Brad Mayne, CEO of MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, N.J. smiles for his Twitter profile picture @BradMayne
Much of the chatter leading up to Super Bowl XLVIII on Feb. 2 at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., has focused on, well, the likely chattering teeth of thousands of fans who will be present for the first Super Bowl to be played outdoors in a northern city.
As far as Brad Mayne, president and CEO of MetLife Stadium, is concerned, much of what has been prognosticated one month in advance of the big game is just that – chatter.
“We’ve never lost a football game going back to Giants Stadium and the four seasons that we have now hosted here at MetLife Stadium,” Mayne said during one of the likely few calm minutes defining the final month leading up to the world’s most viewed televised contest. “Football games have always taken place and they’ve always taken place on time, so hopefully Mother Nature is not going to throw anything our way.”
Mayne said that as soon as last year’s game ended at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, he and his team were on the clock. That clock started tangibly ticking when the NFL began construction on Jan. 2 of a double chain link and jersey barricade fence nearly four miles long to encircle MetLife Stadium.
“They are setting up their perimeter fence that will go around not only MetLife Stadium but also the Izod Center (a multipurpose arena in the Meadowlands Sports Complex) and the Meadowlands Racetrack,” Mayne said.
While the perimeter fence is installed as a security device and has been at Super Bowl venues since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Mayne said that the power station for this year’s game will be installed inside the security perimeter, unlike last year in New Orleans when a blackout occurred early in the third quarter and stopped play for more than 30 minutes.
“We’re unique at MetLife Stadium in that our power supply comes from the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority,” he said. “It’s found on the campus of the Meadowlands. PSE&G (the power provider) has put in a lot of incredible work to make sure that all the infrastructure from a power standpoint is set and ready to go. Each of their stations that distribute power have been updated and upgraded.”
Since the perimeter fencing will also encircle the power grid, Mayne said that it will “give some added protection as it relates to whether it be animals or the weather or anyone else trying to create any issues for us as it relates to our power supply.”
Back on the weather front, Mayne has already browsed the trusty Farmers’ Almanac, which calls for February weather in the greater New York/New Jersey region to be cold with more precipitation than normal and heavy winds.
Mayne noted there is a website set up by Rutgers University professor David Robinson, who is also a New Jersey climatologist, that includes research on the game-day forecast and the days leading up to the game. The site, designed by Robinson’s research assistant, Dan Zarrow, is at biggameweather.com. The website is currently predicting a high temperature of 40 for the day.
“Of course, forecasts are usually 100 percent correct after the event has happened,” Mayne said. “But we’ve been paying a lot of attention to the weather. It was interesting because the day the NFL started moving in to the complex we were doing snow removal from a weather event we had. Those sort of things are going to happen in this area, but it’s always fun how the media and the general public nitpick things out of something that happens every single day.”
Mayne said a similar snow event occurred on Dec. 14, one day before the Seattle Seahawks were to visit the New York Giants. With kickoff 12 hours away, some six inches of snow had accumulated accompanied by freezing rain. “But at 1 o’clock that day we had the Giants game take place and we were able to open up a clean and safe environment for everybody who had come to watch that game,” Mayne said.
Mayne estimated that more than 800 full- and part-time employees were part of that game and that it is possible to double the resources to take on a bigger storm, should one happen. “It was a pretty darn good simulation for us to prepare for whatever Mother Nature might throw our way,” he said.
Interviewed for this article: Brad Mayne, (201) 546-4065