Super Bowl Winners & Losers 2.0
My good friend Jon Easter has posted at his blog, Indy Democrat, a list of his Super Bowl 2012 ‘Winners and Losers.” For the most part, I think Jon gets his list right. The city of Indianapolis and the Mannings are obvious winners, while New England is the obvious loser. However my Internet counterpart misses the mark on a couple points. I’m sure he won’t mind if I fine tune his list just a little bit. An asterisk indicates an original designation.
Winners
Mayor Greg Ballard*
- People tend to forget that the Mayor’s military background is in logistics and moving people and equipment from point A to point B and making necessary adjustments when things don’t go as planned. I think that showed in the execution of SB 46. As far as the smoking ban goes, I asked the Mayor if he had received any complaints about the lack of a total smoking ban from anyone, his answer was pretty clear, no.
Indiana House and Senate Republicans
- Indy Democrat originally had them pegged in the loser category. I would argue that despite four days of Democrat walkouts, thousands of paid union protesters showing up everyday, not only did they pass right to work legislation, but got most of the work done you would expect by half-time.
Losers
Unions
- For all the hemming and hawing and veiled threats that were being made about disrupting the Super Bowl over RTW, none of it came true. The protests were typical, a lot of noise and then nothing. I am not who thought that protesting at an event where most of the people in attendance would be closer to the 1-percent than the 99-percent would be a good idea.
People who a smoking ban before the Super Bowl
- If you can find a news story from a mainstream media out lamenting about the lack of a total smoking ban in Indianapolis, please let me know. I made it a point to search virtually everyday and couldn’t find a thing. In fact, the only article I cam across was one in the New York Times which praised Indy for being a cigar-friendly city.
Better Luck Next Time
Businesses Away from the Super Bowl Village
- If the city does do another Super Bowl, and I have no doubt it will, something will have to be done to help businesses further away from the Georgia Street Super Bowl village. I heard from a lot of merchants that they didn’t get the traffic they were hoping for and overstocked. I think expanding the Super Bowl experience about a mile out will be a good idea. People still won’t have far to go and you can do shuttle services to get people back and forth in the downtown area. Luckily that is one of those live and learn deals. We lived through it, so now we learn better for next time.
That’s my list. I still think the ultimate winner is the City of Indianapolis and once again it’s ability to pull off major sporting events, not that there was ever any doubt in my mind.
