The Super Bowl is the signature event on the NFL’s calendar and on the annual sports calendar, period. It is in the NFL’s best interest that it go smoothly — in fact, that it go brilliantly, and look perfect and spectacular to the world.

For that reason, I can’t fathom why the NFL would ever want to have it in a cold weather city in February. Made no sense to me to have it in Detroit or Minneapolis when they had it there. Makes no sense to me that it’ll be in Indianapolis in 2012. The week leading up to the game is at least as big now, if not bigger, than the game itself. You can argue all day about whether that should be true, but you can’t dispute that it is. People come from all over the world to spend the week being at the Super Bowl. If it’s snowy, icy, windy and cold — which it could very well be in the first week of February 2014 in New York and New Jersey — it’s going to be a far more miserable experience for the NFL’s thousands of guests than it needs to be.

All they’ve done by adding a dome-free stadium to the mix is add game day to the list of potential concerns. You can talk all you like about how the NFL and the community would do everything it can do to overcome the worst-case weather scenario should it happen, but my question is why would the NFL want to risk putting itself in position to have to do that. Why add that risk when you don’t need to? Why mess with something that works?

– Dan Graziano, SNY.tv.

Dan makes a couple of points here I hadn’t considered, especially about the week leading up to the game, not to mention the “ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it” approach.

But I’m all for bringing the Super Bowl to New York (well, New Jersey). The Super Bowl is a spectacle most awesome. The week leading up to it is part of that spectacle. And this is a spectacular place, with the bright lights and the immense buildings and all that.

Yeah, the weather could be bad. It could also be good. And it’s football. Football teams prepare to play outdoor games in December in Buffalo and Green Bay and Foxboro.

If the weather means Peyton Manning (or the next Peyton Manning or whoever) can’t pass so well that day, who cares? That’s football. The Colts should have a plan in place for that, and it’s not fair to all the other teams in the league if high-flying offensive teams like the Colts can be assured of a picture-perfect day every year should they advance to the Super Bowl. That doesn’t accurately reflect the NFL regular season or playoffs. Mother Nature factors in football games, so she might as well factor in the biggest football game.

If lousy weather washes out all the events of the week before? Whatever. I, for one, won’t miss that stuff. Plus, I’m pretty confident the NFL will, by 2014, have figured out some method to broadcast its patented brand of nonsense regardless of the weather at media events.

Maybe due to the weather, some visitors will have less fun in Super Bowl Village, or Football-land or whatever they call the area immediately surrounding the event. But they’ll be right in the shadow of the cultural battery of Planet Earth. Go see a play or something. There’s got to be decent live music somewhere. Spread those tourist dollars around.

And while it’s true that the Super Bowl works out just fine every year in warm weather cities, the counter to that argument is simple: You can’t fail if you never try. Maybe bringing the event to New York will turn out to be a miserable decision, and the NFL will somehow lose money for the first time in forever, and the people will rise up and demand every Super Bowl be played in Florida for the rest of time. Or maybe we’ll see a cold-weather classic, a beautifully rendered 6-3 gem full of smart defense and bone-rattling hits, a game that ushers in a new era of casual football fans appreciating the game beyond what factors into their fantasy leagues.

We don’t know yet. But we can rest assured that whatever comes will be entertaining, and probably pretty spectacular to see, whether New Jersey’s first Super Bowl succeeds or fails.