Notebook : Joe Robbie Stadium Turns Into a Big Tent City

On the morning of a Super Bowl game, the stadium is easy to find. Just look for the circus tents. The area around the stadium always looks like the world’s biggest circus.

As it did again Sunday.

For much of the day at Joe Robbie Stadium, much of corporate America was holed up in the tents, the largest of which could have passed for the big top in the heyday of Ringling Bros.

The idea, of course, is to entertain the advertisers and others of the VIP class, who don’t just want to sit in their cars eating doughnuts until the gates open.

Joe Robbie Stadium is the newest in pro football. Known in the Miami area as JRS, it was built a year ago by Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie after a lengthy argument with the operators of the Orange Bowl, where the Dolphins played for years.

Robbie wanted to modernize a half century-old stadium. Turned down, he built JRS on a site halfway to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

It’s the league’s only privately built and owned stadium. In the beginning, the proprietor had planned to call it Dolphin Stadium. His children renamed it.

Robbie, a former Minneapolis lawyer, started in Miami on a shoestring in 1960. First he borrowed heavily to fund the Dolphins, a 1960s expansion team. Then he mortgaged the Dolphins for $115 million to fund JRS.

Eventually, he and his family will own the team and stadium outright.

“My only partners now are the bankers,” he said.

The JRS playing field is laid in Prescription Athletic Turf, called PAT, the most rain-resistant of the natural turfs but not as satisfactory as AstroTurf in a storm such as the one that struck Sunday morning.

Even AstroTurf cannot handle a big rain. But it is better than PAT, which is an improvement over typical grass fields.

The Dolphins’ surface is similar to Notre Dame’s in South Bend, Ind. PAT also is used at Augusta, Ga., where the Masters golf tournament is played.

PAT fields are irrigated from below with a network of pipes, which also are used to remove excess rain.

This was the sixth Super Bowl in Miami but the first at the new stadium. The others were played at the Orange Bowl.

Joe Robbie said his next goal is to have a World Series at his stadium.

Baseball is being played at the stadium now with a left-field 30-foot screen that resembles the 40-foot Chinese wall at the Coliseum, L.A. site of the 1959 World Series.

For $2 million, Robbie said, JRS can be converted into a real baseball park.

He will settle for a baseball franchise in either the National or American League, so long as the club plays in his stadium.

Before the game, 49er quarterback Joe Montana said he had enjoyed the week at Miami more than the weeks before his first two Super Bowls at Pontiac, Mich., and Stanford, where he was the most valuable player of both Super Bowl XVI and XIX.

“The hardest was the second one (at Stanford),” Montana said. “All I remember all week was trying to get people tickets.”

Joe Theismann, the Washington Redskins quarterback in two Super Bowls, said he thinks the players are better rested for game day than they were in his day.

“I remember the media hype lasting all week, through Saturday,” said Theismann, who is now an ESPN commentator.

“In recent years, they’ve protected the players a lot better. The teams are off by themselves all day Saturday, and most of the day Friday. That’s the way it should be.”

Bob Stupak, Las Vegas high roller casino owner, won a $1 million bet, possibly the largest single wager in the history of Nevada bookmaking, when the 49ers won by only a 4-point margin.

Stupak placed the bet at Little Caesars Gambling Casino on the Las Vegas Strip at mid-morning several hours before kickoff. Little Caesars gave minus 7 points on the 49ers and plus 7 points on the Bengals.

Stupak would have lost if the San Francisco 49ers had won by 8 points or more.

Little Caesars owner Gene Maday said Stupak walked into the establishment carrying two suitcases filled with cash. Stupak bet $1,050,000 in order to win $1 million on the Bengals, which means he gets back his original wager plus the $1 million victory.

A 63-yard punt by Cincinnati’s Lee Johnson in the second quarter was a Super Bowl record. The ball sailed over return man John Taylor’s head at the San Francisco 25 and rolled to the 9 where Taylor picked it up and ran it back 45 yards to the Cincinnati 46, giving him the longest punt return in Super Bowl history.