Jason Kindig
Here’s a fun throwback to an article we wrote when North Texas was planning on hosting the XLV Superbowl in 2010. The Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25 and it happened in our backyard. It’s just too darn bad the Dallas Cowboys didn’t make it any farther that year, because they would’ve had home field advantage. With the big game merely days away, we thought it would be a neat look back at a time we were the center of the football universe. So, for all of you sports nerds, here is an article from our vaults that shows a time when Texas held a major sport game that didn’t have a single Texas team in it.
Countdown to Superbowl XLV
By Gail Bennison
“I submit if we can do this and do it right and set the bar as high as I know we are capable of setting it, then there is nothing we can’t do in the future. That includes making it extremely difficult for anyone who follows us, giving the NFL every reason to want to get this North Texas event in a regular rotation as soon as possible.”
— Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief
When five members of the North Texas Super Bowl Bid Committee, including legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, and Fort Worth’s First Lady, Rosie Moncrief, emerged from a hotel suite inNashville May 22, 2007, they literally were bringing home the bacon, or at least themost precious part, the pigskin.
After four rounds of balloting, National Football League Commissioners and 32 NFL owners passed over Phoenix and Indianapolis to select North Texas to host the most important sports event on the planet in 2011 — Super Bowl XLV.
On Feb. 6, 2011, a worldwide television audience in excess of a billion will be focused on Tarrant County.
This Super Bowl will generate hundreds of millions of dollars for North Texas cities and businesses. It already has created a unique harmony in a region of nearly 7 million people, and that will linger long after the final whistle on the field. It will position North Texas to attract nationally and internationally important sports, entertainment and cultural events, and destination tourism for years to come.
Economic impact estimates for Super Bowl XLV range from $350 million to $400 million, said David DuBois, Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau president and CEO.
“Suffice it to say, it’s an incredible impact,” he said.
The game will be played in the new $1 billion, three-million-square foot Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. With a seating capacity of around 100,000, the new retractable-roof stadium is state-of-the-art and will be the largest venue for a Super Bowl since the game was last played in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in 1993. There will be 14 major highway approaches into the new stadium. From a regional standpoint, it is one of the most accessible venues ever built.
Texas has hosted the Super Bowl twice — in Houston in 2004 in the Texans’ new stadium and in 1974 at Rice Stadium.
Jason Kindig
Community Opportunities
The NFL knows how to do Super Bowls but perhaps 80 percent of what happens in the host city — or cities in this case — is up to local leaders. First and foremost, this is an opportunity for North Texas to sell itself to the nation. But it also is a golden opportunity for the cities in North Texas to present themselves.
“The NFL puts on the game,” says Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Properties, and co-chair of the Committee’s Sponsorship Development Action Team. “The communities of North Texas are responsible for everything else. More than that, we’re trying to do it bigger and better than it’s ever been done before.”
An impressive 250-member Host Committee is in place to help plan the first Super Bowl ever hosted by North Texas.
Leaders of four counties — Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant — share responsibilities ranging from public safety and transportation to volunteer recruitment and encouraging emerging businesses. The committee is divided into action teams, or standing committees, which include a 112-member Council of Mayors, the first such council in the history of the Super Bowl.
It was important when the NFL designated Fort Worth as the official AFC championship city and Dallas the NFC city because it gave the two largest cities a platform on which to build throughout 2010 toward the game in 2011.
Many are involved, but there are five key leaders of Fort Worth’s effort — Mayor Mike Moncrief and First Lady Rosie Moncrief; Johnny Campbell, president and CEO of Sundance Square; Convention & Visitors Bureau Chief David DuBois; and Pam Minick, director of marketing for the renowned entertainment venue, Billy Bob’s Texas located in the Historic Fort Worth Stockyards. The mayor serves on the Super Bowl Host Committee Board and is a member of the Executive Committee. Rosie Moncrief and Pam Minick serve on the Host Committee Board.
Jason Kindig
Fort Worth in Position
City leaders say that Fort Worth is perfectly poised to host the expected quarter of a million visitors to the area during Super Bowl XLV.
Fort Worth is the fifth largest city in Texas and the 17th largest in the nation. It’s a city steeped in western heritage and rich in culture. It’s also a city with a beautiful downtown; and glittering Sundance Square is the heartbeat.
The city is home to the Historic Fort Worth Stockyards and Fort Worth Stock Show, which next year will run from Jan. 14 - Feb. 6. Unfortunately, the show’s rodeo finals conflict with the Super Bowl game, but officials are aware of the potential.
“With the nation’s eye on North Texas, it’s a very unique opportunity to showcase the by then 115-year-old Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo, the oldest Stock Show in the country, as well as shine a remarkable light on the sport of professional rodeo,” said Bradford S. Barnes, executive vice president and general manager. “After all, Fort Worth is where the West begins.”
But Fort Worth is not only Western. It also prides itself on some of the most incredible museum districts in the country and a world-class zoo, all attractions for the visitors the Super Bowl will draw.
“This Super Bowl win is a touchdown for our city — and for everyone in North Texas,” said the Fort Worth mayor.
“The NFL ‘gets’ that this is going to be addressed as a regional effort,” Moncrief said. “It is not the Dallas Super Bowl. It is not the Arlington Super Bowl. It is not the Fort Worth Super Bowl. It’s the North Texas Super Bowl.”
“I submit if we can do this and do it right and set the bar as high as I know we are capable of setting it, then there is nothing we can’t do in the future,” he said. “That includes making it extremely difficult for anyone who follows us, giving the NFL every reason to want to get this North Texas event in a regular rotation as soon as possible.”
Arlington mayor Dr. Robert Cluck agrees.
“The North Texas Super Bowl is about regionality,” he said. “The economic advantage will go throughout North Texas, and I’m just really proud of that… We want people, whether they’re local or coming from out of state or out of the country, to feel that they’re unique and treated with kindness and respect. This is what it’s all about. If we do a good job at that, we will get a Super Bowl every four or five years.”
The Gaylord Texan, located in Tarrant County, is the official hotel of the Dallas Cowboys and has been designated as the corporate hotel for the Super Bowl.
Getting a Super Bowl is one thing, says Grapevine Mayor William D. Tate, but then reality sets in.
“You’ve gone through a lot of excitement and then, you think, boy, the time is passing really quick,” he said. “But the cities will be ready. Grapevine will be ready. We are neatly poised to be a part of this great event for North Texas. It’s the first and hopefully, one of many of the benefits from the Cowboys Stadium, and Dallas and Tarrant County, and the cities working together.”
He, too, stressed the regional impact.
“Great lengths have been taken to make this a regional production,” Tate said. “We’re very excited to be included, and we’re very grateful that we have some of the assets and facilities that allow us to benefit and have worldwide recognition.”
Jason Kindig
Planning Ahead
In late 2007, Bill Lively became the Super Bowl Host Committee volunteer president and CEO. He went full-time in January 2009, overseeing day-to-day business operations and reporting to the Host Committee and its chairman, Roger Staubach.
“When I first became involved, I saw this football game as a catalyst to unite this region like it’s never been done before,” Lively said. “And you know what? It’s happening, and it’s exciting. Mayors are uniting, and the lines that separate us are being blurred. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the mayors have made good progress over the last nine months.
“We’ve got good people involved from all over North Texas. These people understand that it’s a moment in time,” Lively said. “There’ll be more Super Bowls for sure in this stadium. When you have the first one, that’s when you make history. Everything we’re doing is building a template for this game and the ones that will follow. And there’s no margin for error.”
At stake are other major events such as perhaps a World Cup or an Olympics.
“We have a strong financial base,” Lively said. “We’ve raised $15.5 million of corporate underwriting so far and a big chunk of that has come from Fort Worth companies, which is very significant. At the end of our first full year of our expanded Host Committee’s operation, we feel very good about the progress made. We attribute it to the spirit of the region.”
Key Player
Part of that is due to Hillwood’s Mike Berry.
“He’s taking this as something that is historic and significant. He understands that, and he has really opened up doors for us in Fort Worth to visit with corporate CEOs," Lively said.
Berry’s original involvement was through Hillwood’s commitment to be a founding sponsor early on in the formation of the Host Committee.
“The team we’ve put together is doing a heck of a job,” Berry said.
“Basically, we sell packages to raise the money that we as a region have committed to the NFL. You’re buying more than a package of assets — tickets and advertising. You’re buying into this effort and there’s also a community piece to it. The leads that come out of the Host Committee’s work are pretty substantial.”
It is about organization and looking to the future, Berry said.
“To me, it’s about getting in a core group of community leaders, both private individuals and corporations across the whole region who are building a system of relationships and infrastructure and organization that has a chance to become something that lives beyond Super Bowl,” Berry said. “If this organization is successful, and we do a great job at Super Bowl XLV, the organization that’s left behind can then become the organization that can chase the next Super Bowl. It could truly become a marketing and relationship body that can keep the region together for a lot of different activities,” he said.
Staubach agrees.
“The Super Bowl Host Committee wants to make Super Bowl XLV a very rewarding event for North Texas and for the National Football League so they will come back to our great region,” he said. “ Our main goal is to make sure that NFL is happy and in turn, they bring the Super Bowl back for future games.”
The level of potential exposure is stunning.
“We have the capability on this one day in time to basically reach out and touch up to a billion people,” said Rosie Moncrief. “This absolutely is the best thing ever to come to North Texas.”
And there is a lot to sell.
“Here in Fort Worth we have one of the most vibrant and safe downtowns anywhere in America. We are blessed to have a city core where a guest can come in, park his car in his hotel garage downtown, and never have to retrieve his car until he leaves our city. Where else can you find that?” she said.
“We have one of the most incredible museum districts in the world, and it’s ever-growing. We have the Historic Stockyards with that true Western heritage that we’re so proud of and that we preserve, but we also have Sundance Square, one of the most respected and successful downtown business areas of any place in the nation.”
Not-so-secret Weapon
Johnny Campbell, president and CEO of Sundance Square, likes the sound of that.
“Now you know I have no bias in this whatsoever, but Fort Worth is the best city in the region,” Campbell said. “I have never been to a city where the connection of the community to its downtown is anything like it is in Fort Worth.”
And that is a sales tool.
“We are already seeing meeting planners and a number of corporate groups, including the NFL, that are interested in doing an array of events and meetings in downtown Fort Worth for Super Bowl. If they don’t already know what the locals know, they will quickly learn what the locals know,” Campbell said. “And that is, if you want to connect with Tarrant County and Fort Worth on a public high-profile center-of-the-universe kind of level, that’s going to occur in Sundance Square. And the locals probably knew that before I did.”
It makes recruiting easy.
“All I have to do is let them walk the streets of Sundance Square. The selling does itself,” he said. “This Super Bowl effort is going to be the opportunity to introduce itself in that same way to people who have not had a chance to visit Fort Worth — yet.
“Folks look at downtown and they think ‘Wow. It’s clean. It’s beautiful. It’s got this mix of architecture.’ But let me tell you the other thing it has,” Campbell said. “It has the strongest commercial, residential and retail occupancy of anywhere else in this part of the country.”
“There’s a difference between unity of purpose and single-mindedness. In Fort Worth, everyone has a common purpose — the Fort Worth way. Everyone in Fort Worth also has the Super Bowl on their master calendar,” he said. “We’re just beginning to see the sheer scale of impact.”
Bonus Christmas
On an average February day, Fort Worth hotels will have a 50 percent occupancy rate. But that won’t be the case next February. Fort Worth has 13,000 rooms in its city inventory, and the NFL will block most of the rooms in the immediate downtown area.
DuBois, of the Convention & Visitors Bureau, anticipates filling 30,000 “room nights” over a four-day period then — close to $9 million in hotel revenue alone.
“It could be a $20 million week for us. I don’t know. I’ll tell you afterwards,” DuBois said with a smile. “I can tell you this: It’s going to be like Christmas in February. Our downtown marketing theme is ‘You Get It When You Get Here.’ We’re not going to be presumptuous by any means, but we’re pretty confident that Fort Worth will do very well.”
Sundance and the Stockyards will fill up on the Friday and Saturday night before, he says.
“But we’re going to build a database of the corporate executives who come here. We’d like to have at least 50 companies visit because on Monday, guess what? They will leave and say, ‘Wow, this was awesome. Let’s bring our national sales meeting here. Let’s bring our training programs here. Let’s bring our annual convention here. Let’s relocate and have a North Texas office here.’ So, our goal is to maximize this opportunity with a high percentage of Fortune 500 companies’ executives represented in our city,” DuBois said.
Most Super Bowl Host Committees pool resources with the NFL to generate events in their respective cities or regions during the week before the Super Bowl.
The North Texas Host Committee has planned a year-long countdown, the keystone of which is the 2010 Kick-Off Concert Series, which features internationally renowned performers. Three concerts will comprise the series: Faith Hill on March 6 at Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall; Sting, on May 22, at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas; and on Sept. 10, the grand finale act — a performer is yet to be announced — at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.
The three-pronged concert has been packaged as a subscription, which basically is a ticket that gets you into all three concerts. The Host Committee has 1,900 subscription tickets to sell. That’s the seating capacity of Bass Performance Hall. Subscription holders will have the best seats at the finale at Cowboys Stadium. Beyond that, to fill the stadium, tickets will go on sale to the general public. Information is available at www.northtexassuperbowl.com/xlvinsider/concert-series/update/update.html
The Host Committee will hold its gala at world-famous Billy Bob’s Texas in the Fort Worth Stockyards on Thursday before the Super Bowl game.
“When people go to Miami for a Super Bowl, they go to the beach,” said Billy Bob’s marketing director, Pam Minick. “When they come to Tarrant County, they come to Billy Bob’s to do some two-stepping. We’re the real deal here in the Stockyards. It’s not what we do; it’s who we are.”
She’s confident Billy Bob’s and other venues in the Stockyards will get a lot of corporate parties and individual visitors.
“But for me, putting on my marketing hat, it’s not about what happens that week,” Minick said. “It’s about what happens during the four or five years after that. People are going to see Fort Worth on television, feel the flavor and want to come here as a destination. I think the ones who visit will come back. If they haven’t thought of Fort Worth as a vacation destination, they will after this trip.”
Jason Kindig
Getting There and Back
Michael Morris, director of transportation for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, chairs the Host Committee’s Transportation Action Team.
Morris has promised a Super Bowl with rail for transportation to the game from both Fort Worth and Dallas. Initiatives include promoting the Tom Landry Highway and showcasing transportation companies in the region during the week of Super Bowl.
“We’ve been meeting for over 10 months now putting regional transportation plans together. This has been a very positive and productive experience,” he said.
Staging a great Super Bowl is important, says legendary former Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith.
“Anytime you have an opportunity to host a Super Bowl, you want to put your best foot forward and establish a great experience for the businesses coming from around the world to see a super Super Bowl,” he said.
“It’s our job as the Super Bowl Host Committee to provide a unique experience for them. Hopefully that experience goes off without any hitches, and we will have the NFL say, ‘Wow, what an experience in North Texas. That’s one of the best Super Bowl experiences I’ve ever had in my entire life. We need to come back here again,’” Smith said.
“I believe it will be the best,” he said. “You know they do everything big here in Texas.”
Mayor Moncrief said that North Texas leaders understand how the region is turning into a megatropolis and growth is moving east to west.
“Our city limits and county lines are becoming blurred,” he said. “We are very much affected by the ripple effect of ‘what happens in Dallas affects Fort Worth, what happens in Fort Worth affects Dallas, what happens in Denton affects Bedford, and so on,’ ” Moncrief said. “We are interdependent.”
Still, Fort Worth could not find itself in a better position.
“Obviously, it is of tremendous benefit to our city with the new stadium being in Arlington, which, of course, is in Tarrant County, and also geographically closer to Fort Worth than it is to Dallas. It is no accident that we have the third busiest airport on the planet,” he said. "All of that bodes well when you lay out the visual for potential venues that are coming to North Texas, to understand the region.”
Moncrief says the best way to visualize the North Texas Super Bowl is to imagine a gridiron.
“The West goal post is Fort Worth where the AFC champions will be staying in our new Omni Hotel. Fort Worth will host the AFC Fan Party. The AFC team will practice at Texas Christian University,” he said.
“The East goal post is Dallas. Dallas will host the NFC Fan Party. The NFC team will be staying at the Omni Mandalay in Los Colinas, and will practice at the Dallas Cowboys facilities in Valley Ranch.
“The 50-yard line is Arlington, and the stadium itself, where the game will be played,” Moncrief said. “Smaller cities are also very much a part.”
Major Event in Fort Worth
A huge part of the Super Bowl experience is the Taste of the NFL, a charity event held on the night before the Super Bowl.
On Feb. 5, 2011, the event will celebrate its 20th anniversary in the Fort Worth Convention Center. Each NFL team will feature a chef with a specialty from each team’s market, as well as a team Legacy player to sign autographs. Area chefs will showcase their food. A silent auction and a concert complete the experience. About 30 percent of the funds raised at this event will go to North Texas food banks. The rest will go to food banks across the country. It is anticipated that the event will raise $1 million during Super Bowl XLV.
It will be a busy night for Kirk Slaughter, director of Public Facilities and Events for the city of Fort Worth. His responsibilities include the Will Rogers Memorial Center and the Fort Worth Convention Center.
“The folks who put this on are really good at what they do,” Slaughter said. “Everything is volunteered, and they have a true passion for helping. We’re really fortunate to be hosting this at the Convention Center. I’ve had an opportunity to attend one of these, and it’s very well-managed and put together, and a lot of fun.”
He gives Mike and Rosie Moncrief much credit.
“They’ve been engaged 100 percent and are making things happen,” he said. “Getting the Taste of the NFL to Fort Worth was one of those things.”
Rosie Moncrief is excited about this particular event, she said, because she likes things that touch the community in a very special way.
“We are in a down economy right now, and we have a lot of families that are suffering,” Moncrief said. “That means that by purchasing a ticket to this event that’s so much fun, you will be touching the lives of thousands of people. To me, that is one of the significant things that happen as being part of the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee. I can guarantee that the Taste will be big, and it will be memorable.”
We Got the Ball. Now What?
Rosie Moncrief said that one of the most exciting times in her life was being a part of the bid committee but the gravity of hosting a Super Bowl started to sink in on the plane ride from Nashville back to Texas.
“When we went through the bid process, we knew that we were counting on our communities in the North Texas region,” she said.
“We have to work in total concert and cooperation with the Host Committee,” Moncrief said. “But we also have to go to our respective cities and energize the people. If we don’t, it’s like expecting to win the lottery without purchasing a lottery ticket.”
With the team that Fort Worth has assembled, that’s unlikely. It’s more like they bought all the tickets in the store.
It’s because they have something to sell.
“Fort Worth is not a city in Texas,” Rosie Moncrief says. “Fort Worth is a city that is Texas.”
Maybe a billion people will know that come next February.
