Could Detroit Host Another Super Bowl?

Photo Credit: Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports

Prior to Super Bowl XLVII I was thinking back to the week leading up to Super Bowl XL and hoped that the Super Bowl would one day return to Detroit. The Motor City will never be in the league’s preferred rotation of New Orleans, South Florida and Arizona, but it would be nice to know that hosting Super Bowl XL was more than a token gesture to help get Ford Field built.

Maybe it is naive to believe, or even hope, that Detroit has a chance to host a future Super Bowl without the allure of a new stadium. After all, the NFL employs two powerful tactics when trying to get public money to finance stadium construction or major renovation projects: the threat of relocation and the Super Bowl.

Future Super Bowls will be spread between cities that see sun in early February and those that undertake large stadium projects. That seems to leave Detroit out in the cold.

The possibility of Detroit hosting another Super Bowl was among the topics Tom Lewand commented on yesterday. Here is the meat courtesy of Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press:

"I think that that’s something that has really become more of a community effort and a regional effort than it was when we hosted in 2006. Is that something that we would be interested in participating in if the community was interested? Absolutely. But again, there’s a lot of work that would have to be done on that front. There’s a lot of commitments that are out there already for Super Bowls and ones where new stadiums are coming online, where those communities are going to really be interested and I would think the NFL would be interested in treating them much as we were treated back in ’06."

I tend to be an optimistic person but I’m not reading the quote and finding much to grasp on to believe another Super Bowl is coming to Detroit any time soon. Super Bowl hosts have already been awarded through 2016 and Detroit is not being considered for the 2017 and 2018 Super Bowls that will be awarded this spring. If you’re looking for Detroit to make a bid for 2018, consider that the new stadium in Minneapolis would likely be given preference. That being the case, how favorably would the NFL view two Super Bowls in cold weather cities within even a few years of each other? Not very.

Lewand’s comments make it obvious that any future effort to land a Super Bowl will have to be community-driven. Detroit has a lot of issues to worry about attention can be diverted to chasing a Super Bowl.

Is there a chance Detroit hosts a Super Bowl in the next decade? Never say never but to me, it looks like a Lloyd Christmas type chance than something the fine people of Southeast Michigan should start anticipating.