February 2, 2014: Super Bowl XLVIII is held at MetLife Stadium, at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, Bergen County, New Jersey. It is not just the 1st time the NFL has held its championship game in the Garden State. It is the 1st the NFL Championship Game, under any name, has been played in the New York Tri-State Area in 51 years, since the 1962 season, when the Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants at the original Yankee Stadium.
More than that, it is the 1st time the NFL has placed the Super Bowl, intended to be at a neutral site, in a cold-weather city whose stadium does not have a dome, risking not just cold weather, but snow.
Traditionally, the Super Bowl is played in a warm-weather city. Of the 47 previous games, 10 were in the Miami area, 10 were in New Orleans, 7 were in the Los Angeles area, 5 in Tampa, 3 in San Diego, 2 in Houston, and 1 each in Jacksonville, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area.
And of the previous 47, 15 were under domes: 7 in New Orleans, 2 each in Atlanta and the Detroit area, and 1 each in Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas and Indianapolis.
Aside from the games in Detroit and Minneapolis, all under domes, the coldest Super Bowl had been Super Bowl VI, outdoors, at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, 3 years before the Superdome opened: 39 degrees. (The Dallas Cowboys beat the Miami Dolphins, 24-3.)
For years, the NFL debated whether to put a Super Bowl in a cold-weather city without a dome, risking another "Ice Bowl" like the 1967 NFL Championship Game at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 2005, the NFL voted to award New York the rights to host Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, dependent upon the planned West Side Stadium being finished by 2008. It would have had 75,000 seats and a retractable roof, and been home of MLB's New York Yankees and the NFL's New York Jets, and would have been the centerpiece of the 2012 Olympics.
But within a few months of this award, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 Olympics to London. The U.S. Olympic Committee announced that the U.S. city that would bid for the 2016 Olympics would be Chicago. Shortly after that, the New York State government withdrew funding for the stadium, giving a whole new meaning to the term "political football."
And so, for only the 2nd time -- the 1st was when the NFL took Super Bowl XXVII away from Phoenix, following Arizona's refusal to recognize the Martin Luther King Day holiday, giving them Super Bowl XXX after a reversal -- the NFL took a Super Bowl away from a metropolitan area.
The Yankees then began negotiations for a new Yankee Stadium across 161st Street from the existing one. The Jets and the New York Giants began negotiating for a new stadium, next-door to Giants Stadium, at the Meadowlands, 7 miles west of Midtown Manhattan. Unlike Giants Stadium, which was owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA), what became MetLife Stadium would be owned by the Giants and the Jets, 50/50.
No more would the NJSEA award favorable home dates to the Giants: The 2 teams would work together to decide who would host, and when. And no longer would taxpayer money fund the operations and maintenance of the stadium: Both teams' sets of fabulously wealthy owners would fund it out of their own bottomless pockets. The stadium opened on April 10, 2010. On May 26, 2010, 46 days later, the NFL awarded it Super Bowl XLVIII, to be held on February 2, 2014.
With 3 1/2 years of lag time, everyone wondered if it would be terribly cold, or windy, or snowy. Indeed, in the week leading up to the game, weather forecasts suggested that snow was a possibility for the day or the night.
But on the morning of the game, it looked like the snow would hold off until the next day. As it turned out, that's what happened. At kickoff, there was no precipitation, the field was perfectly dry, and the temperature was 48 degrees, not cold enough to produce snow. It didn't drop by much during the game, and no rain or snow fell.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney and English soccer legend David Beckham weren't at a Premier League
game that weekend. Nor were they watching the England national play rugby at the Six Nations tournament, which was also in progress at the time. They were at
the Super Bowl. I’m just sayin'.
The AFC Champions were the Denver Broncos, in their 7th Super Bowl, having won 2. John Fox was the head coach of a Super Bowl team for the 2nd time, having gotten the Carolina Panthers into Super Bowl XXXVIII, although they lost. He had also been an assistant for the Giants in Super Bowl XXXV, but they lost, as well.
Peyton Manning, having previously led the Indianapolis Colts to win Super Bowl XLI -- the only Super Bowl among the 1st 56 to get rained on, interestingly enough -- was seeking to become the 1st quarterback to lead 2 different teams to Super Bowl wins; and the 1st quarterback since Norm Van Brocklin, with the 1951 Los Angeles Rams and the 1960 Philadelphia Eagles, to lead 2 different teams to NFL Championships. Sports Illustrated had named Manning their Sportsman of the Year for 2013. Many viewers were expecting this Super Bowl to be something of a coronation for him, placing him on the level of Otto Graham, Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana for the title of "greatest quarterback of all time."
The NFC Champions were the Seattle Seahawks. An AFC team until the NFL's 2002 realignment, they had lost Super Bowl XL to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and, with stars such as quarterback Russell Wilson, running back Marshawn Lynch, and cornerback Richard Sherman, were seeking to win Seattle's 1st major league sports championship since the Seattle SuperSonics won the 1979 NBA Championship. (Unless you count the WNBA, where the Seattle Storm had already won the title in 2004 and 2010.) Pete Carroll, who had coached the University of Southern California to National Championships in 2003 and 2004, was looking to join Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer as only the 3rd coach to win both a National Championship and an NFL Championship. Both teams finished the regular season at 13-3.
At the time, in spite of his younger brother Eli Manning having quarterbacked the Giants to 2 upset wins over the New England Patriots, 6 and 2 Super Bowls earlier, Peyton was the most popular player in the NFL, due less to his performances than to his personality and TV commercials. In part because of him, the Broncos were 2-point favorites.
But on the game's 1st play from scrimmage, Peyton began calling signals out of the shotgun formation, and center Manny Ramirez -- making some people wonder if he'd been replaced by the weird-thinking, steroid-addled Boston Red Sox slugger of the same name -- sent the snap flying over Peyton's right shoulder, right into the end zone. Bronco running back Knowshon Moreno recovered the ball, but was touched, resulting in a rare game-opening safety. The Seahawks led, 2-0, just 12 seconds in, the fastest score in the history of NFL championship games, under any name.
That was the game, right there. The Broncos recovered just enough to hold the Seahawks to field goals by Stephen Hauschka on their 1st 2 drives, making the score 8-0. But Lynch ran for a touchdown, and then, Malcolm Smith ended all Denver hope by intercepting Manning, and returning it 69 yards for a touchdown. At the half, Seattle led, 22-0.
It got worse to start the 2nd half: Percy Harvin returned the kickoff 87 yards for a touchdown. And Wilson threw a 23-yard touchdown pass to Jermaine Kearse. It was 36-0, which remains the biggest shutout lead in Super Bowl history.
On the last play of the 3rd quarter, Manning threw a touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas, and got the 2-point conversion. But a 10-yard pass from Wilson to Doug Baldwin made it 43-8 early in the 4th, and that would be the final score.
Richard Sherman (left) and Peyton Manning
The Broncos actually got more 1st downs, and had half as many penalties for less than half as many yards. Manning set a Super Bowl record with 34 pass completions, and Thomas one with 13 catches. But the Broncos turned the ball over 4 times, the Seahawks not at all, and so the Broncos lost by the equivalent of 5 touchdowns. The Seahawks had their 1st title.
Knowing that car traffic in and out of the Meadowlands Complex had been nightmarish since its 1976 opening, New Jersey Transit had built a rail spur from the Secaucus Junction train station to the stadium, to provide easier access from Manhattan, and rain additional trains to and from the game. But it turned out not to be enough trains, and NJT faced thousands of complaints about its service.
And while the snow held off on the calendar day of the game, it arrived in the middle of the night, dropping 8 inches of white stuff, causing about a quarter of the next day's flights out of Newark, John F. Kennedy and La Guardia Airports to be canceled, stranding thousands of people. Probably including lots of Bronco fans, who were already miserable.
The next year, the Seahawks were one yard away from back-to-back titles, but Carroll called a pass instead of a run, and they lost to the New England Patriots. The year after that, the Broncos won, beating Fox's former team, the Panthers. Manning then retired, going out a champion like a previous Bronco quarterback, by then the team's general manager, John Elway.
With Super Bowl sites having been chosen through the 2024 season, this will, at least through then, remain the only Super Bowl played in a cold-weather stadium without a dome.
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February 2, 2014 was, of course, a Sunday. There were no other football games. Baseball was out of season. The NBA was smart enough to schedule only 1 game for the day, and it was a day game: The Boston Celtics beat the Orlando Magic, 96-89 at the TD Garden in Boston.
The NHL also avoided a TV ratings wipeout, by scheduling only 2 games, both in the afternoon. The Winnipeg Jets beat the Montreal Canadiens, 2-1 at the Bell Centre in Montreal. And the Washington Capitals beat the Detroit Red Wings, 6-5 at the Capital One Arena in Washington. Alexander Ovechkin scored the winning goal with 2:23 left in overtime.
But English soccer's Premier League stops for no man, and for no country. It does, of course, alter its schedule -- sorry, forgot to speak English there, its fixture list -- for the sake of British television, moving Saturday games to Sunday. On this Sunday, its games included Arsenal hosting South-East London team Crystal Palace at the Emirates Stadium in North London. Arsenal won, 2-0.
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