Here comes the Super Bowl.
The 2014 edition of America’s mid winter festival will take place at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Stadium — the brand new home of the Giants and Jets.
It’ll be the first time the spectacle has been staged outdoors in the dead of winter. (This should substantially reduce the likelihood of halftime-show wardrobe malfunctions.)
But while the potential for weather-driven drama is huge, the elements have also been an integral part of some of the most dramatic championship-caliber football ever played.
And let’s tell it straight: Modern-era professional football began right here — in The Bronx.
Yankee Stadium was the site of the 1958 NFL Championship game: The Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants, 23-17, in the league’s first sudden-death overtime — now known, with much justification, as “The Greatest Game Ever Played.”
The game — broadcast by NBC — captured America’s imagination. Soon pro football would become the de facto national pastime — and the Super Bowl the most watched television extravaganza in the world.
Yes, four years is a long way off — a bit early to begin wondering if one, or perhaps both, local teams could be playing in Super Bowl XLVIII.
But with the Giants and Jets blessed with quarterbacks likely still in or near their prime in 2014, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
Again, the weather likely will be nasty — and surely it will be cold. But that’s the way football was meant to be played.
And have no fear. New York’s energy will keep everyone toasty!