I always hoped the Vikings would build themselves a new outdoor stadium and create a real homefield advantage. Talking to a girl from MN this week, she claimed it was -20 up there recently. Now that's a tough place to play. Why do you think no one ever won in GB in the postseason until 2003?

However, the plans for the Vikes new home is another indooor stadium. Now it's difficult to expect an organization to spend the kind of money it takes to build a state of the art facility and have it limited by being an open-air building.

The fact that your economic viability is that much greater when your building has a roof got me to wondering. Will the NFL eventually become a totally or even mostly indoor league sometime in the relatively near future???? Will the realities of the modern age make it completely impractical for organizations to risk building an old fashioned outdoor home for their team???

Not anytime soon. You have relatively new stadiums in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Tennessee, NY, New England, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago (not new but recently renovated), Seattle, and Denver. I don't believe any of these stadiums could realistically be converted to domed stadiums. All of those areas have the potential to have bad weather in late fall/early winter. Given the age of these buildings I don't see new domed stadiums being built in these cities... at least not in the next 15-20 years.

No I mean over the course of the next 100+ years or so. Will it be the trend for most new builders to build indoor facilities to be used for other sports (b.ball), concerts, etc. in addition to the primary purpose of football??? That seems to be the best investment.

A multi-purpose venue makes sense. However, many of the places you mentioned already have separate facilities for 3 or 4 sports. A football stadium, for the most part, is too large for concerts or basketball, but you could have a dual purpose field for baseball.

And as far as tickets, places like GB, PIT and CHI don't have any problem selling tickets when it's cold.

DAL's new stadium cost $1B. I can't imagine the PA taxpayers ever springing for that for a stadium. PIT had a heck of a time passing like a $350M referendum to fund the new stadium.

The NFL season has also shifted dramatically because of the combination of bye weeks and not starting the season until mid-September. If you go back 20 years, this would be Super Bowl week coming up next week. With the playoffs pushed back two weeks, you create a lot more playoff games in January than ever before. I know it will never happen, but I'd like to see the season start the first Sunday in September and eliminate the bye weeks. However, the bye weeks were put in to generate more TV money (17 weeks instead of 16), so they aren't going away. In the long-term, I could see more domes being built, but like another poster already stated many of the newer stadiums in the league are outside in colder weather, so nothing will happen in the near future.

Eventually yes and the Qb's will be subject to two hand touch below the waist.

Yes, and it's a damn shame.

In my opinion the game was made to be played in the elements, and the diehards will sit in the elements to watch their teams play.

The NFL(as you can see with the SuperBowl) wants weather to not be a factor most of the time,

The Vikings havent made it to the Super Bowl since they went indoors I dont think, so....I wish they would build an outdoor stadium also. It would be a huge advantage come playoff time.

cats gone wild wrote: The Vikings havent made it to the Super Bowl since they went indoors I dont think, so....I wish they would build an outdoor stadium also. It would be a huge advantage come playoff time.

They played at the old Met stadium every time they made the Super Bowl. I agree for the most part it would be a homefield advantage, but I think with the current team (Favre at QB), they have a bigger advantage indoors. Favre struggled in some of his playoff games a GB as he got older.