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NFL Starts With Blank Canvas

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By KEITH MORELLI

kmorelli@tampatrib.com

Published: January 8, 2009

TAMPA - A small city of canvas and galvanized steel is springing up around Raymond James Stadium.

Come the day of the Super Bowl, these huge tents will provide shelter for food, drink, fun and games and shade for the tailgating masses attending Super Bowl XLIII.

Kickoff is set for 6:28 p.m. Feb. 1, but for two weeks leading up to the game, the Tampa Bay community plays host to a number of events that range from music in Hyde Park to lights in downtown Tampa to the Taste of the NFL in St. Petersburg.

Perhaps the most popular of the events is the NFL Experience under the canvas tents next to the stadium. Pro football's interactive project to get fans involved in the game runs Jan. 24-25 and Jan. 29 through Feb. 1 under the huge tents.

"We're excited about this," Reid Sigmon, executive director of the Tampa Bay Super Bowl Host Committee, said Wednesday. "We started on Friday, the day after the Outback Bowl, and now we're seeing the NFL Experience going up on the south end of the stadium."

Almost 1 million square feet will be under canvas stretched across a dozen huge tents, he said. Interactive games, exhibits and historical football displays are planned for the event.

On the north side of the stadium, temporary compounds for operations and the media are being put in place, taking up almost all of the parking lot south of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between Himes Avenue and North Dale Mabry Highway.

Passersby now see piles of chain-link fencing, metal beams and posts and pallets of pressure-treated lumber. Galvanized steel beams line the parking lot on the south side of Tampa Bay Boulevard, waiting for cranes to lift them into place.

The NFL Experience has 50 interactive games and exhibits, and some of the ticket proceeds will be donated to the two NFL Youth Education Towns of Tampa Bay at Mort Park and Jackson Heights.
NFL Experience tickets, which cost $18.50 for adults and $12.50 for children 12 and younger, are available through Ticketmaster or by calling 1-866-TIX-4NFL. Tickets also are available at the gate.

"We've been planning this for two years now," Sigmon said. So far, the weather has cooperated, "and we're all going according to schedule."

The NFL Experience is a tradition that has been part of the Super Bowl festivities since 1992 in Minneapolis, Sigmon said. The year before that, the Super Bowl was in Tampa, and the precursor of the NFL Experience, under another name, really got its start, he said.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760.

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