Super Bowl Countdown: Six Days Left

And so it begins.

For the record, Mrs. Mosley and I aren't really big football fans outside of FSU, so we won't be attending any of the 587 different Super Bowl events going on around town. We're not very big party people, anyway. But I can comment on how the city handles the influx of players, bigwigs and fans.

Speaking of players, both teams arrived here yesterday an hour apart at Cecil Field airport. The Philadelphia Eagles will be staying in luxury at the Sawgrass Marriott in Ponte Vedra Beach. The New England Patriots, on the other hand, will be staying at the Renaissance World Golf Village. These are very nice places to stay and shows that the Super Bowl Committee is putting it's best foot forward to show these players a nice time.

However, it's interesting to note that both of these locations are not even in Jacksonville (Or Duval County, which is one and the same with city of Jacksonville since their consolidation in 1968). They are in St. Johns County just south of us. Now, one of the reasons for this is probably to avoid traffic tie ups and so forth, but the other reason I suspect is that, well, it's more interesting down there.

St. Johns County is home to three major attractions: The Ponte Vedra Beaches, St. Augustine and World Golf Village. The appeal of the beaches is self-explanatory. St. Augustine is perhaps the most popular tourist attraction in these parts short of Daytona during Spring Break or a NASCAR event. It has lots of old buildings, museums, shops and such, and is just a joy to stroll through. It also happened to be where Mrs. Mosley and I spent our honeymoon. World Golf Village is the Cooperstown of Golf and is a great place to...well...play golf (or, like me, see an IMAX show). The location is in the middle of nowhere, so I imagine that the proprietors are gleeful at having a Super Bowl team stay there.

It's interesting to note the descriptions of the players given in that article I linked to. The Eagles, staying in Ponte Vedra, came off the plane with "open-collared shirts and video cameras", clearly ready to par-tay. Whereas the Patriots, staying at World Golf Village, "landed in jackets and ties...with briefcases", clearly ready to relax and stay focused on the big game. So even though these players have not been placed in locations that show off Jacksonville, it would seem that they have been placed in locations that match their personality types. And that's some evidence of some higher brain functions organizing this thing. We'll see if it's in evidence for the rest of the week as well.