Feb 2: Fort Lauderdale Football

I can't seem to get away from blogging about football lately, can I? With very good reason of course. When both the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl are being played in your community within a week of each other, football tends to be a major topic of local discussion. And when you just attended the first Pro Bowl of your life, as I did last night, football is pretty darned fresh in your personal thoughts. I was really glad for the experience - this was quite the football extravaganza from the moment I arrived. The sellout crowd was in a mood to party and that's what we did, more than 70,000 of us. The whole thing felt like a big, over-the-top NFL bash. But I confess that one aspect of this Pro Bowl/Super Bowl doubleheader irks me just a tad: in interviews, the players often are talking about coming to "Miami" for the big games.

First of all, the games aren't in Miami. Sun Life Stadium essentially straddles the county line between Miami-Dade County and Broward County, roughly halfway between downtown Miami and downtown Fort Lauderdale. Also, it just happens that the NFL Headquarters for the games is in ... you guessed it. Fort Lauderdale. Yep, it's right here. Not Miami.

We have NFL banners all over the lightposts around town and big flashing traffic signs saying things like, "NFL Guests .... Turn Right on SE 17^th Street." Believe me, if you've tried to make that turn in the past week, you've quickly realized that a whole lot of NFL guests are doing a whole lot of turning there. But do you hear the players saying, "It's great to come down here to Fort Lauderdale for the game!" Not many, even though they were practicing for the Pro Bowl in ... Fort Lauderdale. To me, this is a problem more of perception than of reality. Fort Lauderdale's image still hasn't quite caught up with all it has to offer these days. At least that's true in this country, I think. Overseas, in places such as Sweden and England and wherever else, they know Fort Lauderdale much better and plan their vacations accordingly. So I'm hoping one of these athletes will surprise me in the days leading up to Super Bowl XLIV. Yeah, I'm hoping Peyton Manning or somebody finally will say, "It's great to come down here to Fort Lauderdale for the game!" I don't know if any of these guys will realize where the true center of the football world is this week. But they should.