Things are relatively quiet here in Phoenix. The media is drifting in and the crush of fans won’t start until later in the week, Thursday or Friday.

I often get asked about my favorite Super Bowl cities. I’ve been to a few of them, and I put New Orleans at the top of the list, followed by San Diego and, here’s a surprise entry in the competition, Minneapolis.

I’m not alone in thinking the Super Bowl should be permanently assigned to New Orleans. Many think this is because sports writers like to eat and it’s difficult to find a bad restaurant in New Orleans. They exist, but you’ve got to spend some time looking. And there are worse things to search for.

Another reason most writers and many fans like New Orleans is the compact nature of the area. On game day, you can walk to the Superdome. It’s a great luxury to be able to do that instead of taking a bus ride through heavy traffic. There have been some years when the teams were staying in hotels around the French Quarter and you could walk to the daily press conferences. That’s really nice.
New Orleans also could use the business right now.
San Diego is not compact and you spend a lot of time on buses during Super Bowl week. But the weather is unbelievable. The last time the game was there, Tampa beat Oakland, the weather was spectacular all week. You could not help but feel good mentally and physically after a week of that.
The problem with living in San Diego is that I understand it’s extremely expensive to live there.
I sometimes wonder why Eli Manning chose New York over San Diego. If you’re young, have plenty of money, and the first player taken in the draft will have plenty of money, wouldn’t you want to live in a place where the weather if perfect about 340 days of the year?
Not that I mean to say anything bad about New York. It’s a great place to visit.
The weather is unbelievable in Minneapolis, too, and not in a good way. There has been only one Super Bowl there, Washington beat Buffalo, and I doubt there will be another, at least not unless the Vikings get a new stadium, with 75,000 seats and ample luxury boxes.
The Minnesota legislature has been reluctant to sign-off on such a project, and there’s something to be said for that.
I don’t mind challenging weather. It makes you feel alive. Or something like that.
Another reason I like Minneapolis is that it has one of the great places to run of any NFL city. About 3 miles from downtown is Lake of the Isles Park. It’s a huge lake, sitting in the middle of a neighborhood that has houses similar to those you see on Monument Avenue, between Lombardy and Roseneath Road.
When you’re running out to the park, you go through the sculpture garden of the Walker Museum of Modern Art. There’s a huge cherry perched on a huge spoon in the sculpture garden, and it’s been there for decades.
When I was there for a Washington Redskins game in December, I took my Gore-Tex running pants, a heavy sweatshirt, extra gloves and a stocking camp so I could run to Lake of the Isles Park. It was worth squeezing all that stuff into my suitcase to make that run again.
The weather in Phoenix has cleared up considerably from Sunday’s rain. And Phoenix is not a bad place to visit. I’ve not been in the new stadium yet. We go there tomorrow for “Media Day.” Actually, Monday through Thursday are media days. Tomorrow is more of a picture day. That’s when they take the Super Bowl team picture.
OK, I’m going to sign off here. I’ll be back often this week. See you then.