Hanley: Soldier Field Super Bowl Is Football Fantasy
By Brian Hanley
(WSCR) -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel attempted to sell NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell Thursday on a Chicago Super Bowl.
Give Mr. Mayor props for trying.
But you'd run out of Roman numerals before Soldier Field is home to a Super Bowl.
There's a better chance Joe ("Government earmarks are bad unless my family gets the free cash") Ricketts would be holding a shovel at the groundbreaking for President Obama's library than Goodell will gift the Bears home with an NFL championship game.
Goodell was on hand to applaud the Bears and the Chicago Park District for making Soldier Field the first NFL stadium to receive LEED certification for its environmentally sustainable attributes.
Nice change from the WEED certification for which the turf at Soldier Field usually qualifies.
Emanuel said he had the Super Bowl on his mind when the two met privately before the news conference.
"I found out a secret, and that is the commissioner's in-laws live in the area, and I'm holding them hostage until that happens," Emanuel said.
That was a joke.
Kind of like Mike Madigan holds hostage the state's voters.
"We talked about 'Why Chicago?' " the mayor added. "Two weeks ago, we had a bunch of world leaders here, sixth largest NATO summit, and if we can do that, it would be an appropriate place to have a Super Bowl."
The reason there will be no Chicago Super Bowl is twofold: No roof and not enough seats.
The NFL will hold its first open-air Super Bowl in a cold weather city in the Meadowlands in New Jersey in 2014. Goodell said the league's position on repeating the experiment will depend a lot on how things go then.
Emanuel is a smart man, a change that was desperately needed given the fiscal carnage this city suffers from the pea-sized brain with which our former simpleton mayor operated.
Imagine the Daley dose of corruption taxpayers would be saddled with had we won the 2016 Olympics.
The reason the Meadowlands will host the Super Bowl? It's a payoff for New Jersey pouring hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the new stadium.
Daley, the clown who brought us 75 years of parking meter ransom, was too dumb to negotiate such a promise when he forked over city cash to rehab Soldier Field.
Too late now to hold hostage the NFL.
Sure, Chicago could hire the law firm, which fleeced Daley while negotiating a sweetheart meter deal before hiring him and some of his top cronies, to talk SB turkey with Goodell.
But city and state dwellers have a better chance the public pension parasites such as Daley find a conscience and return their ill-gotten gains than Chicago has hosting the NFL's February showcase.
Goodell acknowledged Soldier Field's relatively small capacity could be an issue.
The stadium's capacity has grown since its 2001-2003 renovation from 61,500 to about 63,500.
Find a way to shoehorn another 20,000 in the old war memorial and retrofit a roof and Goodell might take Emanuel's next call.
Brian Hanley co-hosts The Mully and Hanley Show, heard weekdays from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. on 670 The Score.
