On to the Silverdome

Pontiac, Mich., a lunch-bucket industrial suburb 25 miles northwest of Detroit, seems an unlikely host for Super Bowl XVI. It is the first time in the history of the sports event that the game will move outside the Sunbelt. Last week Pontiac's decaying downtown was finishing up a hasty facelift. This overnight assemblage of restaurants, lounges and shops--some in abandoned buildings--bears the name Bourbon Street North. More than cosmetics, however, may be needed to equal the blowsy je ne sais quoi of New Orleans, site of the last Super Sunday. Super Bowl, after all, is Oktoberfest, Mardi Gras and May Day charged up into a massive electronic catharsis: the American version of bread and circuitry. Pontiac just might not be up to that.

The Midwestern city (pop. 76,000) is a near disaster area. HUD recently declared it one of the most economically depressed areas in the nation. It is a one-industry town, and that industry is the ailing auto business. Unemployment has escalated to a Great Depression level of 23.9%, almost triple the national average. Into this municipal battleground for survival, old XVI, with its estimated 70,000 out-of-town visitors, its press personnel and its attendant show-business acts, arrives like a relief column of well-off cavalry. Some experts claim that the event may pump as much as $62 million into the economy of southeastern Michigan.

The N.F.L.'s decision to bring their ball to Pontiac's playground was not entirely magnanimous. Ernest Jones, 66, chairman of the Michigan Super Bowl Committee, is also chairman of D'Arcy-MacManus & Masius, a Detroit-based advertising agency, and he tackled Pete Rozelle with the aid of an awesome lineup. Jones got a full roster of ad-firm chieftains to "remind" Rozelle of their dedication. That dedication is measured in automotive industry advertisers--from cars to spark plugs to tires--who have supported the N.F.L. on television with an estimated $1 billion in commercials over the decades. "It was like whacking a donkey with a two-by-four," recalls Jones. "It got their attention." And their votes.

The Pontiac boosters could also point with real pride to the $55 million Silverdome. Though not as plush or as large as the New Orleans Superdome, the 80,000-seat stadium, which resembles a giant Belgian waffle, was built only for football and offers fine sight lines, as well as what CBS claims is some of the best lighting for television in the country. As for the feared Midwest blizzard, inside there is the inflatable dome's weather-controlled environment; outside more than 100 Michigan highway department snow-removal trucks with 500 tons of rock salt are ready to pounce like orange-painted linebackers on the first snowflake that dares to fall on Super Sunday.

The snow job, however, may be on Pontiac. The 2,000 members of the press will stay in suburban Dearborn, 30 miles from the dome and Bourbon Street North; concerts by Frank Sinatra, Motor City-born Diana Ross and Rocker Rod Stewart in the pregame week are to be held in downtown Detroit; 1,200 buses will cart fans from outlying locations to and quickly from the game. Even the teams will not stay in Pontiac; both are quartered in other suburbs.

The facelifting--and the hope it has kindled--may not be permanent. Pontiac is entitled to better times, and perhaps the Super Bowl will help. But in case not, better make that a double bourbon.

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