Linked by the Winds of Change

By Sports Business Analyst Rick Horrow:

Watching the wind whip off Lake Michigan during the final rounds of the 72^nd PGA Championship at Whistling Straits this weekend, I am reminded that golf’s fourth major of the year provides the perfect bridge between the last major sporting event of the summer and the harkening of the fall season, in the form of preseason NFL football games.

And as the NFL prepares to raise the curtain Monday night on its latest mega sports palace, the $1.7 New Meadowlands Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets and host of a loudly debated outdoor Super Bowl in 2014, I am reminded that however unlikely, no two sports are more linked than golf and football, in that no two sports are more dramatically affected by the whims of weather – fog, rain/snow, and especially the wind.

How players, coaches, and caddies manage the gusts also adds a dose of high drama for the fans sitting in the stands, and the millions watching at home.

Playing the wind is a key part of golf’s club and shot choices, and in football, especially in the windswept prairie states, decisions on whether to start a half on offense or defense often rely heavily on the forecast.  In July, play at Britain’s Open Championship at St. Andrew’s was stopped more than once because the wind was actually moving the ball on the greens, frustrating the players and giving the betting-happy UK spectators one more aspect of the matches to wager on.  In football, who can forget the Raiders vs. Patriots NFL playoff game in New England a handful of years ago played in snow so deep it could bury the football like a shot into deep rough and inspiring a new rule of the game (the Tom Brady “tuck” rule)?

If golf were to be played in a completely sterile environment – inside of a giant bubble, perhaps – it would take away one of the all-too-few elements of the game that in this age of a declawed Tiger keep fans glued to their sets on a Sunday afternoon.  Likewise playing the Super Bowl only inside domes or in mild, sunny climates takes away one of the most exciting, unpredictable components of the game that keeps it linked to its roots and contributes to sports’ status as the ultimate in reality TV.

Spreading the Super Bowl around to the NFL’s cold weather locales is the right move by Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s 32 owners.  Just ask any of the hundreds of Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears fans who lined the windswept greens at Whistling Straits this weekend, who can easily handle regular-season games in mid December, largely regard corporate suite-sitters as sissies, and would love a Super Bowl of their own.  Just like all the young guys competing for their first major in Wisconsin, they should get their shot.

In the end, it’s purely elemental.
Rick Horrow is the CNN Sports Business Analyst, co-author of Beyond the Box Score: An Insider’s Guide to the $750 Billion Business of Sports, and of counsel, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLC

Rick joins CNN's Don Lemon tonight at 6pm ET