What? Do you mean to tell me that professional football players can't play in the snow?
Part of the reason football is such an intriguing sport is that it's - mostly - an outdoor game during some of the roughest months. It's a game where you aren't just making adjustments based on your opponent; you're making adjustments to the environment as well. Consider the classic (even if more controversial) Snow Bowl between the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots. Perhaps the biggest travesty is that we only remember this game for the one controversial call, and not for just how brutal this game was. Even Raiders fans should probably be able to admit that it was a great game - a true classic (even if they won't get over the tuck rule).
So how sloppy of a game was it? The Patriots fumbled the ball three times losing none of them (think about that some time, Raiders fans). The Raiders? They didn't turn the ball over once. Rich Gannon completed 54.8% of his passes for just 159 yards, but threw one touchdown. Not a great performance from a guy who completed 65.8% of his passes during the regular season. Ok, so it's easy to blame the weather. It is legitimately difficult to throw and catch in those conditions. Obviously, the snow impacted Rich Gannon - an MVP candidate having a phenomenal year. Surely, the new-to-the-scene, playing-in-a-game-too-big-for-him, not-asked-to-do-much Tom Brady would have fared equally poorly, right? And yet, Tom Brady completed 61.5% of his passes for 312 yards. Not bad for a guy who completed 63.9% of his passes in the regular season and was ALSO dealing with the SAME conditions. Similarly, two of the greatest receivers in NFL history - Jerry Rice and Tim Brown - had a combined 9 catches for 90 yards. Conversely, the top receivers for New England - David Patten and Jermaine Wiggins - combined for twice as many catches (18 - 10 for Wiggens, 8 for Patten) and almost twice as many yards (175).
Point being, the Patriots played pretty efficiently in some pretty brutal snow. The Raiders did not. However, BOTH teams had to account for it. The Patriots made better adjustments than the Raiders.
[EDIT: So, apparently I was misremembering this game. I've just found it online and rewatched it. These numbers are a bit deceptive because both quarterbacks actually looked pretty solid despite the snow. There were a few drops, but not a ton. In the end, the Raiders offense actually looked pretty good. The Patriots secondary had more to do with with the offensive issues than the snow. Brady, meanwhile, actually looked pretty pedestrian for a while. Most of his missed passes were just on bad overthrows which looked more the sign of a second year quarterback with limited experience than an issue with the snow. But if you are able to go back and watch that game, you might notice that while the weather does impact the game, it actually doesn't impact it as greatly as you might think. The biggest play that really stood out was on a Raiders punt when a rookie on coverage lost track of where the endzone was, kept backing up, then waited to touch it when it was past the goal line despite have a huge opportunity to down it within New England's 2 yard line. Hard to blame him, even though he was a rookie, given how confusing the field looked with all the snow.]
Or what about that crazy game between the Green Bay Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1985 in which 4-5 inches of snow fell and the Packers still gained 512 yards of total offense with quarterback Lynn Dickey throwing for almost 300 yards? Tampa didn't do so well, of course. They were shut out 21-0 and gained a mere 65 yards of total offense.
Again, BOTH teams had to account for it. The Packers did.
The difference is, of course, that the Packers/Bucs was a regular season game where even though it was sold out, only about a third of the ticket buyers attended. The Patriots/Raiders game is more meaningful though as it was a playoff game. And it was sold out - and everyone attended. This, of course, would be the primary concern for the NFL. If you were to schedule the Super Bowl in a cold weather environment and it snowed, would people still show up? It seems pretty obvious that the answer is unequivocally yes! It's the flipping Super Bowl!
To my mind, football is all about adjustments. It's not just adjusting to what your opponent puts in front of you; it's also adjusting to circumstances, to environments, to crowds, et cetera. These are all important factors in which the best team must overcome these. If a team like the Denver Broncos or the New Orleans Saints (teams we currently think of as "warm weather teams") NEED to play indoors or in 60-70 degree temperature, then they are not the best teams now, are they? This has always been an annoying argument to me - the idea that a cold weather Super Bowl would somehow be unfair toward teams that are built for warm weather. Frankly, the gradual removal of "the elements" from football has been one of the worst changes in the sport. Wouldn't putting all these Super Bowls in warm weather conditions ALL the time put teams from the north at a disadvantage since they tend to be built a little more for cold weather?
I didn't play collegiate football, but I did play in high school. Granted, we never played past November, but I'll tell you, it gets cold in November here in Massachusetts! I've played in a few snow games. It's tough and challenging. It's what football is all about. We like to complain about "player safety" rules as though they are watering down the toughness of the sport, but what about trying to keep this nice and easy conditions? Isn't that doing the same thing?
So the Super Bowl will be played in New Jersey. New York City might look like this in February:
While reporters and analysts (and I'm sure some overly privileged modern NFL players) are complaining about it, I say, "Good!" Football is a tough sport. It's supposed to be. It's not just tough because of the physicality. It's tough because of the crowds and the intelligence of coaches and - most importantly - the environment. Maybe I'm in a minority, but weather should be a factor! Consider how classic these games were or just how awesome these photos are:
Don't you just look at those and go, "YEAH! FOOTBALL!"
All this talk of how great it is to play the toughest sport in the country in these nice and pristine and - in some cases - artificial conditions for "ideal football" (which really just means "easy, passing-friendly football")? It just makes me think that the NFL is really this:
I mean, c'mon. If the US Men's Soccer Team can play and win in these conditions, any football team should be able to.
(P.S. That's not meant as a knock on soccer. Just saying that in a sport where ground conditions greatly impact the game, they can play on the snow while in the NFL, we're complaining that they might have to play in snow.)
It's football. What happened to it?
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