NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Titans, politicians, and NFL executives gathered for a press conference announcing Nashville as the Super Bowl LXIV host city. The presser’s theme: Nashville will reinvent the Super Bowl.

Nashville will host the best Super Bowl the NFL has ever seen.

A massive promise

The event featured Titans president/CEO Burke Nihil and team controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk.

Former Tennessee governor Bill Haslam, current Governor Bill Lee and Nashville mayor Freddie O’Connell were all in attendance. NFL vice president of events Peter O’Reilly flew in for the occasion. Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp president Deanna Ivey beamed proudly from the stage.

Emceed by legendary broadcaster Jim Nantz, who recently moved to Nashville, lent things credibility.

Every detail was accounted for, except for how to take an event like the Super Bowl to another level. The people of this city brought the NFL here in 1996, when the referendum vote almost didn’t pass. Nashville made the 2019 NFL Draft a landmark event for the league. The people of Nashville filled Lower Broadway during the 2017 Predators Stanley Cup run.

Nashville knows how to throw a party, but the Super Bowl’s largely got that down pat.

Many cities of all different shapes, sizes, and logistical configurations have hosted the Super Bowl. The NFL runs the event as a well-oiled machine. The league has also shoehorned itself into situations that didn’t work. The San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl forced media and operations to split between the host city and Santa Clara, closer to San Jose than San Francisco. Las Vegas presented its own set of complications.

Nashville could be different. I think Nashville will be different. But “different” and “the best Super Bowl ever” are two separate claims. The second one demands receipts.

The announcement press conference was the starting line, not the finish.

Four years of planning, logistics, and execution separate the promise from the product. I think Nashville is capable of delivering something special. It is also fair to ask for more than hyperbole from a room full of self-congragulatory suits about how this gets done.

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Featured Image: USA TODAY Sports.