NFC title game slightly delays Super Bowl stadium prep

Final 12 months the NFL had a staff play in its house stadium in a Tremendous Bowl for the primary time. On Sunday, the league will see one other first that does put a delay in a few of their preparations for this 12 months’s huge recreation.

The NFC championship recreation between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers marks the primary time {that a} convention title recreation is happening on the Tremendous Bowl venue. Katie Keenan, the NFL’s Senior Director of Occasion Operations, mentioned that the league had ready for that contingency, however that it has delayed what work they’ll do inside SoFi Stadium.

“It places us again a few weeks in sure areas, however we’ve nonetheless been capable of do plenty of prep work that we began earlier in January,” Keenan mentioned.

Whereas the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made historical past final 12 months for the Tremendous Bowl, all three of their NFC playoff video games had been on the highway. The Rams received the NFC West, which assured them a minimum of one postseason recreation.

The league started its work on the Hollywood Park website on Jan. 10, the day after the common season. A number of the scaffolding work with tents and different hospitality areas had been evident when the Rams hosted the Arizona Cardinals in an NFC wild-card spherical recreation on Jan. 17.

Extra fence strains, auxiliary lighting and Tremendous Bowl decor can be up on Sunday, however the league and Rams have labored collectively to ensure it received’t severely affect parking. A number of the hospitality amenities for the Feb. 13 recreation are being pre fabricated and can be put in starting Monday.

A lot of the precise work contained in the stadium is not going to start till Monday. Usually at this level, the worldwide broadcast cubicles and different media areas would nearly be arrange, however it hasn’t occurred as a result of it could contain the removing of some seats.

Keenan did say that a number of the prewiring for these have been put in.

“When you will have a five-week construct pushed into two weeks there’s just a few issues it’s a must to get began earlier,” she mentioned.

Keenan additionally mentioned that her workers has used the experiences from Minnesota 4 years in the past to get higher with contingency planning. In 2018, the Vikings had a house recreation within the divisional spherical, which was three weeks earlier than the Tremendous Bowl.

“This website is so sprawling that we’re capable of construct on the campus. We’re getting higher and higher at this as a result of it looks like the previous couple of years the potential playoff staff has been the Tremendous Bowl host metropolis,” she mentioned.

“Beginning in November we began to construct contingencies round every spherical. It’s no secret that the championship recreation situation is probably the most difficult situation as a result of it clearly shortened all the things.”

The one benefit SoFi Stadium does have is that it’s a synthetic floor, that means the league doesn’t have to put in a brand new discipline. Beginning on Monday although, the NFL can have the constructing all to itself.

“It’s like placing a puzzle collectively as a result of plenty of issues which are conventional SoFi and Rams associated have to maneuver out, after which all of our stuff has to maneuver in. Will probably be fairly the orchestrated effort on Monday morning once we can hit the bottom,” Keenan mentioned.