Welp. We will soon be going to the Super Bowl, is not it?

Last week's NFL Draft crowds in downtown NashvillePhoto via MNPD

It was predictable that the Oakland / Los Angeles / Las Vegas Raiders would make a hilarious joke of their first-round pick. After the rough draft of the NFL draft this weekend, our city would turn like a barracuda easily entertained to the next major event. .

I do not need my usual 500 word throat here, because the target is as obvious as Roger Goodell's misunderstanding with the subtleties of the dap. Nashville will at least try to organize a Super Bowl.

Even the kind of people who use the word "sports ball" as a sign of virtue saying that they do not care about such trifles as sports competition would concede, is that Lower Broadway is quite news, while record crowds reach the 500,000 people encircling the neon canyon. watch adult men read the names of less adult men. With the exception of a brief Thursday strangled frog, even the weather has cooperated (how much does the NCVC power come from Butch Spyridon?). The city was beautiful, the people thrilled with the event, the hospitable employers let the real Nashvillians work from home (minimizing traffic jams), and everything went off more or less without a hitch.

Yes, Nashville is able to party. Heck, we managed to host the biggest crowd of publicists in NFL history, while hosting the Cara Singles Night. As Steven Hale has pointed out, our city's evolution into a permanent event continues at a steady pace.

So, no, it's not a complete shock that local sports columnists, Local blocks and ESPN analysts on the move started to say that the musical city should go (or in the relatively measured catch of Joe Rexrode, consider) big game hunting.

And, hey, let's be honest: Superficially, it would be really great. Ziplines down Broadway. International media filling the convention center. The nights are galore. Roll B updated.

Most people agree that such a commitment would require a new stage. Rexrode is not going that far – he says the Titans just want to refurbish Nissan, as Miami did at Hard Rock Stadium. Given that the Nissan Stadium is an ugly, unattractive, often inefficient, cheap-built facility that was dismally outdated at the time of its opening, take the word of the team to say that it just wanted improvements seems a little Pollyannaish. Kirk Herbstreit (who moved to Middle Tennessee in 2011) and Clay Travis have both explicitly called for the creation of a new stadium, a prerequisite for the success of the NFL's glamorous event. By the way, in the case of the former, it is more than a weird thing that an ESPN employee spends his time lobbying for a new stadium on behalf of a company. NFL franchise. So matchy-matchy was the message on the problem, one would almost tend to believe that it was coordinated!

The fact is that the NFL will not give the Nissan Stadium a Super Bowl – even if it is improved – unless the renovation only concerns the studs. And although he held the game away at the Meadowlands, the NFL will not give Nashville, with its sullied February climate, a Super Bowl unless it builds a dome. And as Rexrode points out, this probably puts the city on the map for a University Basketball Final Four and the University Football Playoff Championship, the University Football Playoffs and, more importantly, Wrestlemania.

While it is certainly possible to build stadiums without public funds (or at least to guarantee repayment of public funds), Rexrode completely rejects the idea that Metro will pay for the new Titanodome, saying that "the NFL practice of taxing citizens because new facilities would not work here ", apparently forgetting that we did for MLS and minor league baseball, not to mention the Nashville Titans and Predators, and somehow lacks anyone who dares to speak against the practice of subsidizing stadiums, subsidizing any private enterprise) in this city is treated as a Cassandra.

Titans can now say all the good things about renovations and not ask the city to pay the bill, but it's a bargaining position and not the reality. If Amy Adams Strunk and her siblings and their relationships really want a new stadium, it will be enough for them to make a subtle threat to leave or a subtle allusion to the idea of ​​missing an opportunity to host the Super Bowl and Nashville, with its fragile and fragile artificial art. of self-confidence threatened, capitulate. Then, in one of those classics of good news and bad news, PSC Metals would eventually be bulldozed for a used stadium less than 30 times a year.

But, again, admitting that the Super Bowl is cool, would we even want to do it?

Sports economists agree almost universally to say that juice is not worth it in a hurry. It is said that, yes, major sporting events increase collective happiness, at least in the short term, but they are never sold that way, and that the real economic impact achieved is only a fraction of what it claims (Glendale, Arizona, actually lost money, for example).

Beyond the dollars and zillions of tax breaks, there are the huge drawbacks that the Super Bowl would cause (though, hey, at least, it would not be a coincidence with the marathon) in terms of a thousand other things that we can not anticipate, as we have learned here and here and here for the rough draft.

But the most important thing is the problem of Cherry Tree: how special is Nashville – what makes people come here or who benefits those who live here – are we ready to sacrifice ourselves? ? name of the show, or seeming cool to strangers, or anything that this constant stream of events is supposed to spawn? Because it certainly does not generate revenue for the city, which will privatize parking meters to fill its budget deficit and feeds a host of other disconcerting ideas, such as forcing people to park in parks to make ends meet. .

I have no doubt about the aesthetic wonders of a Nashville Super Bowl, and I will even confide that either by will or by checkbook, we will be able to settle the logistics. I will go so far as to say that through some sort of financial magic and tax increases, we will even get the product for which we pay for it (at least in the short term).

And I'm still not sure if it's worth it if Nashville turns into a Potemkin party city with only a massive long-term debt and only the likelihood of a real community being left behind.