John Zarrella on Super Bowl XXXV preparations and festivities

John Zarrella

Q: For many who go to championships, the actual event appears less important than the parties, the scene, the act of just being there. Is that the case in Tampa?

ZARRELLA: Certainly, there are lots of people who come into town who don't have tickets, and have no expectation of getting tickets. But they're from the cities that the teams are from, and they want to feel a part of the goings-on, so they come down to partake in the parties and all the hoopla that surrounds the Super Bowl. For example, today the city of Tampa had its annual Gasparilla Day Parade, which includes pirate ships landing, and pirates -- 700 of them -- coming ashore and a big parade through downtown Tampa. They had about 700,000 people lining the streets for this event. Many of them were people who had come from out of town to see the Super Bowl or to be here with no expectation of getting tickets.

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And if you come down here to Tampa and you don't have a ticket, as usual, it's going to cost you a fortune to get one. The tickets are going from $1,500 to $2,000 apiece for the game.

We talked with two women who came down from North Carolina, and they've been standing on the street corner on the main street that leads to the stadium, holding a sign, hoping people will stop if anybody had extra tickets. They were willing to pay the $1,500. And if not, they'll be watching it on TV. And that's probably what they're going to end up doing.

There are also ticket brokers; people who put ads in the newspapers saying that they'll get you tickets to the game, and apparently they've run short of tickets because there are brokers lining the street, as well, trying to buy a ticket from anyone who might have an extra. They're offering $1,500 to $2,000 a ticket so they can fill the orders they have here at the 11th hour.

Q: How's it differ from the last time the Super Bowl was in Tampa?

ZARRELLA: There is a stark and a very marked difference from the last time the Super Bowl was here in Tampa. That was, of course, in 1991, and the Gulf War had only just begun, and the air campaign was still under way.

In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, so much of what you saw was this outpouring of patriotism; red, white and blue were really the colors. Everyone carried American flags. Desert Storm T-shirts were everywhere. Desert Storm license tags that you could buy were everywhere. Of course, security for that Super Bowl was a tremendous concern. There was a genuine fear for the potential of terrorism at the Super Bowl. Security was unprecedented. They basically closed the airspace. Everybody is so used to seeing blimps flying overhead and banner planes flying around the stadiums. Well, on Super Bowl Sunday, the blimps were grounded, the banner planes were grounded. The only thing flying were Blackhawk military helicopters doing security surveillance around the stadium. That was it.

On the ground, any car, any truck entering the Super Bowl compound area was checked inside and out. Bomb-sniffing dogs were there, they opened the hoods, checked under the cars, looking for explosive devices and bombs. Anybody who went into the stadium was checked. Everything that they brought with them into the stadium went into a metal detector. On top of that, there were concrete barriers and chain-link fences erected around the stadium so that there would be very little opportunity for breach of security.

Incidentally, the New York Giants were in that Super Bowl, against the Buffalo Bills, and they won that game.

The surprise, I think, in most Super Bowl games, is how anti-climatic the game actually is. Last year's game was a tremendous game when you had the St. Louis Rams winning at the very end of the game over the Tennessee Titans. But that was an anomaly. Most Super Bowl games are usually well decided early on in the game, with one team very dominant over the other.

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