TRYING HARDER : Super Bowl Has Returned, Giving Miami an Opportunity to Repair Its Damaged Image

Miami’s Super Bowl delegation watched dutifully what Los Angeles did. Then it peered a little closer over San Diego’s shoulder, all the while taking notes.

“We looked at the things they did in hosting Super Bowls and how they did ‘em,” said Dick Anderson, former Miami Dolphins defensive back who is serving as chairman of Miami’s Super Bowl host committee.

“Then we developed our plan along those lines and tried to take one giant step forward. We wanted to make sure that we were more organized than anybody’s ever been.”

Now Miami’s self-styled SuperHost Committee feels ready to invite the world into its living room--and is fully mobilized to make people forget how much of an obnoxious jerk it once was.

Miami knows well the stakes this week: The polishing of a badly tarnished international image, and the resultant millions in tourist and business-relocation dollars.

When last seen by the world as a Super Bowl site in 1979, Miami was accurately depicted as gouging and unfriendly. The city apparently had come to feel that serving as host to the Super Bowl was one of its unalienable rights, since 5 of the first 13 were played at the Orange Bowl.

But National Football League owners put the city in its place. With the impassioned help of Dolphin owner Joe Robbie, who constantly fought with city officials, Miami was ceremoniously yanked out of the Super Bowl rotation. Indefinitely.

Then Robbie built his own stadium, which opened for the 1987 season. That suddenly had him locking arms with Miami’s Super Bowl backers. In fact, Robbie’s money-motivated switch of allegiances clearly was the single most important factor in Super Bowl XXIII being played at Joe Robbie Stadium Sunday.

“This Super Bowl isn’t in Miami because of the city or because of Dade County,” said Norman Braman, the Philadelphia Eagles’ owner and a Miami resident. “This Super Bowl is in Miami because of Joe Robbie.”

Those concerned about the area’s sagging image figured that as long as America’s most hyped event was going to be in their back yard, it behooved them to show that Paradise Lost, as bugled so damagingly in Time magazine a few years back, had become Paradise Found.

Sid Levin, one of the founders of the Beacon Council, an organization formed to recruit businesses, said that after charges of unfriendliness and gouging at the ’79 Super Bowl, and after a massive influx of Marielitos from Cuba, Miami became the target of criticism.

“Every day, it seemed, you picked up a magazine or a newspaper and they were dogging Miami,” Levin said.

“People began to get angry about it. They’d go to Detroit, and people in Detroit are telling them they’re afraid to come to Miami. Well, that’s laughable. But the whole thing was getting very upsetting.

“Out of that anger came a constructive bent, a desire to do something worthwhile.

“This community probably has taken a tougher series of jolts than any community in the country and overcome them faster and with more style and more effectively than any other community in the country.”

Now Miami clearly feels it has a story to tell. And this is the message, according to Levin: Miami is not a place where you have to be afraid to walk around. It’s a delightful town that took its lumps, admitted them, came to grips with them, solved those problems and created a more vibrant, exciting kind of a town.

That, of course, is the public-relations version. Privately, there is much chagrin that thousands of homeless Nicaraguans are being bused into Miami at precisely the time that the town is geared to turn on its charm.

Miami suffered another blow Monday night as a civil disturbance broke out in the city’s predominantly black Overtown area, after police shot at two men on a motorcycle during a high-speed chase.

Soon after, sniper fire began, stores were looted and cars set ablaze.

Expressway exits near the area were closed and Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez declared the disturbance “contained” about 5 hours later. Officials announced five schools in the area would be closed today.

The scene of the disturbance is at least 10 miles from Joe Robbie Stadium in north Dade County, the site of the Super Bowl. But the Cincinnati Bengals are staying a half mile away from the Overtown section.

If that wasn’t enough, one of the SuperHost Committee vice chairmen is Sergio Pereira, a former county manager who resigned last year after a series of incidents involving stolen suits and mysterious land deals. Another is restaurateur Monty Trainer, who took time off from preparing for trial on two counts of tax evasion.

Dealing with the sheer bulk of a Super Bowl visitor list approaching 100,000 is a big job, hence some 2,000-plus volunteers. One major change from the 1979 disaster, Levin said, is for the county to consolidate into a central voice in three key areas: tourism (Greater Miami Convention and Visitor Bureau), economic development (Beacon Council) and chamber of commerce (Greater Miami).

“From the business point of view, those are the legs on the table,” he said.

In November, 1987, the Dade County commission provided another leg. It created the Greater Miami Super Bowl Host Committee, later to become simply the Miami SuperHost Committee. It anted up $150,000 to get the committee rolling and appointed Charles Scurr, an executive assistant to the county manager, as full-time committee president.

From there, a seven-member executive committee brainstormed on covering all the proverbial Super Bowl bases, starting with assuring friendliness and price controls on through to addressing safety and tourist information. The SuperHost Committee has 16 committees that are so well-organized that even their subcommittees have committees.

Scurr said he has a $1.9-million cash budget and another $1 million-plus in services with which to promote the area. Some of the bigger chunks of cash have been supplied by the state, $250,000; Dade County, $150,000; Burger King, $150,000, and Pepsi, $80,000. And the Miami Herald is a prime example of “in kind” help. It is printing 250,000 copies of a 24-page tabloid visitors’ guide, to be distributed at hospitality stations--7 at the airport and 32 at NFL-designated hotels.

Said Anderson, the SuperHost chairman: “One of the gratifying things about this effort is the total community support we’ve gotten. For the most part, whenever we’ve asked for something, and given them the reasons why we want it, they’ve come through.

“Like the Department of Transportation. Everybody says they’re impossible to work with. We went to them, sat down in person, outlined what we want to do with NFL highways and came up with solutions, and they were supportive of it.

“I think when you meet a problem head on and meet with people and tell ‘em what the value is, most people are really community spirited.”

With the DOT’s permission, the SuperHost Committee put NFL helmet replicas on the 660 light poles of four Dade County expressways.

It was a nice idea, except for one thing. A number of the helmets were blown off by the wind last week and were hurled, like buzz saw blades, at passing motorists.

But the NFL Highways idea is being salvaged with more secure bolting, according to Scurr.

Another idea being tested, paid for by Pepsi, is for four 30-story-high images of NFL players to be projected onto the sides of downtown skyscrapers. It’s to call attention to downtown, but it’s just as likely to be a little disconcerting to motorists on nearby I-95.

The SuperHost Committee has addressed everything, particularly VIPs. A 30-member committee was formed to attend a VIP’s every need. The VIPs will receive options to get front-row tickets at any of seven major events--such as the Liza Minnelli-Frank Sinatra concert.

They have numbers to call for no-wait tennis, golf, fishing and boating. They have a VIP referral number for any type of medical assistance or special tour. They will have preferential parking at most places and a no-wait plan at the 49 restaurants deemed by the committee as the area’s best.

In fact, at Joe’s Stone Crab, where people have been known willingly to wait up to 4 hours, an upstairs room has been opened and dubbed “the NFL room.” It’s strictly for VIPs, who include NFL team owners, heads of Fortune 500 companies, NBC-TV officials, governors and senators, major newspaper publishers and television station owners.

Becky Casey, the SuperHost Committee’s VIP coordinator, also is distributing a VIP card that allows the bearer entrance into any of 12 private clubs in the area.

“We believe in happy endings, and by opening the door for these people to the activities they like to experience, and by treating them with respect, we think we will have some happy endings,” she said.

That’s happy endings, as in companies moving a branch office here or holding a convention here.

Ron Kent, executive director of the Great Miami Super Bowl Host Committee, ventured on television early in the football season that in the interest of the area’s economic health, he hoped the Dolphins didn’t make it to the Super Bowl. That drew a wave of outrage from the local citizenry, but not a peep from hotel and restaurant owners, who figure to walk away with a sizable chunk of the projected $144 million that will be left in South Florida coffers by sundown Monday.

That $144 million is the short-term benefit. Of much greater importance to SuperHost Committee organizers is what happens long term. As Casey said, how many conventions will be held in Miami as the result of this work, and how many companies will establish branch offices or their headquarters here?

Robbie hoped to capitalize on this opportunity by selling some 69 vacant Robbie Stadium sky boxes at prices ranging from $29,000 to $65,000 a year, and 1,475 remaining club seats, costing from $600 to $1,400 a year.

No luck, though. The Dolphins were absolutely no playoff threat from the first play of the opening game against the Chicago Bears on through a dreary season.

Please, though, save the crying towel for someone else. Robbie still stands to pocket more than $1.5 million profit merely for playing host.

Elsewhere, the Miami Herald is doing its civic part. It has set up a “Super Bowl Action Line,” and visitors are invited to complain about any injustice they may encounter. For example, the newspaper wants to know if a 5-mile cab ride from the airport to the hotel costs more than a 5-course meal.

The Herald, as a Super Bowl watchdog, aims to solve as many problems as possible.

Local police are breathing a little easier, now that San Francisco and Cincinnati have qualified for Sunday’s game. They had feared a Chicago-Buffalo matchup.

“It just seems that the fans who follow those two teams have a tendency in game situations to be a little more rowdy than others, and that results in more fights,” said Metro-Dade Maj. Don Matthews, who is in charge of security planning for this Super Bowl.

Matthews and his troops intend to round up vagrants and prostitutes as part of the overall effort to cleanse Miami’s image.

Moreover, extra police officers will be everywhere this week, including some 200 at Sunday’s game. SWAT teams will be standing by for whatever needs arise.

Police have identified what might be called the Seven Sins of Super Bowl. They include pickpocketing, ticket scalping, prostitution, counterfeiting of tickets, counterfeiting of NFL merchandise, hotel room burglaries and ticket snatch-and-runs.

Even taxi drivers have been jostled by organizers and made to stand at attention. Drivers had to survive a 2-hour “optional” course in courtesy training before having their permits renewed.

The 3,800 who endured the course, which was given in English, Spanish and Creole, were presented official SuperHost shirts to wear this week.

Civic leaders clearly believe that this is much ado about something.

“Listen,” SuperHost president Scurr said Monday, peering out from his office to a panorama of posh Bay Pointe, “you’ve got to realize that having the Super Bowl in Miami is like nothing that’s ever happened here before.”

He was reminded that there have been plenty of Super Bowls here.

“Yeah,” he said. “But those were just football games.”