By PAUL KUHARSKY
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The city of Nashville, the Titans and the NFL are understandably excited that Super Bowl LXVI is coming.
At a Wednesday morning press conference, officials from the league, the team, the city and the state pledged to make it the best Super Bowl in history, an understandable vow given the massive spectacle of the game, the city’s big-event mojo and the expectations for new Nissan Stadium.
They are talking about the week’s experience, not strictly the game.
Nashville sold the NFL on more than a shiny new venue. The league already knew the city could stage a giant football event after the 2019 Draft drew enormous crowds downtown. Combined with the new enclosed stadium, a dense entertainment district and the city’s tourism infrastructure, the bid checked nearly every modern Super Bowl box.
But in discussing it all, I felt they may have pushed too far.
“Looking ahead to 2030, there is no doubt that Nashville is going to reinvent the game for the Super Bowl and redefine what a Super Bowl means in the same way that we did as a community with the 2019 NFL Draft,” Titans president and CEO Burke Nihill said. “We are going to have 100s of millions of people across 100s of countries get a glimpse of what makes this city and state remarkable.”
Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s Executive Vice President fof Club Business, International & League Events, said 2019 was a game-changer for the NFL Draft that reset the bar.
“Super Bowl LXIV will be another game-changer for Nashville, Tennessee, another game-changer for the Super Bowl, another game-changer for the NFL,” he said, citing numerous opportunities to raise the bar.
The Super Bowl is a very healthy entity and I think reinventing or redefining it to any notable degree is an incredibly ambitious goal. Nashville wants to elevate the event, but where exactly can it go?
I suppose, however, we can’t imagine what that would look like until we see it.
Nihill and O’Reilly made those initial comments from the stage, and were both asked for more detail in a question afterward.
“There are nuts and bolts things about a Super Bowl that won’t change,” he said. “I’m a fan of the phrase, ‘The light bulb wasn’t invented by the continuous improvement of the candle.’ And I think there are a lot of businesses and organizations and probably cities that think about how they can incrementally improve a candle and I think Nashville has this light bulb mentality.
“What are the pieces that you need to put into a Super Bowl to have a Super Bowl be successful, to meet the NFL’s expectations. But also, let’s not start with a base understanding of how it’s always been done. How can we create something new that’s very different?”
O’Reilly said it’s also about what’s left behind after the game, what Nihill called “legacy assets” – and the essence of the city with its special sauce of creativity, music and more.
“Yes, you’re playing a 60-minute football game in a stadium,” he said. “I think the changes come with everything that goes around it that entire week and thinking about what that experience is for the fans who may not be in that stadium but can touch and feel that Super Bowl in the entire week leading up. …It’s thinking about what is the legacy, what can we do that can go well beyond the whistle?”
Here’s to Nashville’s light bulbs. I’m all about the city hitting on new things, as it did with the draft. But a roving player selection show was a concept in its infancy in 2019, and the Super Bowl will turn 64-years-old in February of 2030.
I don’t know how much can be reimagined. But the big game requires a big scope and big talk, and we’re officially at that stage.