by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
A year ago, Mike Kelly wasn’t getting much sleep.
As president of the Jacksonville Super Bowl Host Committee, he and his staff were just days away from finding out if the smallest market to ever host the Super Bowl could handle the biggest football game of the year and crowd that comes with it. The countdown clocks had all dwindled from years to mere days and the number of last-minute issues seemed almost overwhelming.
The weather didn’t cooperate until late in the week, but the game was good and — for the most part — everyone left Jacksonville with a better impression of the city than when they showed up.
Today, Kelly’s on the clock again, knocking around Detroit this week as it gets ready to host Super Bowl XL. Kelly’s there because next year he’ll be running the Super Bowl for Miami — his third as top man, fourth overall, and the ninth for Miami, tying it with New Orleans for the most of any town.
“Everything’s going great,” said Kelly last week from his offices in Miami. “We are excited to be back on the clock in a few days, a place the Super Bowl hasn’t been since 1999.”
That year, the Denver Broncos beat the surprising Atlanta Falcons, 34-19. The win marked the end of Broncos quarterback John Elway’s career and it also marked the last time South Florida hosted the game (for the record, Kelly is president of the South Florida Super Bowl XLI Host Committee) and Kelly and the city are anxious to show the world that Super Bowls are not passe.
“It’s not old hat,” said Kelly, who also ran Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa in 2001, his first as head of a host committee. “It’s not quite the same as it was in Jacksonville, but there will be a buzz here in about a month or so. We still have to get our plans in place and people need to do things.
“Right now we are very much in the planning stages and we are working with our committees. We are not trouble-shooting. That will come in the last month or so.”
Miami certainly doesn’t have the infrastructure issues Jacksonville faced. There are hundreds of places to eat, more than enough airports to handle the crowd and the city that regularly sends cruise ships all over the world won’t need to use them as floating hotels. In fact, Kelly said Miami is actually anxious to host the game again because so much has changed since 1999.
“There are so many new hotels in the Miami-Dade area since the ‘99 game. There are three new Ritz-Carltons alone and several other new hotels, properties that rival any in the world.
“The Dolphins and owner Wayne Huizenga have made a lot of improvements to Dolphins Stadium for the Super Bowl. They installed these giant HD (high-definition) TVs that are the biggest TVs in the world.”
Kelly started in Miami on July 1 and his job will officially wrap up — as it did here — four or five months after the 2007 game. While Kelly enjoys running host committees and his wife “has been great” about moving every few years, Kelly admits he’d be fine with ending his nomadic professional lifestyle. He has two young kids and the idea of one day changing schools every two or three years isn’t appealing.
One thing will help that cause: Miami was recently awarded the 2010 Super Bowl by the National Football League, giving the town two in the four years and the state of Florida four in six (Jacksonville last year, Miami next year and in 2010 and Tampa in 2009). Kelly said the plan is to create enough big events in Miami during non-Super Bowl years that his services could be needed on a full-time basis in South Florida.
“We are in the process of getting into the Super Bowl rotation every three years or so and want to create signature events for those two years between the games,” said Kelly, whose first Super Bowl job came in 1995 after he finished helping run what was the Carquest Bowl in Miami (he was then loaned to the local host committee). “We want to broaden ourselves and become synonymous with the Super Bowl.”
For now, though, it’s Motown for the Pittsburgh-Seattle game where he and staff members as well as Miami-area business leaders, politicians and Chamber of Commerce folks will pitch the new South Florida to the world.
“We are going up there to both get the media excited about coming to South Florida next year and emphasize what’s new in South Florida since 1999,” he said. “It’s even better than ever. There are new venues and entertainment complexes. The Super Bowl means a lot to the people down here.”