Despite meeting overseas requirement for Super Bowl hosts, Kansas City not yet on Super Bowl radar

A few days after the Chiefs announced they would play one of their 2015 home games in London, chairman Clark Hunt explained that one reason was the team’s desire to host a Super Bowl at Arrowhead Stadium.

But while a NFL spokesman confirmed Friday there is a rule requiring Super Bowl bid winners to play a home game overseas within five years, the Chiefs don’t appear to be on the radar for the big game just yet.

“That is not being seriously contemplated,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told The Star on Friday after he was asked whether KC was in line for a Super Bowl. Goodell was speaking during a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors in New York.

Hunt, who is the chairman of the league’s international committee, said in November that the league passed a recently amended resolution from 2006 that requires teams who hold the Super Bowl to play overseas in the next five years. After the Chiefs agreed to give up a home game this season, which will take place Nov. 1 vs. the Lions, Hunt said he was hopeful the move would take care of that obligation for the next four or five years as the Chiefs pursue a Super Bowl bid.

When asked Friday whether there was a connection between playing a home game abroad and landing a future Super Bowl, Goodell said this: “Those are decisions that the ownership will make. I don’t think they’re going to tie it to an international game.

“We are going to be playing probably more international games, and we don’t have enough Super Bowls to handle that. I don’t see that connection.”

A Chiefs spokesman said Friday that the club had no comment. Hunt told The Star at the owner’s meetings in March that he did not expect the league to seriously consider going back outdoors in a cold-weather market for a “few years down the road,” and in the meantime, the Chiefs would patiently bide their time.

Hunt said the NFL’s spring meeting, May 18-20 in San Francisco, will provide him a better forum to engage his fellow owners on the topic.

The Chiefs were originally awarded Super Bowl XLIX, which was played in February in Glendale, Ariz. But the bid was contingent on taxpayer funding for a rolling roof that would cover Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums, which voters did not pass.

Hunt said at the owners meetings that any future bid the Chiefs were to make would not be contingent on a new roof, a notion that Goodell agreed with when asked if Kansas City’s weather is an issue.

“We came close to (awarding a Super Bowl to) Kansas City in ’06, we played (a Super Bowl) in a northern climate right here in this market (New York-New Jersey), and we are going to Minnesota soon,” Goodell said.

Hunt also said in March that the bigger issue for Kansas City in regards to one day hosting a Super Bowl was the lack of high-quality hotel rooms.

The Chiefs, whose schedule was released on Tuesday, will only have four games at Arrowhead Stadium during the season’s first 12 weeks. The week eight game against the Lions, while followed with a bye, is in the middle of a stretch where five of seven games will be held away from Arrowhead.

This story was originally published April 24, 2015 at 8:10 PM with the headline "Despite meeting overseas requirement for Super Bowl hosts, Kansas City not yet on Super Bowl radar."