In the days before the October 2003 owners meeting in Chicago, NFL Chief Operating Officer Roger Goodell called Browns CEO Carmen Policy with a request for help.
The owners would be voting to award hosting rights to the 2008 Super Bowl. Finalists were Tampa, Washington, D.C., and Arizona. Washington owner Dan Snyder, in his fourth year and not yet a pariah among his colleagues, was lobbying “so hard you can’t believe,” Policy recalls.
Goodell and his boss, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, wanted the game to go to Glendale, Ariz., a wealthy, growing market where the Cardinals and the state were building a dome. It was strategically important, not to mention a place where good weather in February could be counted on.
But it was an ownership decision, not an executive one, and Goodell and Tagliabue worried Snyder had the votes. Goodell asked Policy to speak on behalf of Arizona.
In that room, Policy became a litigator again, delivering a brutally effective closing argument on behalf of Arizona. Policy dug into his memories of the 49ers’ first Super Bowl in Detroit in 1982, when a bad snowstorm caused major logistical challenges.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to defrost the Super Bowl,” Policy recalls saying. “Let’s take it out of the beautiful freezers of the great Midwest and Northeast, and let’s bring it back to the sunshine and glorious weather as we celebrate our colossally successful and popular game.”
Arizona won. “Snyder went ballistic,” Policy said. “He used terrible language in describing what had happened. He was really, really upset, but the truth of the matter was it was time [for Arizona.].”
