In a sporting coup, Michael Bidwell brings the Pro Bowl to Glendale a week before the Super Bowl.
If Arizona Cardinals president Michael Bidwill doesn’t make history by both hosting and winning Super Bowl XLIX, he’ll get something of a consolation prize – several Cardinals would likely play before a home crowd at the Pro Bowl in Glendale on January 25.
Not bad, but Bidwell would prefer the Super Bowl.
“We still have a lot more football to play, so we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves,” says Bidwell, whose club looked on-track to make the NFC playoffs with a month left in the regular season. “But of course, you think about the possibilities.”
Hosting the 2015 Pro Bowl was Bidwill’s idea. The game, which is typically played at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, wasn’t yet committed to a venue when Bidwill flew to New York about two years ago to meet with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The league was looking for ways to increase the all-star scrimmage’s appeal and Bidwill thought hosting it in the same city as the Super Bowl would accomplish that.
“I thought that Arizona would be a perfect place to have the game, not only because of our weather but for NFL fans,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to get to Arizona, the weather is perfect, it’s the week before the Super Bowl so there’s a lot of excitement here and we’ve got a terrific infrastructure for tourism. Commissioner Goodell was open to the concept, subject to the details, so we put together how it would look on paper, sent it off and they decided it was something they wanted to do.”
The 2015 Pro Bowl will be only the second Pro Bowl not played in Hawaii since 1980 – Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens hosted the game in 2010 – and just the third played in the same city as the Super Bowl. The Los Angeles Coliseum hosted the first Super Bowl on January 15, 1967, and the Pro Bowl the following week. South Florida hosted the Pro Bowl a week before Super Bowl XLIV in 2010.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority said the 2014 Pro Bowl generated nearly $72 million in direct visitor spending, including spending by people who traveled with Pro Bowl attendees.
Neither Bidwill nor David Rousseau, chairman of the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee, had economic-impact projections for the Arizona Pro Bowl, but Bidwill says the benefits – specifically the exposure for the state and the Valley – will outweigh the costs.
Bidwill makes it clear that this is a one-time opportunity, at least for now. The NFL already announced the Pro Bowl would return to Aloha Stadium in 2016 and, per an agreement between the league and Hawaii, the 2017 game is expected to be played there as well, although final confirmation will be made at a later date.
The Pro Bowl is the most watched all-star game in professional sports. Last season, 11.4 million people tuned in. Still, the NFL has not been happy with its entertainment value. Because of the low stakes and ever-present risk of injury, players hit and hustle with less gusto, creating a well-behaved affair that the Associated Press once likened to a “pillow fight.” And because the game is played so close to the Super Bowl, players from the two Super Bowl teams – by definition, the season’s most All-Pro-caliber players – do not participate, saving their energy for the pursuit of the Lombardi Trophy.
The league has tried various measures to make the Pro Bowl more entertaining. Last season, players were selected without regard to conference and then drafted onto two teams. The NFL will utilize the same format in Glendale.
If the Arizona Cardinals advance to the Super Bowl, they would become the first team to host a Super Bowl in their own stadium. Either way, at least some Cardinals will be playing football in the final two weeks of the NFL season.
“With the Pro Bowl being here it kind of sucks because me and my wife (Antonique), we love going to Hawaii,” says Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson, who was selected to the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons – twice as a cornerback, once as a kick returner. “But hopefully I won’t be playing in the Pro Bowl because we want to be in the Super Bowl. And if I am fortunate enough to play in the Pro Bowl, it will be good to sleep in my own bed.”
