Jack McCaffery with a characteristically wrong-headed piece about why Philadelphia has never hosted a Super Bowl:
In a chilly climate, in anything but a vacation destination, in a mini sports complex in the suburbs of Dallas hard by a Walmart, more than 100,000 will watch the Super Bowl Sunday. Why couldn't Philadelphia have been a Super Bowl site? Because Philadelphia has spent decades butchering its sports complex and thus its opportunity to host such an event. That's why. Understanding the century he was in, Jerry Jones ordered up the most spectacular of six-figure-capacity domed palaces for his Cowboys. Already, he has lassoed in the Super Bowl and has become a real threat to Las Vegas boxing with the ability to put on mega-shows. By contrast, Philadelphia bulldozed 100,000-seat JFK Stadium and replaced it with a hockey arena 10 inches from a perfectly useful hockey arena. Gone was Philadelphia as a world destination for the mega-rock concert. Eventually, the Linc rose for outdoor football, and mostly to yawns.Wrong, wrong wrong. The reason Philadelphia hasn't hosted a Super Bowl has nothing to do with the inadequacies of the Linc- it's because it's a cold-weather city, and cold weather cities without domes don't generally get Super Bowls. New York got one for a few years from now, but I've got a feeling if it's even a little bit cold that week it'll be the last cold weather Super Bowl for awhile. Not to mention, Philadelphia isn't "gone... as a world destination for mega-rock concerts"- the city was the U.S. host for Live 8 a few years ago.
Is McCaffrey suggesting that the city should've left the Spectrum and JFK Stadium standing forever? Wasn't JFK condemned 25 years ago? And sure, if Philly had built a covered stadium in place of the Linc, it probably would've gotten a Super Bowl- but would that have been worth having a dome?