By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
You’d think that after being involved in putting on three Super Bowls in New Orleans that things would get easier for former Shreveporter Jay Cicero this time around.
Think again.
“It’s been pretty frantic,” said Cicero. “We are trying to accomplish a lot more than we did in 2013. The event has grown tremendously since then and we challenged ourselves to do something that we could grow. It’s created a lot of work but we think it’s going to be great.”
For example, a parade has been added to the festivities on Saturday before the game because the league wants the atmosphere to feature that host city flair. “The NFL encourages you to do something that is representative of the local culture and a parade will certainly do that,” he said.
Rest assured, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell hasn’t spent any time discussing whether to turn left onto Poydras or take a right on St. Charles.
He’ll leave that to Cicero, who is the President and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation, and chairman of the New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee. That organization basically takes care of all things Super Bowl – except the actual game.
Cicero has been a part of the Super Bowl preparations in 1997, 2002 and 2013. The 2002 game was memorable because it was the first after the 9-11 attack. The 2013 game was memorable for the light failure that hit the Superdome during the third quarter.
The events of earlier this month are just another layer to deal with. “Certainly the terrorist attack on January 1 (on Bourbon Steet) has added an extra level of planning for security,” he said.
There are other significant events that are tying the NFL and New Orleans together – a light show at St. Louis Cathedral is another example (with an eye toward getting a head start on a $50 million renovation of the building).
All of that has been in the planning stages for months, if not years. And Cicero was well staffed to handle that with the No. 2 man at the GNOSF set to oversee many of those duties.
Until he left to take another job.
So Cicero knew he had two options. He could try to find somebody who understood New Orleans and had the experience to bring all of this together.
Or he could just do it himself.
He chose Plan B.
“I’ve stepped in to both roles, but I feel like I’ve been rejuvenated because it’s really exciting to be involved in all of this,” he said. “We have some staff members who have been through this before, but to guide them through this again has been really rewarding.”
Cicero looks back at 1997, his first Super Bowl, and borrows the term that his father often used as baseball coach at Jesuit (now Loyola) to describe an easy fly ball. “That was a can of corn compared to now,” he said. “There were 3,000 members of the media back then and now there are 6,000. The security level wasn’t what it is now. Street closures, parking displacements are all issues.”
With a week to go and the pressure sure to increase, the obvious question for Cicero would be this: Is he looking forward to the game or looking forward to the game being over?
“Every day I look forward to the game,” he said. “I still love the game itself. On the day of the game, we have a brunch and walk to the Superdome, just like it’s a Saints game, and our job is done. The NFL runs everything on that day. The next day there is a handoff ceremony (to next year’s host San Francisco) at 8 a.m. and I’ll breathe a sigh of relief once that’s done. But I’ll miss the hustle and bustle. It’s that type of excitement and that type of feverish pace that has been our lives for the last several months.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com