A dome on Cleveland Browns stadium makes no logical sense

Let’s end the debate, the Cleveland Browns should not build a dome.

Folks, we had our shot in the late 1990s. The Cleveland Browns didn’t want a dome stadium then, and they shouldn’t have one now. I can cite years of the historical precedence of what the Cleveland Browns are all about. Smashmouth football, playing in the elements, adapting, surviving, and overcoming.

All that good jazz. None of that matters though. Not in this debate. This debate is already over. The Browns have no reason to put a dome on a stadium because it’ll take decades to pay off. By the time they’re done paying it off, or even before then, they’ll be looking to build a new stadium.

That alone ends the debate, but wait, there’s more. What’s the typical statement by those who want a dome? “Oh, we can host a Super Bowl!”

Ha. No, we won’t.

The NFL just doesn’t want Cleveland to host a Super Bowl, dome or nto

Firstly, New York proved you don’t need a dome to host a Super Bowl, they did so in 2014, and their weather is arguably as bad, if not worse than ours at that time of the year. So not having a dome and bad weather isn’t stopping people from bidding for the Super Bowl or being awarded it.

The NFL just doesn’t care about putting a Super Bowl in Cleveland. So dome or not, the NFL isn’t interested. Let’s say we do put a dome on the stadium though, with the hope of getting a dome. The Super Bowl will generate around $550 million for the city and that’s a high estimate.

The dome will roughly cost $2 billion. Where’s that number coming from? The Chicago Bears looked into this three years ago, and they got a price of about $1.5 billion. Granted that was on the high end of the estimate, but always assume the high end. That was when materials and labor were cheaper too. Keep in mind that from when the Bears looked into those figures, everything has gone up in just eight months.

The Titans have a plan on the table for a new stadium that costs $2.2 billion. Why sink the entirety of a new stadium into just a dome? It makes no sense.

Moreover, do you really want to host the Super Bowl? Imagine the traffic, the congestion, and the out-of-towners who aren’t used to Cleveland weather driving on our highways. My goodness, it screams “nightmare”.