NEW YORK - Bowing to environmental concerns, the National Football League announced that no Super Bowl activities other than the game itself will be held this year. NFL Director of Environmental Programs Jack Groh made the announcement today.“I don’t think fans realize how big a party we throw,” Groh said. “We have 3,000 vehicles running around. We use a huge amount of building materials and electricity to build The NFL Experience for fans. We calculated the carbon footprint for that one weekend at 500 tons of greenhouse gases, and that doesn’t even include having the teams fly in, driving them around, and the game itself. We just can’t justify the environmental damage we are doing.”
Groh says he looked for ways to mitigate the damage. “We looked at reforestation projects we could do to make up for all the gases we’d generate, but it turns out there isn’t enough land mass in the world. If we tried to build more land mass, we’d just be creating more greenhouse gases in the process. It’s a real Catch-22,” Groh sighed.
NFL owners at first were reluctant to cancel the activities. “To be honest, we make a lot of money on the Super Bowl activities,” owner Jerry Jones said. “Luckily, we’re all filthy rich already, so none of us will miss a million here or there. Plus the league could use some good publicity to offset the Patriots’ cheating scandal and the Michael Vick thing.”
Groh thinks NFL fans will understand. “It’s for the good of the planet. Everyone will still get to see the game, and that’s what everyone is really interested in,” he said. “That, and the TV commercials.”
