| |  No better Super Bowl city
By Joe Theismann
Special to ESPN.com
NEW ORLEANS -- There is no better city to hold a Super Bowl than New Orleans. It's a party town, and the Super Bowl is a big party, the NFL's opportunity to showcase the two best teams in football.
What makes New Orleans the best? For one thing, I love to play golf, and the climate is conducive to outdoor activities. The players can practice in decent conditions. The restaurants are fabulous. The partying is unbelievable, especially this time of year with all the parades and festivities leading up to Mardi Gras. It's an easy town to get around in. The Superdome is located in a place where people can walk to it.
While I love Arizona, San Diego and Miami as Super Bowl sites, none of three have downtown stadiums; you have to travel to each one. San Diego, which will host Super Bowl in 2003, would be my No. 2 choice for its climate and the outdoor functions.
I was last in New Orleans only a month ago for New Year's. I saw the Washington Redskins play the New Orleans Saints on Dec. 30 and stayed through the Sugar Bowl. The city seemed to be getting excited that the Super Bowl was returning after five years.
Partying and celebrating big events seem almost like an everyday occurrence in New Orleans. Bourbon Street is Bourbon Street every night of the week. If you go out to Bourbon Street in May, it's not much different on a Friday night than it would be before the Super Bowl.
There are several great restaurants to choose from, but my favorite is Clancy's. I also like Mike Anderson's Seafood Restaurant and Arnaud's, where my wife Robin and I spent New Year's Eve this year. I love to walk the streets, to see the people, and to go to the House of Blues, as well as some of the other tourist traps.
The last three years I worked for Nokia at halftime of the Sugar Bowl. I threw footballs through targets, trying to win money for people. Three years ago, I won someone $250,000. And this year I won someone $100,000. So I have given away $350,000 in New Orleans -- easy money in the Big Easy.
I have attended the last 18 Super Bowls, and I expect Sunday's to be a memorable one. I have said this before: Of the four teams that played in the conference championship games Sunday, every one of them could have gone to the Super Bowl and would have been a good representative. All four teams were that good. The St. Louis Rams do not own as superior an edge as some past Super Bowl champions, like when the San Francisco 49ers played the San Diego Chargers and dominated the game.
A Rams-Patriots Super Bowl will be a well-balanced game. For anyone who wants to pooh-pooh the matchup, check out the last game the two played in Week 10. The Patriots lost 24-17, but they haven't lost a game since.
A game analyst for ESPN's Sunday Night Football, former NFL QB Joe Theismann won a Super Bowl and a league MVP award. He will contribute a Cup o' Joe for ESPN.com each day during Super Bowl week.
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