Much to the NFL’s surprise, the weather wasn’t the only thing the league had to be worried about when the football world descended upon the Twin Cities for the Super Bowl in January of 1992.
This was the league’s first trip to a northern city for its showcase event since a shaky experience in Detroit 10 years earlier, when an ice storm wreaked havoc on the weekend. Vikings GM Mike Lynn and a group of persistent lobbyists had spent years trying to convince the league to let Minneapolis host the Super Bowl.
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It took three tries, some back-room agreements and a savvy proposal from Lynn to narrow the field of candidates before they finally convinced the league’s 30 owners to give the Metrodome a chance.
After all of that work to get the game to town, NFL officials discovered that the Metrodome was a yard short of a full field. That’s not a metaphor for the shortcomings of a stadium that was famously built on-time and under budget. It was a literal measurement of the turf.
“When we measured it to re-stripe it, it was 119 yards long,” Jim Steeg, the NFL’s long-time leader of its special events department, told The Athletic. “It was missing a yard in the right end zone. So the Vikings had played that season, or forever, with a 9-yard end zone.”
Nothing a new paint job couldn’t fix. That little idiosyncrasy was easily addressed, as were most of the hiccups that came with a maiden voyage on the good ship Super Bowl.
As some of the power brokers involved with bringing the game look back on that event, they view it as the launching point for a sports revolution that helped raise the Twin Cities profile to a national level.
In pulling it off, they proved that it was possible to put on a big-time party in the dead of winter, which paved the way for cities like Indianapolis, New York and Detroit (again) to get a crack at the biggest sporting event in North America.
When the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles kick off on Sunday, they will do so at U.S. Bank Stadium thanks in large part to the success of that game between Washington and Buffalo in 1992.
“For a community that felt like it was a terrific community but was lacking evidence (of a major event), that verified what a lot of people felt about Minnesota and the Twin Cities,” said Dave Mona, one of the Twin Cities public relations pioneers who served on the Super Bowl committee.
An ice sculpture outside the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis featured team-logo helmets for both Buffalo and Washington, who squared off in the 1992 game. (Credit: AP photos/NFL photos)
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The somewhat audacious plan to bring a Super Bowl to Minnesota was backed by then-Gov. Rudy Perpich, who believed that such an event would be a boon to a vibrant, but often overlooked, community.
The efforts started in the early 1980s, not long after the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1982.
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“We were still in a situation where our most recent (sports triumph) we could celebrate were the championships of the Minneapolis Lakers,” Mona said. “When we started pursuing the Super Bowl, ’87 hadn’t happened with the Twins and ’91 hadn’t happened.
“We had a long stretch of Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale (losing Presidential elections), the four Super Bowls and finishing second. I think there was an attitude that we were major league, but we were kind of on the periphery of major league.”
It didn’t come easy.
Marilyn Carlson Nelson, one of the state’s most influential figures, led the charge. But after two swings and misses, she was ready to step aside and let someone else take a crack at it. Perpich would have none of it.
“He was a dentist,” Nelson said. “He looked at me and said, ‘You’re doing great, Marilyn. We’re just going to keep drilling on the same tooth.’”
Same tooth. Different tool.
Through all of their efforts, it became clear that if the Twin Cities were going to be up against exotic locales like Miami, New Orleans and Pasadena, California, every year, there was no chance. So Lynn, the Vikings GM, convinced the NFL to adopt a resolution stating that every 10 years the Super Bowl would be played in a northern city.
Once that passed, it leveled the playing ground for Minnesota. In 1989, Nelson, Mona and the rest of the Minnesota contingent were competing against Seattle, Indianapolis and Detroit for the 1992 game.
“The first two times we tried to convince America to come to Minnesota,” Mona said, “our feedback from the NFL was, ‘Don’t try to do that.’ Your audience is 30 owners. You need to convince a majority of the owners to come. We really changed our tactics.”
Lynn started to curry favor with the owners by voting for issues important to them on league matters in hopes of one day getting that reciprocated to deliver a Super Bowl. Carlson and Mona crisscrossed the country to visit owners and lobby individually, paying closer and closer attention to who was supportive of the proposal and who wasn’t.
“Marilyn was so driven,” Steeg said. “She would never take no for an answer. You tried to convince her that this wouldn’t work, but she would not take no for an answer and would keep plugging through to get there.”
Marilyn Carlson Nelson has been a driving force behind Minnesota’s two winning Super Bowl bids. “I told the commissioner I think I got another one in me,” she says. (Credit: Jim Mone/AP)
When the league convened at the Intercontinental Hotel in New Orleans in 1989, most thought the Minnesota group was a decided underdog. But Nelson and Mona were much more confident.
“We were pretty sure we were going to win,” Mona said.
As a final flourish, they had to fill out a summary page for the owners, a Cliff’s Notes version of the hundreds of pages in the committee’s full proposal to the owners. One of the questions that needed to be answered was “mean temperature.”
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With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Mona wrote in: “Yes.”
When the announcement was made, Nelson let out a yelp.
“It’s a miracle,” she cried.
“It changed the psychology of Minnesotans and it made us feel proud of all of our seasons,” she says now. “We didn’t have to apologize for winter anymore.”
It didn’t take long for reality to set in. They had won the bid. Now they actually had to execute the plan.
“Suddenly,” Nelson said, “you’re the dog who caught the bus.”
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“Everybody was a little skeptical because of what took place in Detroit,” Steeg said.
The Super Bowl host committee and Minneapolis and St. Paul city officials immediately set out to ensure that there were plenty of events indoors to accommodate the thousands of people who were going to come in for the game.
The league rebranded and launched the NFL Experience at the Minneapolis Convention Center, a huge festival with interactives for adults and children that could all be done without shivering to death.
Chef Wayne Kostroski also introduced the Taste of the NFL, a lavish event that raises money to fight hunger. From the modest beginnings in Minneapolis, it has grown into a staple of Super Bowl weekend and has raised $25 million for the cause.
Mona said they also kicked around some other quirky ideas, perhaps a golf tournament through the skyway system downtown. But the NFL calmed them down.
“They said, ‘Hey, we already made the decision to come north. Don’t hide the fact that it’s cold. Show us how you survive and how you celebrate the cold,’” Mona said. “It really changed what we did and how we thought.”
They took John Madden ice fishing. Journalists from Honolulu went snowmobiling. Fitness star Denise Austin led a huge group through an aerobic workout outside the Metrodome dubbed “The Great Minnesota Warm-up,” which was broadcast on morning shows across the country.
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The St. Paul Winter Carnival, with its towering ice castle and mischievous Vulcans, got a national audience and Minnesota also unleashed an army of thousands of volunteers who helped fans and journalists navigate the city and get through the airport.
“They really did a great job of reaching out to everybody and the legendary hospitality of the community really showed through,” Steeg said. “The experience was a good one. We had a good game day, which is always the key.”
A rally was held outside the Metrodome to protest the Washington Redskins nickname ahead of the 1992 game. (Credit: Mark Duncan/AP)
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The game itself was a blowout, more memorable for Bills running back Thurman Thomas missing the first two plays because he couldn’t find his helmet than it was for Washington’s 37-24 victory.
It was Buffalo’s second of four straight losses in the Super Bowl and Washington’s presence angered a large American Indian population in Minnesota. A large demonstration was held outside the stadium to protest the team’s nickname, a fight that continues to this day.
The halftime show, featuring Gloria Estefan, Dorothy Hamill, Brian Boitano and members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team was a dud, its claim to fame being the final theatrical-style presentation before the NFL turned it into an A-list concert starting with Michael Jackson in 1993.
Tim Mahoney was a bar manager at The Loon, the well-known sports bar and restaurant in the Minneapolis Warehouse District that he now owns, when the 1992 game came to town.
When it finally arrived, the Twin Cities had become the center of the sporting universe. The Stanley Cup final, U.S. Open golf tournament and World Series were all played here in 1991, and the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four was scheduled to come just over two months after the NFL left town.
“By the time the Super Bowl rolled around, it’s like, ‘OK, bring it on,’” Mahoney said. “We were ready. We were like, ‘Let’s party.’
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“That whole year created an atmosphere in downtown Minneapolis that was inviting to other major sporting events. We’re not afraid to host big events.”
The Redskins pep band broke into song at The Loon and the Bills cheerleaders made a cameo appearance and led a cheer from the bar.
“It was more organic back then,” Mahoney said. “They were creating ways to keep not only the guests from out of town but the guests locally intrigued about what was going on and involved and experience it.
“And guess what? They’ve been doing it ever since. It’s a testimonial to the strengths of the people of Minneapolis and their ideas about how to market a Super Bowl in a cold-weather city.”
Bars and restaurants throughout the two cities were packed every night, but Mahoney said he could only remember one real fight at his place, when he noticed a tussle between two tables full of Redskins and Bills fans.
When two police officer friends of his got over there to break it up, they found out that it was Bills-on-Bills crime and not a clash between the two sides. The Redskins fans were there trying to calm things down.
That’s when the cold weather actually came in handy.
“The two cops grabbed them, took them outside and put them head-first in the snowbank and told them to cool down,” Mahoney said. “Just two knuckleheads that got mad at each other. They got a good ol’ fashioned white wash.”
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Flash forward a quarter-century and so much has changed. The Super Bowl was certainly a big deal in 1992, but it’s become a worldwide phenomenon in 2018.
A 30-second television commercial during the game cost $850,000 in ’92, but runs a cool $5.5 million this time around.
The number of visitors to the area is expected to increase 10-fold because so many more come in looking to soak up the atmosphere and festivities without going to the game.
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And now, in addition to the NFL Experience and the Taste of the NFL, the league oversees Super Bowl Live, a weeklong slate of outdoor concerts and a festival on Nicollet Mall while the Mall of America was home to Radio Row, an elbow-to-elbow mass of humanity and talking heads from all over the country that was just barely getting started back in ’92.
“Back then the NFL was about the game,” Mahoney said. “They created things to do so that people would enjoy themselves in a cold climate city. They were concentrating on the game, so the city created this other atmosphere. And we were all a part of it.
“This time around the NFL has their fingers in everything and they created the experience. So that has a different sort of feel to it.”
The other difference? There was no trepidation about the chances for success for Super Bowl No. 2 in Minneapolis. The Twin Cities has almost 30,000 more hotel rooms today than it did back then, a shiny, new $1 billion stadium to showcase the game and the confidence that comes from having done this all before.
U.S. Bank Stadium is home to the 2018 Super Bowl. (Credit: Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports)
“Between the press and even our own citizens, they were excited for us, but they doubted if we could even do it,” Nelson said of the first go-round. “They kept saying, ‘It’s Minnesota, it’s wintertime.’
“Minnesotans are humble and self-effacing. This time when we won, there was no doubt. We’re going to do this. We’re going to call it bold. We’re going to be bold.”
Nelson served as co-chair for the Super Bowl host committee again for this game. Her first interactions with the league were with Pete Rozelle back in the 1980s. Paul Tagliabue was the commissioner when the game came around in 1992.
During a quiet moment in Minneapolis this week, the 78-year-old Nelson walked up to current commissioner Roger Goodell with a simple, direct message.
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“I told the commissioner I think I got another one in me,” she said with a chuckle. “He laughed. But I don’t want to wait another 26 years.”
(Top image: A view of the pregame festivities before Super Bowl XXVI, in January 1992. It was the culmination of a years-long journey to bring the NFL’s biggest stage to Minneapolis. Credit: Vernon Biever/AP)
