Snow-verreaction at the Super Bowl?

With the midwestern United States buried under snow, and coming up with very creative phrases like "Snowpocalypse" and "Snowtorious B.I.G." to talk about it, Dallas has decided to join in on the fun...Super Bowl or no Super Bowl.

The snow is rather unfortunate for the city of Arlington at this time though. One of the main reasons the city agreed to help fund the $1 Billion-plus stadium was the idea that they'd make their money back when they got the Super Bowl and hundreds of thousands of tourists swarmed into the city to drop money on overpriced hotels, taxicabs and restaurants. You think I'm lying? Wikipedia knows the truth....

To aid Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones in paying the construction costs of the new stadium, Arlington voters approved the increase of the city's sales tax by 0.5 percent, the hotel occupancy tax by 2 percent, and car rental tax by 5 percent. The City of Arlington provided over $325 million (including interest) in bonds as funding.

Does that not sound like they were pushing all their chips into the middle of the table and better on the fact that they'd get a good return on their stadium investment during this week?

Well, now because of the inclement weather the news is flooded with stories of restaurant owners that expected to make nearly $1 Million this week and are now just hoping to make somewhere close to $100,000. Sports journalists have talked about everyone staying in their hotels to avoid the cold, and when they venture outside they find empty restaurants and worried business owners.

I've always been in that group of people that believe the Super Bowl should only be played in cities that get snow once every two or three decade (for an hour) to avoid situations like this, because now the entire city of Arlington is like a guy who put all of his money on the team that's down by 30 points at halftime. This is not going to end well, and in the next three seasons the league is hosting Super Bowls in Indianapolis (which currently looks like this) and New York (which currently looks like this). Oh boy.

More on this later today.....