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Oakland gearing up for Super Bowl bid - SF Business Times, July 31, 2000 - Ron Leuty
It's fourth down and goal to go for Oakland's long-shot bid to host the 2005 Super Bowl, and Zennie Abraham knows the city must execute perfectly to pull off an upset.
Abraham, president of the 29-member Oakland-Alameda County Sports Commission, must spend the next two months blitzing dozens of hotel general managers, lining up commitments for 24,500 top-notch Bay Area hotel rooms, tackling the issue of 12,000 additional seats for Network Associates Coliseum, and pinpointing venues for various Super Bowl-related events.
And that's just for starters for an event Abraham estimates will cost $17.5 million to host. All of it goes into a bid package to be delivered to 32 NFL team owners in preparation for their Nov. 1 meeting in Atlanta. At that gathering, owners are expected to give a thumbs-up to one of four bidders for the 2005 version of football's frenetic season-ending extravaganza.
Oakland's competition Atlanta, Miami and Jacksonville all have strong political and corporate backing. Yet a critical page is missing from Oakland's playbook: a letter of support from San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
"The mayor prefers to have the Super Bowl in San Francisco," said Kandace Bender, spokeswoman for Brown.
"We still would like his support," Abraham said, adding that it is not necessarily needed.
Stoic as Abraham sounds, Brown's support may be a make-or-break item, especially as Oakland tries to block off premier hotel rooms for NFL staff.
"The requirements for a Super Bowl really exceed one city's abilities as far as resources like hotel rooms," said Greg As-bury, general manager of the Rose Bowl when Los Angeles snagged Super Bowl XXVII in 1993. He also was Stanford Uni-versity's associate athletic director when the 49ers hosted the game there in 1985.
Abraham will meet with hotel general managers in mid-August, after delivering to them a 13-page contract. The game will draw about 140,000 visitors to the Bay Area, Abraham estimates.
Other than hotel rooms, the biggest and most costly item on Oakland's Super Bowl agenda is seating. Another 12,084 seats are needed to meet the Super Bowl minimum of 70,000 sellable seats. That logistical nightmare includes architectural renderings of how the new seats will be configured and assurances that the new seats won't obstruct the view of high-paying luxury box owners.
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