As a Host City, San Diego Earns Excellent Marks

Welcome to 1988.

Forget what the calendar says. It just arrived Monday. At least in San Diego.

This city has been in its own time warp or ozone since 1987 ended. It went from ’87 to XXII and now on to ’88.

Life can now resume.

But wasn’t XXII nice while it lasted?

Ah, the Super Bowl was like a pleasant-though-frenzied guest, a little bit like entertaining a hyper nephew. XXII had to be kept busy, but we enjoyed ourselves and discovered new things about our city and county in the process.

When it went away, it left a letdown--maybe drained--feeling. A vacuum. It had been so all-encompassing.

XXII will be missed.

And remembered.

It is hoped another of these Roman-numerated visitors will be here in the future. XXIII will be in Miami in 1989, followed by XXIV in New Orleans in 1990 and XXV in Tampa in 1991. That would leave it for San Diego to compete with a so-called “Northern Tier” city--such as Seattle, Indianapolis or Detroit--and the Rose Bowl’s 103,000 seats for XXVI or XXVII.

However, a Super Bowl bid should be easier to get the second time around. San Diego no longer has to go before the National Football League owners with grandiose tales of what it would do if it ever got the game.

It need say only one thing.

Remember XXII.

San Diego did a job and pulled it off. The NFL, naturally, had input and impact on many functions, but someone had to execute the game plan. San Diego did.

Let’s look at a Super Bowl XXII report card:

Weather: A+

Skillfully planned. Get the rain and winds and sub-freezing weather out of the way ahead of time. Put together shirt-sleeve weather for Super Bowl week and then let it rain the day after most visitors had left town. Marvelous.

Festivities: A

They ran the gamut from wide-open public functions to the most exclusive private affairs. A hangar on the North Island Naval Base adapted quite well as a site for Pete Rozelle’s annual Friday night hoedown, and that shindig is a very vital part of the week from the NFL’s standpoint. The smaller parties, in essence, can be held in any ballroom of any hotel anywhere.

What I appreciated most was that folks who did not want or could not afford to cough up $50 to $100 for an event could be a party to the most spectacular pregame extravaganza. That would have been the Friday night fireworks and laser show over the harbor. After all, XXII belonged to everyone, not just to a fortunate few.

Transportation: A

This well-oiled machine was made more efficient by the fact that San Diego is so compact. The suburbs are getting so that they sprawl a bit, but the heart of the city is a tight web.

Consider that in the past, headquarters hotels, media hotels, practice fields, amusement parks, shopping areas, restaurants and the stadium itself have been spread over city and even county lines. Visitors to other Super Bowls have had to resign themselves to spending good chunks of their days getting from place to place.

Not so in San Diego. When someone asks me how long it will take to get from downtown to the stadium or the stadium to the beach or San Diego State to La Jolla or almost any Point A to Point B hereabouts, the answer is 20 minutes. It’s never off by much.

Traffic: A

Even during Super Bowl week, the answer was 20 minutes. The only time an XXII-related event caused a traffic boondoggle was after the Friday night fireworks show downtown. It was such a minor glitch that I feel guilty taking an A+ down to an A.

Game day itself was remarkably smooth, partially because San Diegans were able to abandon their devotion to the automobile and discover new ways of getting to the stadium. I got to the stadium three hours before the game and learned that the worst was over, and that had not been bad.

Parking: A

See traffic.

Expanded Seating: B- to C+

The people sitting in the erector-set seats next to the scoreboard should not have had to pay the same $100 that others paid to sit in comfortable chairs on the 50-yard line. The NFL should scale the house.

The temporary bleachers on the field level provided better views, provided the seats were not too low, but fans were packed so tightly that they suffered from what I’ll call ambulatory gridlock. You had to hope you had nice neighbors, because everyone was in everyone else’s laps.

The problem here is that such measures had to be taken to get capacity up to minimum standards to attract a Super Bowl. The normal 60,000 won’t do it.

Hospitality Tents: A

They looked good on television.

Miscellaneous: A

Hotels, restaurants and even the airport were not really miscellaneous, but I didn’t stay in a hotel, eat in any “mainstream” restaurants or, heaven knows, fly in or out of town. However, the dozens of people I encountered were upbeat and pleased . . . and most of the people I encountered were media types, who spend considerable time in such places and are thus more prone to complain than praise.

I did have one personal experience that I will relate as a summary of how San Diego embraced both XXII and its visitors.

I was standing on a curb in the stadium parking lot some four hours after the game ended. I was dragging about like the game dragged in the second half.

And there was my ride, sailing by on the outer circle. I frantically waved, but to no avail. My shoulders sagged.

Seconds later, a taxi pulled up in front of me.

“Get in,” the driver said. “We’ll catch up. No charge.”

It was a perfect ending to XXII.