OPINION: The best possible Super Bowl is one in cold weather

(logo courtesy of the NFL).

Relax Mike Ditka, a cold weather Super Bowl isn’t as bad as you extravagantly deplored earlier this week. In fact, football played in temperatures that make your hands numb fits right into the rugged, testosterone bound game’s roots. Football weather should be 75 and sunny—said no one ever.  

Would I rather sit in a double padded seat inside of a climate controlled dome with a t-shirt on for the biggest sporting event of the year? Maybe, especially with all this Polar Vortex nonsense becoming everyday vernacular. But if you are a traditionalist like myself, then you are giddy about the possibility that more games will be played outside the southern brim of the country after 2014.

Detractors point to the “harsh reality” that teams like the New Orleans Saints, Miami Dolphins and Detroit Lions aren’t properly equipped to handle Old Man Winter’s sharpest wrath of the season to which I say quit the caterwauling.

Guess what? For the last 38 years they’ve benefitted from Florida “winters” and roof covered stadiums.

So Drew Brees might have to wear sleeves or Reggie Bush will have to get some extra stretching in to get his body properly prepped for cold weather. Big deal. Just like they have since 1976 and like they will for the next three years after Sunday when they play The Big Game in California and domed stadiums in Houston and Arizona, those run-and-gun teams will once again be at an advantage.

This is the National Football League comprised of 32 teams from 21 states and a good portion of those teams play their home games north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of glitzy California weather.  

The game is built on tradition in cold weather with diehard fan bases, not in some area of the country where they leave a closely contested game with two minutes left (ie: Miami Heat “fans” in Game 6 last season) to go hit the club scene.

Your roommate probably cannot recall a single question from the 50-something question exam he took an hour ago, but he can tell you exactly how every single play and formation went from the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Super Bowl XL victory in 2006.

Think locally, too.

While the Washington Redskins haven’t even built a roster that can be a regular contender for even the No. 6 seed on the NFC side of the playoff bracket, fans of the organization are some of the brashest historians you’ll ever meet. They’ll explain how much Robert Griffin III’s selection in the 2012 NFL Draft is (and perhaps was depending on your outlook of the young quarterback) a sign that the franchise is headed back to the days of The Fun Bunch and The Hogs or how dominant they were in 1992.

How about the publicly owned Green Bay Packers? You know, the team that won the first two Super Bowls and whose famed head coach the championship trophy is named after.

Do you not find it to be a slap in the face to the organization that they have to wear championship hats inside of a stadium that has perfectly comfortable 70 degree temperatures and cacti out?

The hand of the slapper probably applied sunscreen to the area earlier that morning too for their weekly Sunday beach trip.

I’ll take warm weather during Wimbledon, but not the Super Bowl.

Give me snow. Give me wind gusts for the only time in my life I would prefer it. Shoot, give me sub-zero temperatures. I’ll live if I get to see real conditions not something manufactured to benefit the pompous CEOs who constantly ask their colleagues who is actually playing because they are too busy to worry about a sport that doesn’t represent the upper class of America.

So when the Seahawks and Broncos collide this Sunday at MetLife Stadium buried in layers, I’ll be at home with a smile on my face and the windows of my house will be open to allow the sweet chilly winds of tradition swirl through my football loving mind.