[sportscurmudgeon]

The NFL has not allowed tailgating at the Super Bowl site ever since 9/11. This isn't new this year. Of course, one of the Super Bowl sites since 2001 was Detroit and so there wasn't a whole lot of demand for that kind of activity at that venue in February.

Actually, I'm told by several attorneys that there are laws in Miami that relate to crowd control during large public events - such as parades, demonstrations, 4th of July celebrations and the like - that will easily accommodate the police and the NFL from keeping prospective tailgaters away from a defined and designated and publicized area around the stadium.

The Super Bowl game itself is not for the fans; it's for the corporate partners and sponsors. Each of the participating teams only got about 13,000 tickets and - at least for the Bears - more than 9,000 of them went to players and friends of the owners and team sponsors. Only about 4000 season ticket holders got tix. And don't think that this is just the Bears, Danny Boy will do the same when/if he ever has the Skins in a Super Bowl game. If you think I'm wrong, the Redskins got an allocation of just under 1000 tickets for the game. How many of those went to season ticket holders who aren't also team sponsors? My guess is you won't have to take off your shoes to count that high.

The NFL really does understand its audience better than any other sports entity. The vast majority of the core football fans will be attending Super Bowl parties or they'll be in Vegas at the sportsbooks. They won't be anywhere near the game site itself. And so the NFL creates an atomsphere for the people who will be at the game site and tailgating isn't part of their "expectations".

The Super Bowl game is about TV ratings and ad revenue for the game itself and for the games coming up next season.