Joe Henderson: Neither rain, freeze, or a blowout could chill Tampa’s first Super Bowl

Clock is ticking: Tampa is hosting next Year's Super Bowl.

A few days before the 1984 Super Bowl game, a fierce storm rolled through Tampa. The thermometer plunged, and heavy coats became the order of the day. And as a member of the Tampa Tribune sports department, I felt the need to apologize to some of my friends in the media for the less than chamber-of-commerce conditions.

I wasn’t the only one.

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That was silly, of course. No one can control the weather, but that was the first time Tampa had stepped upon the national stage, and everyone in town wanted it to be perfect.

The city sold visitors on a vision of sun-splashed beaches and golf courses, capped with a game for the ages on the Super stage. Instead, palm trees and foliage planted along interstate highways throughout the area had frozen to death.

“It was awful,” Tampa businessman and civic icon Leonard Levy said.

The show must go on, though, so people still went to parties. Restaurants filled. Friends told me the apology was unnecessary. And that game for the ages turned into a 38-9 rout for the Los Angeles Raiders over the Washington football team that changed its nickname this season.

An Atlanta columnist wrote afterward that Tampa will be remembered for hosting the Super Bowl — once.

Tampa must have done something right that week though, because, on Feb. 7, it will host football’s biggest game for the fifth time.

It’s the first time that a Super Bowl participant will play in their home stadium. That would be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, quarterbacked by some guy named Tom Brady.

You may have heard about that.

Nobody in Tampa is apologizing for anything at the moment. Rain, cold, who cares? There’s a championship at stake, and the Bucs are one of only two teams that can win it.

There remains a sense of awe about having the Super Bowl in town, but no one doubts Tampa’s ability to pull this off in style, even in difficult situations. We’ll get to the reasons for that in another story, but first, take a step into the way-back machine to that initial game in 1984.

Tampa’s quest for the Super Bowl began the day in 1974 when the NFL awarded the Tampa Bay area its first major pro sports franchise.

Levy, in New York for the announcement, went straight to longtime NFL executive Don Weiss.

“OK, we’ve got a team, but I asked him when we could get a Super Bowl,” Levy said. “He told me we didn’t have enough hotel space.”

That was true. Downtown Tampa didn’t have a marquee hotel then, and the surrounding area wasn’t much better. When the Hyatt Regency finally broke ground downtown, Levy sent a clip of the story to Weiss with the same question: When do we get a game?

Even when Tampa did break through, hotel space was a major issue. That’s been corrected now, by the way.

“The thing that made it work in 1984 was Orange County. There were some hotels in Pinellas County, but a lot of people stayed over in Orange County. We even talked about the Commissioner’s party, the big Friday night party, doing it at Epcot,” retired NFL executive Jim Steeg said.

“There was a discussion for a while about running trains back and forth. Disney was pushing for that. It was a different world then.”

That was true in more ways than one.

Player access was much looser then. You actually could get one-on-one conversations with players. Now, coaches keep them sequestered during Super Bowl week except for mass media events.

Joey Johnston, a colleague in the Tribune sports department, recalled chatting one-on-one with winning coach Tom Flores after the game. That never would happen today.

And there was this moment.

“I was in the Raiders locker room, talking by myself with (safety) Vann McElroy,” Joey said. “He was holding the Lombardi trophy, which was amazing. Somebody yelled for him to come over and get a picture taken with some players, so he goes, ‘Hey, kid. Hold this for me.’

“There I am, 22 years old, in the winning Super Bowl locker room, holding the Lombardi trophy.”

The memories of that game came flooding back Sunday when the Bucs defeated Green Bay to earn their second trip to the Super Bowl. What a week!

I talked one-on-one with stars like running back Marcus Allen of the Raiders, who was the game’s most valuable player. Washington quarterback Joe Theismann was a quote machine.

Being around the biggest names in sports writing at the time, including legendary L.A. Times columnist Jim Murray and Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald, left me starstruck. Each story, each paragraph, had to be perfect, in case they were reading.

I did not succeed, by the way.

It’s a different story this time, of course. The pandemic eliminated 99% of the buildup that is so much a part of the Super Bowl. The Kansas City Chiefs will fly in on the day before the game as if it were just another midseason trip.

I’ll watch from my living room instead of the press box.

This still is the Super Bowl, though, and nothing will change that.

Not rain, wind, nor freeze warnings, nor a 38-9 final score.

No apologies needed.