Jim Steeg may be the most detail-obsessed person in America, but one story about the departing NFL Super Bowl czar is continually circulated because it’s about something he forgot.
It seems that one year — as he and other top NFL officials were looking around the venue about 30 minutes before kickoff of a Super Bowl — there was a section of 50 unfilled seats. Others wondered what was wrong — a section that large never goes unoccupied at America’s biggest sports event.
Steeg knew instantly that he had left a block of tickets in his desk drawer back at his office. Considering that the start of a Super Bowl has more moving parts than the inner workings of a hydroelectric dam, you might think those seats went unused. But with some help from the people at “will call,” Steeg somehow managed to produce tickets for those seats and get them filled by the time the national anthem was started.
“I still don’t know how he did that, and I might not want to know,” chuckled a top NFL executive. “Jim is a guy who can get things done on a stage so big it intimidates a lot of other people.”
After producing 26 Super Bowls, Steeg is leaving his stressful post to become executive vice president and
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| Steeg (left, with WFAN-AM’s Chris Russo) did some reminiscing in Jacksonville. |
 FAVORITE SUPER BOWL, LOGISTICALLY SPEAKING: “Minnesota. You couldn’t just roll out the warm weather as a cure-all, so everyone had to be creative, and they were.”
Editor’s note: Super Bowl XXVI was at the Metrodome in Minneapolis on Jan. 26, 1992. Washington Redskins 37, Buffalo Bills 24 |
| EASIEST TALENT TO WORK WITH: “Diana Ross; we had her twice. The second time, I was in her locker room and said we’d take care of something for her and she gave me a big hug. That even impressed my son. A lot of musicians don’t know what a football is, then they get here and have such a good time they want to come to every game. That’s why we had Sting four straight years.” |
TOUGHEST TALENT TO WORK WITH: “Last year was generally a pain in the neck and it wasn’t just Janet [Jackson] and Justin [Timberlake].”
Editor’s note: Other talent last year included Nelly, P. Diddy and Kid Rock. |
| MOST OUTRAGEOUS TICKET REQUEST: “Back in the ’80s, someone called for Frank Sinatra and we laughed at them. Frank himself called the next day — he got tickets. The tough ones are the ones who call with a terminally ill child or parent. We try to find out which ones are real — some of them call back four years in a row with a kid that’s dying.” |
| SECRET TO RUNNING A SUPER BOWL THAT NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT: “Clout does not equal efficiency. It’s about having a network established before Super Bowl week. They’ve got to trust you and you’ve got to trust them. You can’t establish that in a week, so you have to spend time in the city during the year getting to know everybody.” |
chief operating officer of the San Diego Chargers. His legacy could be seen as being as enduring and indelible as the NFL itself, since under his watch, the Super Bowl grew to become America’s biggest unofficial holiday — and an adult version of spring break in the host city.
Through Steeg’s tenure, the permanent Super Bowl staff increased from three to 26 people, and media outlets that cover the game grew to include the likes of such iconic brands as ESPN, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, and USA Today, founded in 1982. Radio row grew from New York’s WFAN, the lone broadcaster at the media center the week before the 1992 game between the Washington Redskins and Buffalo Bills, to 90 stations broadcasting from Jacksonville’s Convention Center last week.
Steeg’s longevity can also be traced in the various communication devices he has used during those 18-hour days prior to Super Sunday, which have evolved from the fax machine, to e-mail, to cell phones and pagers and now other PDAs. Steeg even added ship-to-shore radio communication to his portfolio in Jacksonville, dealing with the dilemma of getting the cruise liners serving as floating hotels into the St. John’s River during some foggy days. While JumboTrons were affixed inside buildings when Steeg started at the NFL, they now have become so common that there were six outside Jacksonville’s Alltel Stadium during Super Bowl XXXIX.
Through it all, Steeg and the NFL built the blueprints for an events department that is now essential to any large sports property.
“Jim’s a genius in detail and coordination, but you also have to admire his creative side,” said Roger Goodell, NFL executive vice president and chief operating officer. “He created a lot of the inventory leagues now take for granted.”
Steeg, who joined the NFL in 1979 after four years as business manager for the Miami Dolphins, credits commissioners Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue for giving him relatively free rein.
“I was extremely fortunate to have two bosses that give me considerable rope,” he said. “Somehow, I managed not to hang myself yet.”
Throughout Super Bowl week in Jacksonville, the always-on-the-go Steeg maintained he was too busy for sentimentality. Nonetheless, he took time in the days before the Super Bowl to experience some things for what he knew would be the last time, among them the arrival of a team at the airport to a throng of adoring fans (in this case it was the Eagles), and the latest iteration of former Dolphins receiver Nat Moore’s football clinic, something Steeg helped invent 15 years ago. There were some things he had meant to do and never quite got to through the years, like doing 10 interviews in two hours along radio row.
As Super Bowl XXXIX ended on Feb. 6, the emotions finally got the better of Steeg as he exited his standard control-room perch. “I don’t mind telling you I was misty-eyed,” he said. “I knew it was the last time I’d make that walk.”
The usual wrap party, held on the same stage on the
field where the Vince Lombardi trophy was awarded to Patriots owner Robert Kraft and coach Bill Belichick, was especially heartfelt. Steeg was awarded a Super Bowl ball and jersey signed by the 250-plus cast members, along with the football used for the game’s opening kickoff. At the Fox wrap party, David Hill gave him an oil portrait.
“With all the toasts, I got kind of choked up,” said Steeg, “but it’s not like I’m retiring. I’m leaving to go do something I really want to do, and waiting to jump into that made it a lot easier.”
As the Chargers COO, Steeg’s new job will be just as daunting, if less demanding, as Super Bowl Sunday. The Chargers view a new stadium as essential and Steeg will coordinate the effort. It’s a complex procedure that includes a referendum to grant the Chargers 66 acres adjacent to Qualcomm Stadium as a development site, eventually leading to a $500 million stadium the Chargers would give to the city and run themselves. The politics alone seem overwhelming, or perhaps not to a man used to orchestrating the many disparate ingredients that make up a Super Bowl.
“Jim Steeg is an artist at accomplishing the unachievable,” said Michael Lynch, senior vice president of event and sponsorship marketing at Visa, an NFL corporate sponsor since 1995. “His understanding of the value of a partnership is what helps him get it done.”
Last week, Steeg and his successor, Frank Supovitz, former NHL group vice president of events and entertainment, were in Hawaii tending to the Pro Bowl. Asked if he had any single piece of advice, Steeg chuckled. “There’s no one thing I could tell him,” he said.
Still there is something Steeg hopes to pass on to his heir. “We’ve started to call him ‘Supervitz,’” he said. “We’ll see if that name sticks.”
