Bart Hubbuch, an old Times Herald pal of mine and a neighborhood kind of guy, is a nationally known sports writer who works for the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville played host to the Super Bowl in 2005, so I asked Bart what we have to look forward to when the Super Bowl gets here in 2011. Says Bart:
"My only advice is for people to get ready to be shredded by a bunch of lazy, ungrateful sports writers who would complain about the free pineapple if the Super Bowl was held in Hawaii every year. Granted, Jacksonville isn’t exactly Mecca, but the way this city was torn apart two years ago was disgraceful. Case in point: Tony Kornheiser wrote an entire column in The Washington Post that basically called Jacksonville a hellhole WITHOUT HAVING EVER VISITED HERE. As if a city with miles of pristine beaches on the shores of the freakin’ Atlantic Ocean was uninhabitable.
"So get ready to hear plenty of snide comments about the weather, how spread out Dallas and Fort Worth are, the traffic, blah, blah, blah. The best thing is to just tune it out and enjoy the spectacle, because the parties, the celebrities and the street scene really are a lot of fun. Of course, being from Dallas and knowing how thin-skinned everybody is, I understand people there will go ballistic at the first snide remark. But trust me: Be proud and blow it off."
Which raises the question: If they thought that of Jacksonville, what will they say about Arlington?
