NFL Corners Money Market

My favorite Super Bowl story actually occurred on the way home from San Diego: A whole group of cars speeding and who gets pulled over? The guy with the big Raider decals on his Jeep. Talk about profiling.

Neither the Raiders nor their fans were very offensive during Super Bowl week -- especially the Raiders on Sunday. But in a nod to Raider Nation’s reputation and the perpetual threat of terrorism, the absence of major security incidents at the game qualified as front-page news in the local paper.

The NFL actually needed Raider fans in San Diego. They brought passion to an increasingly stale event, reminded us that there were still people who cared about who won or lost.

The aura, the significance, the event of the Super Bowl is much larger than the Super Bowl itself.

Huge Super Bowl banners decorated the outside of the Marriott hotel, NFL headquarters. At night, spotlights are flipped on, visible all the way from Balboa Park, all to announce that Something Big Is Going On Here.

People eager to prove that they were a part of Something Big posed for pictures with the Marriott’s Super Bowl banners in the background.

All of this hype feeds the ego of NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and convinces him that cities really ought to commit every last dollar of tax revenue to keeping team owners happy.

The Spanos family, which owns the San Diego Chargers, wants the city to kick in half of the $400 million it will take to build a new stadium. But the owners aren’t even paying half of the other half up front; they’ll rely on NFL money to kick in about two-thirds of their share under their current proposal.

Our state could be $34.6 billion in the hole over the next year and a half, which means funds to city and county governments will dry up, and the city of San Diego is supposed to take care of a stadium it just renovated? And this is what L.A.’s missing by not having a team in the league?

Just to up the ante on San Diego, Tagliabue used his state-of-the-league address to say that it was unlikely the Super Bowl was coming back to San Diego. He said he wondered how the city even got this one.

As if the city’s guarantee to buy unused tickets wasn’t enough of a show of support to this non-contending franchise.

You want to talk guarantees? No other city, not even Los Angeles, can deliver such perfect weather on demand in January. While those dreaded purple and white hues denoting arctic temperatures covered the rest of the country on USA Today’s weather map, the temperatures in San Diego started off great and progressed to ideal.

Soon the Super Bowl will be in Detroit, where the fans will be shivering through miserable winter conditions while waiting to go through the extra-tight security checkpoints. But Tagliabue and the other big cheeses won’t mind because they’ll be whisked through a VIP entrance on the way to luxury boxes, following the money trail.

In one sense, the capitalist feeding frenzy has advanced so far that it has returned the stadium to the fans -- at least those fans with a few thousand dollars to spare. At the last Super Bowl in San Diego, the Green Bay and Denver fans were relegated to a few sections of Qualcomm Stadium, while the lifeless corporate types lorded over the rest of the building.

With the game within an easy drive of the Raiders’ hub, and Tampa Bay fans desperate to see their team’s first trip to the Super Bowl, this quickly became a hot event. All of the neutral fans sniffed the big bucks and cashed out their tickets to brokers or scalpers. Even those who paid full face value of $500 for their initial purchases were able to clear a four-figure profit.

With resale prices topping out above $7,000, it scared off the casual fans and meant Qualcomm Stadium was largely the realm of people who really cared about their teams. One side of the stadium was black, one side was red and it felt like a college bowl game.

The game was a peripheral event for most of the folks in town.

I went to dinner Friday night with about a dozen people associated with sports. It was business talk and more business talk. Finally, well after the entrees had been consumed, someone asked about going to the game. I was the only one at the table who was.

Just about the only game-related talk you heard all week was when you walked past the scalpers’ bazaar outside the Marriott and endured a constant stream of people coming up to ask, “Got any extra tickets?”

Otherwise, you heard talk of mergers and buyouts and investment opportunities and tax write-offs. Follow the money.

The money creates some strange sights, such as John Madden in the midst of a bumping hip-hop party.

Understand that Madden hates crowds -- he won’t even allow other reporters on the elevator when he goes up to the broadcast booth.

And I get the sense he doesn’t exactly have Nelly’s latest CD pumping on the bus as he rolls around America.

But EA Sports, makers of the wildly popular Madden video football game, sponsored a party and videogame tournament and apparently Madden was contractually obligated to present the trophy to the winner.

So the music stopped, and he came out and made a speech to the platinum-chain-and-retro-jersey crowd. The only word audible over the din was “Boom!” He looked as if he couldn’t wait to get out of there. Trophy presented, exit Madden, stage right, cue the Dr. Dre song and let the party resume.

Party, party, party. Here’s the drill: You spend all day calculating and coordinating so you can get access to a party. You fight through the crowd, reassure the people at the door that you are on the list, and finally get inside. Then, 10 minutes later, some member of your crew says: “Where do we go next?”

Here’s where the Super Bowl is going for the next three years: Houston, Jacksonville, Detroit.

Before long, they’ll be begging for San Diego. That is, if the Chargers haven’t moved to L.A.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.