Feb 13, 2016 5 min read

Yeah, let’s play the Super Bowl in Pittsburgh in 2023.

The group, Visit Pittsburgh, is planning to take trips to other cities that hosted Super Bowls looking for tips.

They’re meeting with a sports commission in New Orleans on Monday. Do you think they’ll notice the big downtown football stadium there has a roof?

It’s called the Superdome. It’s always 72 degrees in there.

If Super Bowl 50 was played in Pittsburgh last Sunday there would have been no need for a roof or a heavy coat. It was in the high 40s at game time.

Did you notice the weather this weekend?

It would have been about 14 degrees at kickoff if the game was played in Pittsburgh today. The face value of a Super Bowl 50 ticket was between $850 and $1,800, but the average sale price was just a little below $4,500.

Would you want to pay $850 to sit outside in 14-degree weather for three-plus hours? How would the players feel about playing in it?

The NFL got away with a cold-weather city Super Bowl in New York in 2014. A gigantic blizzard was nice enough to wait until Monday to show up.

Steelers President Art Rooney II said his only question about Pittsburgh hosting a Super Bowl is, “Why not?”

Do you think Rooney would be sitting outside with the fans in January 2023 if it’s 12 degrees at kickoff?

How about the politicians who think it’s such a great idea? How many of them will be watching from a heated private box?

They and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell should all make a pledge to sit in the stands for the entire game if it happens.

And if you become part of a media cheerleading squad for the idea, you should have to give up your seat in the enclosed press box and sit outside with the fans.

How will the fans of the two teams – especially if they’ve waited for years to see their team in the Super Bowl – feel about being stuck with Pittsburgh as the host city?

The game should be played in a warm-weather city. The fans who supported the two teams and are willing to pay ridiculous prices for tickets should be rewarded with a trip to a beach.

But if the game is played in Pittsburgh, here’s hoping the two teams are the Browns and Eagles.

• Maybe Rooney could use the possibility of the Super Bowl coming to Pittsburgh to get a new stadium. Ridiculous, you say? Did you know Thursday was the 15th anniversary of the implosion of Three Rivers Stadium?

That means Heinz Field is now half as old as Three Rivers Stadium was when it came down. By 2023, Heinz Field, which is one of the uglier, most unimpressive stadiums in the NFL, will be almost as old as Three Rivers was when talk of a new stadium began.

And here’s something for you to consider: Every NFL team will receive $250 million in TV money in 2016. Heinz Field cost $357 million, $281 million of it paid for by tax payers.

And, since the stadium is financed over 30 years, the taxpayers will end up paying two or three times that. The Steelers could probably make those mortgage payments with a fraction of their TV money.

How should taxpayers feel knowing that?

How should the stupid, corrupt politicians who agreed to the deal get away with it? They’re no longer in office, that’s why.

• Someone should show Cam Newton a video of Russell Wilson’s postgame news conference after he threw an interception on the goal line and lost Super Bowl 49.

• The Steelers are one of three teams you can get 8-1 odds on to win the Super Bowl next year. The Broncos are 10-1.

What are the odds the Steelers’ defense will face six backup quarterbacks in a row at the end of the season? No matter how healthy their offense stays, the Steelers won’t go to the Super Bowl without improving their defense.

• Lots of people came to the defense of Major League Baseball’s ridiculous economics after my column last week refuting ESPN’s Jayson Stark, who wrote his annual, “MLB has more parity than the NFL” column.

I’m amazed when people old enough to remember the Pirates’ World Series teams defend the stupidity. Does anybody think World Series MVPs Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell would have still been Pirates in 1971 and 1979 if the current economics existed then?

How many Pirates fans in their 20s and 30s were taken to games and encouraged to be fans by parents and grandparents who grew to love the Pirates because of those teams?

Would those parents and grandparents have been fans if most of the stars from the ’70s left for New York, Los Angeles, Boston or Chicago after six years?

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday sports column for the Observer-Reporter.