Round 1:
Hosting a Super Bowl a huge economic plum,
and costly
Josh Peter, USA TODAY Sports8:07 p.m. EST January 25, 2015
(Photo: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)
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PHOENIX – Mike Kennedy spoke to a group of Arizona attorneys last week and held up a thick binder
few people outside the NFL get to see.
It's the "NFL Super Bowl Host City Bid Specifications & Requirements," given to viable and interested
candidates.
Kennedy, former chairman of the Arizona Super Bowl host committee, said he used the bid book to drive
home a point about hosting the big game.
It's a business – competitive, costly and, it turns out, increasingly advantageous for the NFL.
"You have to comply,'' Kennedy told USA TODAY Sports, "or make best efforts at complying with the
specifications set forth.''
Be prepared to pay up, too.
Arizona, drawing from private and public funds, will spend about $30 million to host the 2015 Super
Bowl, to be played Sunday in Glendale, Ariz. That's a relative bargain. San Francisco, the host for the
50th Super Bowl next year in Santa Clara, Calif., expects to spend more than $50 million. Last year, New
Jersey and New York spent a combined $70 million hosting the game that was played in
East Rutherford, N.J.
"I think it's a better buy for a community today than it was before,'' said Kennedy, who was part of Arizona's
bid when it spent $5 million to host the game in Tempe in 1996 and when it spent $18 million to host the
game in 2008. "The benefits are enormous.''
But there's concern in cities such as New Orleans, which has hosted 10 Super Bowlsand is tied with
Miami as the city that has hosted the most.
"The cost to cities for all of these major events has skyrocketed in the past 15 years,'' said Doug
Thornton, regional vice president for the company that manages the New Orleans Superdome. "Soon
certain cities may priced out.''
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy declined to discuss specifics, but he said the requirements in the Super
Bowl bid package are comparable to hosting a national political convention.
The cost-benefit analysis for host cities has been the subject of economic studies — and even those
glowing projections are debated — which estimate the game has an impact of $200 million to $500
million on the local, regional and state economies in which the game is played. Super Bowl host
committees, the non-profits organizations that represent host cities and their surrounding regions,
commissioned these studies that, in turn, drove up the cost to host the game.
That's because the NFL saw the studies, too.
"That demonstrated to cities that there was a great advantage to hosting Super Bowl, beyond just
bragging rights,'' said Frank Supovitz, who managed the game for the NFL between 2005 and 2014.
"There was a real revenue opportunity there for them.
"Recognizing that, we were able to create a more competitive environment and more of a business
opportunity for the NFL in terms of capturing some of the additional economic advantage.''
Humble beginnings
The NFL didn't always have such leverage.
There were tens of thousands of empty seats at the first Super Bowl, played in 1967 at the Los Angeles
Memorial Coliseum. That next year, the NFL moved the game to Miami — not because of any
inducements, but rather because Pete Rozelle, then commissioner of the NFL, thought football-loving
snowbirds might drive up ticket sales.
"There were no long discussions with owners groups over these venue decisions because it was a low
priority for them,'' Joe Browne, a longtime NFL senior advisor, said by email. "They were still spending
their time and energy on realignment and many of the major issues surrounding the 1966 merger
(between the NFL and AFL). It was pretty much left to Pete and our office to decide.
"No one thought in terms of economic impact or out-of-town visitors."
In 1978, when the game was played in New Orleans, the league still was sharing profits. Denzil Skinner,
general manager of the company then-managing the Superdome, said the stadium got 10 percent of
gross revenue from ticket sales and the NFL reimbursed the stadium for all out-of-pocket costs, such as
vendors, ticket takers and security guards.
"There was no such thing as a bid book,'' Skinner said. "We simply went in to meet with Pete Rozelle
and presented our proposal. …Things obviously have really changed.''
No one tracked those changes as closely as Jim Steeg, who took over responsibility for the game in
1979 and is credited as a key figure in helping grow the game into the biggest spectacle in American
sports.
The competition between cities wanting the Super Bowl had grown, and they looked for ways to sway the
owners, who had taken greater interest in who hosted the game – and how much they'd make.
The year Steeg joined the NFL, a Miami restauranteur involved in the bid for a Super Bowl spearheaded
a push that led to the Florida state legislature waiving a state tax on tickets for the Super Bowl and
college bowl games. Three years later, the NFL played the 1982 Super Bowl free of charge in
the Pontiac Silverdome outside of Detroit.
Philadelphia offered a straight cash payment of $2 million for the 1987 game. Not enough.
Joe Robbie, late owner of the Miami Dolphins, built a new stadium that opened in 1987. Bingo. Super
Bowl returned to Miami in 1989.
After Rankin M. Smith Sr., late owner of the Atlanta Falcons, helped lobby for the construction of the
Georgia Dome, the big game came to Atlanta in 1994.
"Then you kind of got into a one-up, what can the next guy do?'' Steeg said.
Steeg said in his final year handling the game, the NFL made $275 million on the Super Bowl, including
broadcast revenue.
But then, soon after Steeg left and Supovitz arrived in 2005, the NFL got more aggressive. When cities
started offering to provide facilities free of charge, for example, the NFL made it a requirement.
"It made sense to institutionalize it into the bid package,' Supovitz said. "Because if everybody's doing it,
then everybody can do it, and you might as well make it a requirement."
NFL investment grows
As the NFL's requirements grew, so did the Super Bowl host committees budgets — with the money
used to pay game-related expenses and the committee's own operational expenses. Supovitz said the
budget range for host committees grew from as little as $12 million to as much as $50 million between
his joining the league in 2005 and departing last year.
Supovitz declined to disclose the league's budget for the Super Bowl. But he said the league's expenses
far exceeds the money it gets from the host committees.
"It helps, but it's not remotely close to what the NFL spends,'' Supovitz said. "When you take a look at the
enormity of all of the events and all of the facilities, it wouldn't have happened at $12 million and it
wouldn't happen at $50 million. It's well in excess of that. The NFL undertakes the vast majority of costs.''
But the costs aren't always clearly defined. Minneapolis, for example, will host 2018 Super Bowl. The
host committee's budget will not reflect what was most crucial to securing the game: the state legislature
approved nearly $500 million in public funds to help build a $1 billion stadium for the Minnesota
Vikings that indirectly enriches the NFL. Yet Minneapolis Super Bowl host committee faced compeititve
bidding process and learned the truth about hosting the modern-day Super Bowl.
You get the big game, you get the big bill.
Contributing: Caitlin McGlade of The Arizona Republic
Round 2:
The Quiet World
BY JEFFREY MCDANIEL
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
Round 3:
Round 4
The hijab-wearing Barbie who's become an
Instagram star
By Stephanie Busari, CNN
Updated 9:26 AM ET, Mon February 8, 2016
Lagos, Nigeria (CNN)Barbie has had another makeover. This time as a hijab-wearing Muslim.
It was only last month that Mattel gave Barbie a dramatic transformation with a variety of skin tones
and different body types, including adding curves to her impossibly slender frame.
Now a Nigerian medical scientist has taken Instagram by storm since she began posting images of a
hijab-wearing Barbie doll a few weeks ago.
We are used to seeing Barbie scantily-clad in denim hotpants and skimpy tops, but with her colorful
headscarves, flowing abayas and full-length couture dresses, Hijarbie is far more covered up.
Haneefa Adam, pictured, says she was inspired to create the Hijarbie account after coming across
the Barbie Style Instagram page.
She told CNN: "I thought I had not seen Barbie dressed in a hijab before so I decided to open an
Instagram account and dressed Barbie up in the clothes that I made. I thought it was really important
for a doll to be dressed like how I would be."
The 24-year-old, who recently completed a Masters in Pharmacology in the UK, describes Hijarbie as
a "modest doll" -- one that offers Muslim girls a relatable role model.
"It has roots in my religion and cultural identity. The way Barbie dresses is very skimpy and different
and there's nothing wrong with it. I just wanted to give another option for Muslim girls like me.
She added: "I want to use the Instagram page to create an identity for her similar to Barbie."
The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive with requests from all over the world to buy the dolls.
Hijarbie now has 19,400 followers on the social network.
Adam plans to expand heraccount to include dolls of color. Previously she was unable to locate any
on sale in Nigeria and has had to order them from abroad.
"I couldn't find the different types in Nigeria (no Amazon or eBay or anything)," she says. "I'd have
loved to dress up a black doll myself too. I've ordered for some internationally and they'll soon be
here."
But despite the account's popularity, Adam says she has received some negative comments from
people who think that Muslim women who wear the veil are "oppressed," a misconception she wants
to fix.
"People think that when Muslim women cover up they are forced to. (The) majority of us are not," she
says.
"We want to cover up and express our religion. But a lot of Muslims don't cover their hair and it
doesn't make them any less of a Muslim.
"I think this is a great platform to try and get the Muslim identity to the world and correct some
misconceptions."