Super Bowl XIX / Stanford Stadium question

[ChrisBabcock]

Thinking about the fact that we just had the 2nd Super Bowl to be played in the Bay area got me thinking about the first one. What was the logic at the time in selecting Stanford Stadium instead of Candlestick? Was it a question of capacity? Stanford would have probably seated a lot more because of Candlestick's football/baseball configuration.

[Gary Najman]

Yes, it was the capacity. In those years Stanford Stadium seated nearly 85,000 people (while Candlestick Park seated 63,000) and it was similar to the Rose Bowl or the LA Coliseum in configuration. IIRC it did not had artificial lights, so they had to be put in the stadium for the Super Bowl (and in my opinion, the lights were terrible, the poorest-lit Super Bowl since they began to start late in the afternoon).

[Andrew McKillop]

Yes, it was the capacity. In those years Stanford Stadium seated nearly 85,000 people (while Candlestick Park seated 63,000) and it was similar to the Rose Bowl or the LA Coliseum in configuration. IIRC it did not had artificial lights, so they had to be put in the stadium for the Super Bowl (and in my opinion, the lights were terrible, the poorest-lit Super Bowl since they began to start late in the afternoon).

The fog also didn't help matters but it wasn't exactly like Wrigley Field in December.
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news- ... /502198888

[BD Sullivan]

The game was awarded on December 14, 1982, with Pete Rozelle commenting on the decision:

"Stanford has great tradition. We like to move the game around the country and San Francisco, we feel, is an attractive city in which to have the game"

While it presumably didn't factor into the final decision, Rozelle got the attention to the NFL with his work as SID at the U. of San Francisco in the early 1950's.

The supposed risk at the time was that the Bay Area was coming off one of the wettest January's on record.

Finally, this interesting factoid was part of the article I got the above info from:

Rozelle said that the conference championship games would be held (as usual) at the home of the team with the best records. There had been speculation when the strike ended that the two games would be held at the Superdome. The article states only that, "The NFL could not make arrangements with the arena for those contests."

[luckyshow]

I lived near Stanford at that time. Just north in Menlo Park. What I remember is the discrepancy between what the media was portraying in the weeks before the Super Bowl as to the area's interplay with the event, and the reality in Palo Alto and the effected communities.

All the "hoopla" was (supposedly) in The City, 60 miles north. Across El Camino from the stadium. From the big corporate tents on the plentiful green expanses of Stanford....were vendors on the corner hawking souvenirs. Both NFL approved and not. On the busy shopping streets of Palo Alto and Menlo Park, in Mountain View, et al, the interplay with the Super Bowl gestalt was so negligible. You wouldn't know the vaunted Super Bowl was in town. Yes, everyone was hyped, the Niners were going for another one. What a team. Winners who were all nice guys. Or seemed so. But the craziness was reserved for the tents. Where I watched the first half. I worked in radio.

I don't remember the halftime show. Was it Prince?

How many Super Bows have been played at non-NFL stadiums>

[superbowlfanatic]

All of the different NFL/Rozelle/Super Bowl histories that I have read point to Rozelle, and that it was his personal wish to have a Super Bowl played in what he considered to be this picturesque site.
The stadium did host one Niners' regular season game, after the 1989 earthquake moved it away from Candlestick Park.

[conace21]

I can only think of Stanford Stadium and the Rose Bowl.

[Andrew McKillop]

Don't forget about Rice Stadium in Houston. A few years after the Oilers moved out it was the venue for SB VIII.