The Cowboys have hosted a single Super Bowl in their gigantic stadium. They could soon be trying to host another.
Via Charean Williams of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Cowboys could make a play for one of the next two Super Bowls to be awarded: Super Bowl LVI, to be played in 2022, or Super Bowl LVII, to be played in 2023. Voting for those two games will occur in May 2018.
The first Super Bowl played at AT&T Stadium in February 2011 was marred by a winter storm that hit six days before the game. Lingering temperatures below freezing coupled with the absence of equipment to remove the ice made travel by car or foot treacherous. Two days before the game, large chunks of ice cascaded from the roof of the venue; if those pieces of ice had fallen two days later when thousands of people were trying to get inside the building for the game, the outcome would have been not good.
The delay in making a bid, as Williams explains it, has arisen primarily from the litigation sparked by an absence of sufficient seats.
“We obviously and totally understand we had business that we needed to clear up here from the previous Super Bowl, which was unfortunate,” Cowboys executive V.P. Stephen Jones said, via Williams. “Hopefully that is coming to an end here this summer, and then hopefully, we’ll be in the hunt. We think this building is special, AT&T Stadium, and certainly a great place for players to come play. I think if you asked players around the league, they certainly enjoy playing the game here. I think North Texas is a great area. I think we were a little snakebit that [Super Bowl 2011] weekend in terms of our weather. I think it’s the first time a snow storm had hit North Texas for a week in 75 years, where kids are out of school for a week.”
It really wasn’t a snowstorm. It was a two-inch coating of ice, on every exposed surface in the region. And there was no means, method, or effort to get rid of it.
When the time comes to make a bid, it’ll be interesting to see whether funds are set aside to prevent that from happening again -- or whether the focus will simply be to give the league’s billionaires even more free stuff.
