Super Bowl in London: NFL Foolish to Consider Celebrating 50th Edition Abroad

The NFL is looking to London as a potential host for Super Bowl L in February of 2016, or at least that's what Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay would have us believe.

When he's not busy battling Peyton Manning in the media, that is.

London Calling

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone to hear that the league's owners are talking about moving the Super Bowl in London, presumably at Wembley Stadium. The NFL staged eight preseason games in the UK capital between the mid-1980s and early 1990s and has held one regular season game per year there since 2007, with the St. Louis Rams slated to play at least one home game at Wembley for each of the next three seasons.

No shocker there, considering Rams owner Stan Kroenke also owns a majority stake in English Premier League powerhouse Arsenal, which plays in North London.

What's more, the NFL has demonstrated a distinct willingness of late to allow cities other than San Diego, New Orleans, Phoenix, Miami and Tampa to host the Super Bowl. Dallas had some issues last year, though not necessarily on account of weather. Indianapolis seems to have everything down pat thus far, and if the climate gets a bit blustery, the New York Giants and the New England Patriots will still enjoy perfect conditions beneath the closed roof of Lucas Oil Stadium.

The real test will come in 2014, when the Super Bowl makes its way to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the phrase "retractable roof" isn't even in the vocabulary, much less in the operating instructions.

The Perils of a Super Bowl Abroad

Of course, the NFL won't have two years to sit back and wait before it decides where it will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl. The league is likely to have a plan in place for 2016 by this coming May.

In the meantime, let's hope the NFL decides to postpone its grand plans for world domination for at least another few years. The Super Bowl, while growing in global appeal over the years, is still a uniquely American institution. The first Sunday in February is a de facto national holiday whereupon hundreds of millions in the US spend the day watching football and high-priced ads, regardless of which two teams are playing.

To ship the golden edition of the Super Bowl across the pond would be an affront to the loyal American audiences that have made the NFL a sporting juggernaut, despite having scantly escaped our shores.

Such a move would also prevent scores of pigskin-crazed fans in the states from so much as dreaming of attending the Super Bowl. With ticket prices as ridiculously high as they already are, few would be able to afford spending thousands more on international flights and hotel stays, among other things.

Hence, the Super Bowl would become an event for an even smaller slice of the monied elite that's interested in sports.

And from a practical standpoint, how does the NFL suppose it will be able to broadcast the Super Bowl in American prime-time while filling the seats in Wembley Stadium? The clocks in London, Big Ben included, run five hours ahead of those on the East Coast, eight hours ahead of those in the west. That means an 11:30 p.m. local start time for Super Bowl XLVI.

Do the league's owners really think they'll be able to sell out a 90,000-seat stadium for a four-hour event that starts just shy of midnight? That would be a tough task even for those promoting the FA Cup final, much less the championship game of American football, a sport whose popularity in Great Britain is scant, at best.

A Complex Solution to an Even More Complicated Problem

So what would it take to make sure the NFL doesn't row the Vince Lombardi Trophy ashore in another country?

Simple—bring pro football back to Los Angeles.

I know, easier said than done. Much easier, in fact. No NFL team has set foot in the City of Angels since 1995, when the Rams and the Raiders bolted for St. Louis and Oakland, respectively, within months of each other. An ever-changing swath of business moguls and sports luminaries have since attempted to reunite the NFL with the second-largest media market to no avail, due in large part to a typically tangled web of politics.

But there seems now to be more hope than there's ever been. The Rams, the Raiders, the San Diego Chargers, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Minnesota Vikings are all in prime position to relocate on account of their decrepit enclosures and/or lackluster bases of local support. The Rams and Raiders, in particular, seem the most likely to return, with the former already seeking alternative places to play with its excursions to London and the latter in play now that the franchise is in the hands of Mark Davis, the son of the late, great Al Davis.

The NFL has already pontificated on the possibility of holding the 50th Super Bowl in LA, at either the Memorial Coliseum, where the first Super Bowl was played, or the under-renovation Rose Bowl, where the city's most recent Super Bowl was played in 1993.

The ideal plan, though, would see Super Bowl L played at Farmers Field, the as-yet-constructed downtown stadium proposed by the Anschutz Entertainment Group. Ground won't likely break on a new facility, though, unless/until a team commits to playing in it and until the owner of said team agrees to the scores of stipulations that would accompany such a move.

In other words, there are still plenty of hoops to jump through to bring football back to LA, though keeping the Super Bowl in America may well depend on something substantial getting done in that regard within the next few months.

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