Super Bowl: Can Seattle freeze out Peyton Manning’s Denver?

While other cities which have pleased the National Football League by building new stadiums have been repaid in the form of being awarded a Super Bowl, they have not had to contend with sub-zero temperatures.

“Putting the game here is ludicrous,” says New Yorker Dave Klein, one of four reporters to have covered all 47 previous Super Bowls.

“I think the recent ‘unspoken policy’ of putting a Super Bowl in a stadium that’s been recently built was the major reason for this. But there are new stadia in New England, Buffalo and Washington DC and those places will never get one.

“This is for the Mara family and the New York-New Jersey area – and it’s putting the ‘Big Apple’ on worldwide television. But it’s a joke.”

Whether the NFL, whose boss acknowledges he has taken a gamble by allowing the Super Bowl to be hosted in a bitterly cold uncovered stadium, ever repeats its experiment will largely be down to what happens on the field.

Much of that could be down to Denver quarterback Peyton Manning, who aims to be the first starting quarterback to win the Super Bowl with two different teams.

After 13 stellar seasons with the Indianapolis Colts – with whom he won Super Bowl XLI in 2007 – he missed the entire 2011 campaign with a neck injury, leading many to question whether he would ever play again.

But he returned to lead the Broncos to the play-offs last season and completed 55 touchdown passes during the 2013 regular season for 5,477 yards – both NFL records.