Houston to host Panthers, Patriots at Super Bowl
Random thoughts from alliteration to the cradle of coaches
Now we know who will be here for the long-hyped Super Bowl on February 1st- Carolina and New England. Hopefully, it will be a good game, and since I have a brother who lives in North Carolina, I'll be rooting for the Panthers. Still and all, Super Bowl XXXVIII IS only a game. I doubt any other athletic event in this town's history has been hyped to such an impressive degree.
In many ways, though, I can't help but wonder if those who organized this whole shebang didn't have their priorities back asswards. Let's examine a few points here, as the Houston Chronicle's Rick Casey has done:
I'm not humbugging sports. I'm humbugging the ludicrous hoopla with which the town's civic and political leaders are greeting the event.
It's not just the outrageous sums of money the city is laying out for the privilege of helping millionaires (owners and players) get richer.
It's the suggestion that all good citizens will join in volunteer brigades to roll out and keep clean the waiting red carpets.
At least Wal-Mart pays its greeters something.
It's the ridiculous rhetoric arguing that the city will be awash in cash, despite the fact that serious economists shake their gray visages at the estimates of hundreds of millions of dollars in "economic impact" -- itself a term you never seen defined.
Do you know what city has played host to more Super Bowls than any other?
New Orleans.
Now there, economically, is a model city for you.
It's the talk about how "you can't buy the publicity the Super Bowl gets you."
Let me ask you a question:
Where was the Super Bowl last year?
I remembered that it was in San Diego only because I cheated and read ahead. And perhaps that is the point here. By 10pm on Super Bowl Sunday, no one outside of Houston will even remember, nor particularly care, that the game was played in the Bayou City.
The (thankfully departed) Lee Brown Administration did a lot of work in making sure that a ton of money was spent to ensure that the city was "beautified" for the Super Bowl. Well, not the entire city, of course, just the parts visitors are most likely to see during their sojourn from party to party prior to game day. That hardly begins to address the problems that plague Houston as a whole.
Is Houston ugly? Parts of it.
Have you taken a cab from LaGuardia to Manhattan lately? That's ugly.
We should make Houston more beautiful, but not for one-time visitors.
The best mayor in America is Joseph Riley of Charleston, S.C. While voters in most American cities have angrily passed term limits, the mostly conservative citizens of Charleston have re-elected Riley every election since 1975.
One secret of his success: You build your city for the people who don't get to go elsewhere.
"A lot of citizens haven't been anywhere," he says. "All they have is the city."
Yes, I suppose a few people will make a bunch of money, but the reality here is that, unless you own a hotel or a restaurant, your "economic benefit" will not amount to much at all. The average Houstonian will find his or her city much the same on February 2nd as it was on January 31st- ugly and built to stay that way. That isn't to say that we should just give up on making Houston a better place to live. What I am saying that spending millions to impress a few thousand well-heeled out-of-towners likely will not be nearly as effective as anyone in the Brown Administration had thought it might be. This makes me glad that I live a good distance outside of Houston.
Given all of this, I have an idea. How about we remember February 1st for something that should by all rights have all of us engaging in some somber reflection? Super Bowl Sunday will be the first anniversary of the Columbia shuttle tragedy. The memory of that event will, and should, long outlast the memory of whichever team wins the game.
