Jul 23, 2015 2 min read

The Pittsburgh Steelers have filed an application to host Superbowl LVII in Pittsburgh eight years from now. The prospect of bringing the National Football League championship game here may be exciting to some, but we have our reservations.

It might be convenient if the Steelers were to play in that game, but odds are much better that they would not. How excited would the populace be if, say, Dallas and Baltimore were contending for the championship? Which team do Steelers fans hate more?

There are other considerations. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told a crowd at the Hilton Garden Inn at Southpointe Tuesday that the game would attract 150,000 visitors to Pittsburgh. With our luck, they would all come by car, and the traffic jams would take a week to clear.

Goodell noted that Pittsburgh has about 6,000 fewer hotel rooms than would be needed to host the Super Bowl. Where would all those people sleep? Not in Washington County, for sure. The gas boom has been great for hotel business here, but finding an empty room here is a problem, as the organizers of the Pony League World Series know. They’re having a tough time finding beds for boys coming in August from as far away Austria and Taiwan.

And then, of course, there’s the weather. Goodell said: “We had our first cold-weather outdoor Super Bowl site in New York a couple of years ago. I think it was very successful. We missed the snow by about three hours. I woke up the next morning and saw six inches of snow. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

Imagine, snow. Shocking. In the Northeast. In February. Who would have thought?

If the Super Bowl does come to Pittsburgh, here’s our suggestion. Avoid the snow and traffic, fly to Miami and watch the game on TV.