Why Is the Super Bowl in Atlanta Again

Super Basin XXXIV is remembered for having one of the best and most dramatic finishes of all-fourth dimension. With five seconds left and 10 yards to become into the cease zone, Kevin Dyson defenseless a would-be game-tying Steve McNair pass, simply to exist tackled one yard short of the goal line, his arm outstretched, by St. Louis Rams linebacker Mike Jones.

That play became an iconic image in NFL history — something that everybody remembers that Super Bowl by. But ask anyone from Atlanta about the city's last Super Bowl, and it's likely to conjure memories of fallen copse, sheets of ice, traffic jams, and blistering cold.

On January 23, 2000, a week before the game, an ice storm struck the metro Atlanta area. Rain and freezing temperatures are a bitter combination for any town, but they're particularly tough on a major Southern metropolis where cars are the primary mode of transportation. When a 2d ice storm hit merely v days later on, the urban center was nearly paralyzed.

This all took place while America was watching. The weather put such a damper on Super Bowl festivities that Atlanta wouldn't get another Super Basin for xix years despite being one of biggest and fairest weather NFL cities in the country. Nearly two decades later, the Super Bowl has finally returned later on the NFL forgave Atlanta — but just at a significant cost.

The kickoff ice storm caught Atlanta off baby-sit.

"Initially we were thinking it was going to be more than extreme in northern Georgia, and maybe more than of a snow event further north, merely information technology's a common cold rain in Atlanta," says the Weather Channel'southward Paul Goodloe. "And then the day before, we started kind of seeing the writing on the wall."

The tempest left 500,000 households, generally in Atlanta, without power. "Customers could exist a family of four, it could exist an apartment building of 400. And then you're talking at least a million or more people in the metro area without power, and some didn't get it back for that whole week."

What made the ice storm particularly bad is that Atlanta is essentially situated in a forest. A contempo study estimated that 48 percentage of the city is covered by an urban tree canopy, putting information technology well above nearly every major city in the U.s.a.. That canopy is largely made up of pines. "Y'all put water ice on a pine tree, information technology's kind of a brittle wood, not the strongest forest," Goodloe says. "They come down, they bring the ability lines down, they block roads, it was a mess."

Still, there was more than than a week to get the city ready for the game. If Atlanta had but had to deal with one tour of bad weather, it might never take earned the reputation that information technology had to live down for so many years. "Right up to the Super Basin suddenly the models are saying, 'You know, this common cold air isn't going anywhere. There's another ice tempest coming.'"

The 2d ice storm hit only 2 days before the Super Bowl.

It wasn't nearly as destructive as the commencement, but information technology combined with the lingering effects of the first tempest to brand a bad week worse.

Heaters failed on the northward-due south line of Atlanta'due south rail organisation — the Metropolitan Area Rapid Transit Authority, better known equally MARTA — forcing MARTA to deploy buses to shuttle riders to stations from Due west End, due west of downtown, and the airdrome. A train got stuck between Lindbergh and the Arts Center stations the solar day earlier the Super Basin, trapping 200 people for two hours.

Atlanta is notorious for its traffic. Adding a sheet of water ice to the mix resulted in a 47-auto pileup on I-20 at Lee Street, the largest auto accident reported that week. Parts of I-xx, I-85, I-285, GA 400, and other major roads had to be closed at different times.

Cars driving slowly past a weather advisory sign on Interstate 85, one day before the 2000 Super Bowl in Atlanta.

AFP/Getty Images

Because of the transportation bug, Super Bowl festivities in Atlanta weren't as live as they should accept been.

"I do remember going down to the NFL Experience with my wife at the time," Goodloe says. "All the venues that were waiting for the throng of thousands of people enjoying the NFL experience, going out, eating out at restaurants, confined, the clubs.

"It was a pure ghost town the day before the Super Bowl."

Things went a bit more smoothly for players, but training wasn't piece of cake.

Erstwhile Titans running back Eddie George says that half the team's practice field at Georgia Tech was unusable because the turf was frozen.

"It affected our preparation in the fact that nosotros couldn't get full speed like we wanted to," George says. "The ground was then hard that we had to utilize our turf shoes, we couldn't use grass shoes. Typically we liked to get after information technology a little bit and compete, so it actually took away from that aspect of it."

George acknowledges that the situation wasn't all bad, though. "It may accept turned out to be expert for usa, because nosotros really merely had to focus on the cerebral part of the game and the mental part of it versus the physical."

The atmospheric condition didn't stop George from getting in his regular routines. "I had my people come down from Nashville — my cook, my chef, my yoga teacher, my masseuse, massage therapist — I put them up all at the hotel so I could go on a regularly scheduled week."

The weather was arguably more challenging for the Rams and Isaac Bruce, who were used to practicing indoors. They spent the week practicing at the Falcons' facilities in Flowery Co-operative, which didn't include a closed practice field.

"Yous got probably 60 guys out in that location practicing with two heaters, and I'm talkin', it was in the teens," Bruce says. "But we were able to put everything in that we wanted to put in offensively."

Despite the conditions, nil was going to bother George, who rushed for 95 yards and two touchdowns in the game. "It could accept been a blizzard, hurricane, tsunami," he says. "Nothing was going to distract me from trying to win the Super Bowl, information technology didn't matter to me."

The most lasting effect of the water ice storms may have been how the NFL used them against Atlanta during the city'south subsequent Super Bowl bids.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Marking Bradley summed up in August 2017 what had go accustomed knowledge prior to the opening of Mercedes-Benz Stadium:

Information technology's sometimes said, more often than not by Arthur Blank employees, that MBS will "take Atlanta to a different level." The cold truth is that we were already at that place. MBS will have more bells and whistles — it likewise volition toll seven times what it predecessor did — and perhaps Atlanta wouldn't have gotten another Super Basin after the ice tempest of 2000. But the Dome did nothing incorrect except age.

Atlanta's Super Basin-hosting dreams failed twice in a roughly 17-month bridge.

A woman protecting herself against the weather while entering the NFL Experience in Atlanta on January. 29, 2000, one mean solar day before the Super Bowl.

AFP/Getty Images

Atlanta's bid in 2005 for the 2009 Super Bowl included a promised $150 million in improvements to the Georgia Dome, too equally "meteorological data to show the ice storm was a freak result," co-ordinate to a 2005 written report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. However, Tampa was selected over Atlanta in May. Raymond James Stadium was older than the Georgia Dome, but Tampa is warmer in late January and early February than Atlanta. Advantage, Tampa.

The 2010 Super Bowl had originally been awarded to New York in March 2005 under the condition that a new stadium would exist built. Later on the state voted down funding for that stadium, however, Miami was picked as the fall-back choice in October 2006. When asked nearly what he'd do differently in his adjacent pitch, Falcons owner Arthur Bare joked, "I would take Atlanta and move it to the Caribbean area."

The Georgia Dome was just 13 years former in 2005. "If you expect at the last number of votes, it's very clear the ownership feels strongly almost having the game where the weather condition is by and large warmer," Blank said.

Atlanta can't control its weather condition, and so after losing those bids, it didn't have many options if information technology ever wanted to host a Super Basin again.

Now that Mercedes-Benz Stadium has been congenital, the Super Bowl has come back to metropolis.

The host committee has been working for two years to ensure the city is prepared for anything and everything. Well enlightened of what happened in 2000, Atlanta host committee COO Brett Daniels says the city has prioritized weather preparedness.

"Nosotros're doing a lot of planning and preparation with all of the venues to brand sure that we already have equipment rented and on site should there be any foul atmospheric condition to address, as well as materials like ice melt and things of that nature," Daniels says. Those materials will exist placed around the Super Bowl campus, which includes Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Georgia World Congress Center, and Centennial Olympic Park.

The commission has been in abiding communication with the city, county, and state to make certain resource are available wherever needed. The Rams will be practicing in Flowery Branch, 45 miles from Atlanta, and the Patriots at Georgia Tech in Midtown.

"I feel confident that the metropolis, the state, all of our partners here have come up together with a great plan on how to manage and mitigate any real crunch related to the atmospheric condition," Daniels says.

When I ask if the host committee took whatever specific lessons from 2000, Daniels makes a skilful point: "Everybody's learned a lot over the final v years probably more than and then than going back to 2000."

Daniels is referring to the city's recent winter atmospheric condition events, but the 2014 Snowmaggedon sticks out. Thanks to a couple inches of snow, Atlanta suffered unthinkable gridlock when millions of people hitting the road at rush hour to get home. The snow turned to slush and froze over into ice, forcing commuters to sleep in their cars, on the sides of roads, in gas station parking lots, and on the floors of stores like Dwelling house Depot and CVS.

Days before the 2019 Super Basin bid was appear, another NFL possessor asked how Atlanta would handle another ice tempest. Blank said, "I reminded him that was 16 years ago and the weather condition in Atlanta, due to climate changes, it'southward changed. So, it'due south beautiful now. ... Nosotros don't recollect that will be an upshot. I understand that was 1-in-100-years kind of freak stuff."

Atlanta'southward pitch included the walkability of the metropolis, and a brand new stadium. The latter seemingly earned Atlanta forgiveness for the curveball Female parent Nature threw years before. Finally, on May 24, 2016, Atlanta got the Super Bowl that Bare and then badly wanted.

"I'g thrilled for Atlanta, thrilled for our bid team, thrilled for all the political leaders who take supported us forth the way with a difficult (stadium) project in downtown Atlanta," Blank said at upon receiving the bid at the NFL's owners meetings in 2016.

Whatever the weather, Atlanta's latest Super Bowl should go off much more smoothly than it did earlier.

But say another storm hits — Would Atlanta get left out of Super Bowl conversations all the same again?

"I call up we've got a great city, the infrastructure here, the walkability of the downtown campus, the slap-up new stadium that we've got," Daniels says. "There's and so many swell things in identify now to make this a success that I definitely think nosotros'll continue to stay in the conversation for future Super Bowls moving forward."

gomezthats1990.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2019/1/29/18200512/atlanta-super-bowl-ice-storms-2000-history

Share this post