Why Is the Super Bowl in Atlanta Again

Super Bowl XXXIV is remembered for having ane of the all-time and most dramatic finishes of all-fourth dimension. With five seconds left and x yards to get into the end zone, Kevin Dyson defenseless a would-be game-tying Steve McNair pass, only to be 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 Basin by. Merely ask anyone from Atlanta about the city's terminal Super Bowl, and it's likely to conjure memories of fallen copse, sheets of water ice, traffic jams, and blistering cold.

On January 23, 2000, a week before the game, an ice storm struck the metro Atlanta surface area. Pelting and freezing temperatures are a bitter combination for any town, just they're especially tough on a major Southern city where cars are the principal fashion of transportation. When a 2d water ice storm hitting just five days afterward, the city was almost paralyzed.

This all took identify while America was watching. The atmospheric condition put such a damper on Super Bowl festivities that Atlanta wouldn't become another Super Bowl for 19 years despite being one of biggest and fairest conditions NFL cities in the country. About ii decades later, the Super Bowl has finally returned after the NFL forgave Atlanta — only only at a pregnant cost.

The first water ice storm caught Atlanta off guard.

"Initially we were thinking it was going to exist more extreme in northern Georgia, and maybe more of a snowfall event farther north, but it'southward a common cold rain in Atlanta," says the Weather condition Channel'due south Paul Goodloe. "And then the day before, nosotros started kind of seeing the writing on the wall."

The storm left 500,000 households, by and large in Atlanta, without power. "Customers could be a family of four, information technology could be an apartment building of 400. So you lot're talking at least a million or more people in the metro expanse without power, and some didn't go it back for that whole week."

What made the ice storm particularly bad is that Atlanta is essentially situated in a forest. A recent study estimated that 48 percent of the city is covered by an urban tree canopy, putting information technology well higher up nigh every major city in the United States. That awning is largely fabricated upwardly of pines. "You put ice on a pine tree, information technology'due south kind of a breakable woods, not the strongest wood," Goodloe says. "They come up downward, they bring the ability lines downward, they block roads, it was a mess."

Still, at that place was more than a week to get the city ready for the game. If Atlanta had simply had to bargain with one bout of bad weather, it might never have earned the reputation that it had to live down for so many years. "Right up to the Super Bowl all suddenly the models are saying, 'Yous know, this cold air isn't going anywhere. There's another ice storm coming.'"

The second ice storm hitting just 2 days earlier the Super Bowl.

It wasn't nearly as destructive as the first, just information technology combined with the lingering effects of the first storm to make a bad week worse.

Heaters failed on the north-south line of Atlanta's track arrangement — the Metropolitan Area Rapid Transit Authority, better known as MARTA — forcing MARTA to deploy buses to shuttle riders to stations from W End, west of downtown, and the airport. A train got stuck betwixt Lindbergh and the Arts Center stations the day earlier the Super Bowl, trapping 200 people for 2 hours.

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

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

AFP/Getty Images

Considering of the transportation problems, Super Bowl festivities in Atlanta weren't as alive every bit they should take been.

"I do remember going down to the NFL Feel with my married woman 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 solar day earlier the Super Bowl."

Things went a bit more smoothly for players, simply training wasn't easy.

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

"It affected our training in the fact that we couldn't go full speed like we wanted to," George says. "The ground was and then difficult that we had to employ our turf shoes, we couldn't apply grass shoes. Typically nosotros liked to get after information technology a piddling flake and compete, and so it really took away from that aspect of it."

George acknowledges that the state of affairs wasn't all bad, though. "Information technology may accept turned out to be skillful for united states, because we really just had to focus on the cerebral part of the game and the mental role of it versus the physical."

The weather didn't stop George from getting in his regular routines. "I had my people come downwardly from Nashville — my melt, my chef, my yoga instructor, my masseuse, massage therapist — I put them upwardly all at the hotel so I could keep a regularly scheduled calendar week."

The weather condition 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 Branch, which didn't include a closed do field.

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

Despite the conditions, nothing was going to bother George, who rushed for 95 yards and 2 touchdowns in the game. "It could have been a blizzard, hurricane, seismic sea wave," he says. "Nothing was going to distract me from trying to win the Super Basin, it didn't affair to me."

The almost lasting event of the ice storms may take been how the NFL used them against Atlanta during the urban center's subsequent Super Bowl bids.

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

Information technology's sometimes said, mostly by Arthur Blank employees, that MBS volition "take Atlanta to a different level." The cold truth is that we were already there. MBS will take more than bells and whistles — it also will cost seven times what it predecessor did — and perchance Atlanta wouldn't take gotten another Super Bowl afterwards the water ice storm of 2000. Merely the Dome did goose egg wrong except historic period.

Atlanta's Super Bowl-hosting dreams failed twice in a roughly 17-calendar month span.

A woman protecting herself confronting the weather while entering the NFL Experience in Atlanta on Jan. 29, 2000, one day earlier the Super Bowl.

AFP/Getty Images

Atlanta'due south bid in 2005 for the 2009 Super Bowl included a promised $150 one thousand thousand in improvements to the Georgia Dome, too as "meteorological data to show the ice tempest was a freak issue," according to a 2005 written report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Even so, Tampa was selected over Atlanta in May. Raymond James Stadium was older than the Georgia Dome, simply Tampa is warmer in late January and early Feb than Atlanta. Advantage, Tampa.

The 2010 Super Bowl had originally been awarded to New York in March 2005 nether the condition that a new stadium would be built. After the state voted down funding for that stadium, however, Miami was picked as the autumn-back option in Oct 2006. When asked about what he'd do differently in his next pitch, Falcons possessor Arthur Blank joked, "I would take Atlanta and motion it to the Caribbean area."

The Georgia Dome was but 13 years one-time in 2005. "If you await at the concluding number of votes, information technology's very clear the ownership feels strongly about having the game where the weather is generally warmer," Blank said.

Atlanta can't control its conditions, and then afterward losing those bids, it didn't accept many options if it ever wanted to host a Super Basin again.

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

The host commission has been working for two years to ensure the city is prepared for annihilation and everything. Well aware of what happened in 2000, Atlanta host committee COO Brett Daniels says the urban center 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 be placed effectually the Super Bowl campus, which includes Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Georgia Globe Congress Eye, and Centennial Olympic Park.

The committee has been in abiding communication with the metropolis, canton, and state to make sure resources are available wherever needed. The Rams volition be practicing in Flowery Branch, 45 miles from Atlanta, and the Patriots at Georgia Tech in Midtown.

"I experience confident that the city, the land, all of our partners here take come together with a slap-up programme on how to manage and mitigate whatever existent crunch related to the weather," Daniels says.

When I enquire if the host committee took any specific lessons from 2000, Daniels makes a good point: "Everybody'due south learned a lot over the last five years probably more so than going back to 2000."

Daniels is referring to the city'due south contempo winter weather events, but the 2014 Snowmaggedon sticks out. Thanks to a couple inches of snow, Atlanta suffered unthinkable gridlock when millions of people hit the road at rush hour to get dwelling. 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 similar Home Depot and CVS.

Days before the 2019 Super Bowl bid was appear, another NFL owner asked how Atlanta would handle another ice storm. Blank said, "I reminded him that was sixteen years ago and the atmospheric condition in Atlanta, due to climate changes, information technology's changed. And then, information technology'south beautiful now. ... We don't recollect that will be an consequence. I understand that was 1-in-100-years kind of freak stuff."

Atlanta'due south pitch included the walkability of the urban center, and a make new stadium. The latter seemingly earned Atlanta forgiveness for the curveball Mother Nature threw years earlier. Finally, on May 24, 2016, Atlanta got the Super Bowl that Blank so badly wanted.

"I'grand thrilled for Atlanta, thrilled for our bid squad, thrilled for all the political leaders who take supported us along the fashion with a difficult (stadium) projection in downtown Atlanta," Blank said at upon receiving the bid at the NFL's owners meetings in 2016.

Whatever the weather, Atlanta'south latest Super Basin should go off much more smoothly than information technology did before.

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

"I recollect we've got a great city, the infrastructure here, the walkability of the downtown campus, the great new stadium that nosotros've got," Daniels says. "There's so many great things in place at present to make this a success that I definitely think we'll proceed to stay in the conversation for time to come Super Bowls moving forrad."

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

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