolute disaster if they did

 

[tapeANaspirin2it]

Indeed, the media loves to ride a story way out of proportion. They'll see the Patriots' past success and turn Wes Welker and Tedy Bruschi into NFL legends. The gap isn't monumental, but it's pretty wide. Any objective observer sees the talent gap between the southern and northern schools. NFL scouts see it, too, in overwhelming fashion. That doesn't mean they'll be undefeated when they play, though they do usually win. Alabama was a far more talented team than Oklahoma, but talent doesn't always win a one-off bowl game. Was Utah more talented than Alabama in 2008? Boise State more talented than Oklahoma?



I hate to take the media's side, but they base that on the obvious talent disparity and most recent history. The top Big Ten team usually cruises through an 11-1 season with signature wins over Penn State and Nebraska. Oregon/Stanford usually cruises to 11-1 by holding off UCLA. That just doesn't compare to a team like last year's Alabama, whose only regular-season loss came to unbeaten Auburn. The situation I just described happens pretty much every year, and it's sometimes even more pronounced. You want to compare Big Ten #1 to SEC #1 and there's rarely any comparison at all. Most years, a 10-2 LSU team is more talented and has a more impressive resume than 11-1 Ohio State, so why wouldn't they get the benefit of the doubt for something like one-point losses to Alabama and South Carolina?

That's what drives me crazy. The conference stuff is nonsense. It's just a marketing pitch. You never heard people talk about conference strength until about 10 years ago. Now it wags the dog.

The argument about resume is contrived. Of course SEC teams have the better resume. If you start with 4 SEC teams top 10 in the preseason then it's nearly written in stone you will have a bunch of highly ranked SEC teams. Because they don't drop in the polls when they lose.

You'll end up with a team with 3 losses and they'll still be ranked high because everyone will say their only losses were to #2, #5 and #8. Yeah, that sounds great and then you look and notice they lost to the only 3 good teams they played, so how good are they really?

Florida started ranked 10 last year and they were garbage. But the SEC teams who played them

I think Ohio State would have beaten Alabama last year. It was not a great Bama squad. Ohio State had more talent and would be a matchup headache for Bama. Ohio State had a good pass rush and we saw Bama's pass protection issues vs Oklahoma. Braxton Miller is the type QB that Bama struggles against. Nick Marshall tore them up and Miller is a better player with better weapons.

So you're saying i should not take any of that into account when deciding who is better. Instead of picking the team i think would win a head to head matchup, instead of looking at individual matchups like Bama not being able to block Spence and Bosa, i should look at Bama beating Texas A&M in week 2?

This auto voting drives me crazy.

The good part is i see the playoff expanding quickly. There are 5 major conferences and 4 playoff spots. Right off the bat, 1 conference Champ is not invited. If the SEC gets 2, that means 2 conferences are shut out. People will scream. If the SEC only gets 1, SEC fans will scream.

 

[Vader]

Not sure how you get that Tape. The Big 10 was 2-5 in bowl games last year. The SEC was 7-3. What conference do you want to put in the top 10 to throw these SEC bums out? It isn't like the SEC has won a lot of national titles or wins a lot of bowl games or anything.

 

[Idioteque]

That's what drives me crazy. The conference stuff is nonsense. It's just a marketing pitch. You never heard people talk about conference strength until about 10 years ago. Now it wags the dog.

A lot of that has to do with the seven straight national titles and 80-53 bowl record by one conference.

The argument about resume is contrived. Of course SEC teams have the better resume. If you start with 4 SEC teams top 10 in the preseason then it's nearly written in stone you will have a bunch of highly ranked SEC teams. Because they don't drop in the polls when they lose.

Sure they do. They just don't drop as far as you'd like. The top-15 at midseason is often flooded with decent teams who are 8-0 or 7-1 against bad schedules. If #3 South Carolina loses to a great Auburn team and "falls" to 7-1, they should probably stay ranked ahead of 8-0 Louisville or UCF or Iowa, whose signature win is probably knocking off Minnesota in Week 3. You keep bowing at the altar of W-L record, ignoring the competition level. Either that or you're strangely considering the SEC's top teams to be even with the dregs of Louisville's schedule.

You'll end up with a team with 3 losses and they'll still be ranked high because everyone will say their only losses were to #2, #5 and #8. Yeah, that sounds great and then you look and notice they lost to the only 3 good teams they played, so how good are they really?

That's a gross exaggeration. No three-loss team stays ranked highly without some signature wins. I know you think the top SEC teams are ho-hum, but any objective observer knows that a 9-3 LSU team that beat Auburn, TCU, Florida, and Texas A&M deserves some leeway when they lose to Alabama at the end of the season.

I think Ohio State would have beaten Alabama last year. It was not a great Bama squad. Ohio State had more talent and would be a matchup headache for Bama. Ohio State had a good pass rush and we saw Bama's pass protection issues vs Oklahoma. Braxton Miller is the type QB that Bama struggles against. Nick Marshall tore them up and Miller is a better player with better weapons.

OK, that's fair. A "not great" Bama squad with "issues" may have indeed been on a par with Ohio State (sounds like a ringing endorsement). But why are we only matching up those two teams? Bama may have struggled v. Ohio State, but superior to most of the top-15. Ohio State may have beaten Bama, but not FSU or Auburn or Oregon or Stanford or Missouri. You're focusing on the individual matchup of one team v. another, but how do you rank them that way?

So you're saying i should not take any of that into account when deciding who is better. Instead of picking the team i think would win a head to head matchup, instead of looking at individual matchups like Bama not being able to block Spence and Bosa, i should look at Bama beating Texas A&M in week 2?

Yes, because it's impossible to create a top-25 by pitting each team into a hypothetical matchup with each other team. Resume is necessary to get some kind of picture of a team's success. Bama beating A&M, crushing VaTech, LSU, and Ole Miss, and losing only on a last-second FG return to Auburn.. that's a better indicator of quality than anything the Big Ten put forth.

I know you think beating Northwestern and Penn State is equal to beating Auburn and LSU, but that ain't the case.

The good part is i see the playoff expanding quickly. There are 5 major conferences and 4 playoff spots. Right off the bat, 1 conference Champ is not invited. If the SEC gets 2, that means 2 conferences are shut out. People will scream. If the SEC only gets 1, SEC fans will scream.

People will scream if there's a 128-team playoff. Why didn't Buffalo get in over North Texas?!?! If the best the Big Ten can put into the mix is 10-2 Michigan State, then most will be fine with 9-3 LSU getting their spot. Again, not all W-L records are the same. UCF and Louisville were clearly inferior to South Carolina and Missouri.

 

[Super Dave]

Amen. this is all I really mean in terms of Super Bowl sites. Simply that I would likely not go. I went to Tampa, actually went to the game. It was a great overall experience, and a lot of that
had to do with decent weather and a lot of the events over the weekend taking place outside, including just closing off the main drag in Ybor City. Whether intended or not, it felt like a reward to the fans and like a vacation. I'll watch any Steelers Super Bowl on TV - like I did the one in Detroit or Dallas, and don't necessarily care about the location from the confines of my couch. But it takes a city that qualifies as a vacation spot (read: not Detroit or Minnesota, in February) to lure me there. Too much freaking money, too little vacation time...

Yep.......

I also believe that the quality of the game suffers in extremely frigid environments. The AFC Championships against the Pats and the Jets were extremely cold, when I got back to my room after the Jets game it was like taking off a suit of frozen body armor, a member of my crew got **** faced drunk and got lost after the game. If he would of passed out he would have been in deep ****.

Minnesota is dangerous cold, the only reason they got this bowl is a pay off from the league for using public funds to build a new stadium.

I was at a Vikings Lions game on a Thursday night once at the Metrodome. Sat next to this guy who loved the MetroDome, said that old Metropolitan Stadium was a piece of crap and that the further it got into winter the less people showed up. Most people got **** faced drunk to deal with the cold, and now there are more and more night games making the situation worse.

Old school NFL games played on the frozen tundra are highly overrated, especially for the poor sap sitting in the stands.