IRVING, Texas -- If you build it, they will come -- wearing winter coats.
The New Meadowlands Stadium, the $1.6 billion jewel co-owned by the New York Giants and Jets, will host the 2014 Super Bowl, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced Tuesday afternoon at the league's spring meeting.
The league's 32 owners, undaunted by the prospect of a wintry championship game, awarded Super Bowl XLVIII to the New York/New Jersey region after also considering bids from Tampa and South Florida, both traditional sites. South Florida and Tampa have hosted the Super Bowl 10 and four times, respectively.
It took four rounds of secret balloting to determine the host. New York/New Jersey won by a simple majority over Tampa. South Florida was eliminated after the second ballot.
The official tag line of the New York/New Jersey bid was "Make Some History," and it did. It will be the first open-air stadium in a cold-weather region to host a Super Bowl. In their presentation to the membership, the Jets and Giants reps showed a video that included clips from historic cold-weather games, including Adam Vinatieri's forever field goal for the Patriots in the 2001 divisional playoffs in Foxborough, Mass. -- a.k.a. "The Snow Bowl" and "The Tuck Rule Game."
"An old-school matchup in a new-school stadium," the voiceover says.
There could be a record-low temperature at kickoff. The current record is 39 degrees in 1972 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, and that would be considered a warm February day in East Rutherford, N.J.
There's never been snow in a Super Bowl game and that could happen, too.
"Obviously it will be cold, but that's what playing football is all about," Giants quarterback Eli Manning told Fox News Channel's Studio B with Shepard Smith. "I've been in the Super Bowl and I've been to a couple of Super Bowls and if you're not in it, the Super Bowl is an event and its kinda a place to be and there's no better place to be than New York City for that vibe and that atmosphere."
The average temperature range for the Meadowlands area during February is 24 to 40 degrees, with several inches of rain, according to the bid documents. Remember, the game kicks off after sunset in the Eastern time zone, so temperatures would be dropping throughout the night.
Planners have factored it all in. They're plotting giveaways to warm hands and seats, having hundreds of folks ready to shovel away snow and anything else they can do to make the experience more than just bearable.
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