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Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has made no secret of the fact he considers Chicago an extremely viable location for a Super Bowl, but during discussions with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell last week Emanuel also brought up the idea of Chicago hosting the NFL Draft.
The NFL is contracted to hold the NFL Draft in New York at Radio City Music Hall through 2014, but after that, it's wide open as to where the draft will end up.
Besides talk of Soldier Field hosting the Super Bowl, Emanuel also pitched the idea of Chicago becoming the new home of the annual NFL draft. The league is considering moving the draft out of New York City's Radio City Music Hall after 2014.
We've been over the Super Bowl thing numerous times - namely that Soldier Field's a roofless, crappy-fielded, ridiculously small capacity stadium in a huge cold-weather market - but that doesn't deter Emanuel.
"First of all, we've always been good enough to host the Super Bowl," Emanuel said. "Obviously, they're going to have their Super Bowl in another (cold-weather) city. See how that goes. Two weeks ago [2012], [we] had a bunch of world leaders here, the sixth-largest NATO summit. If we can do that, it'll be a perfect place to have a Super Bowl."
And the NFL is showing itself more open to a cold-weather environment.
"As you know, we are hosting a Super Bowl in New York in an open-air stadium in 2014, and we're excited about that," Goodell said at that news conference. "We think it's going to be a great thing for our fans, and a great thing for New York.
"I think if we can do it successfully there, I think that opens up doors where we'll be looking at. Obviously, you know how to host great events. ... And you got a great stadium."
That could mean Chicago, or it could also mean Gilette Stadium in Foxboro. Just two roof-less outdoor cold-weather stadiums I can think of. Either way, the earliest it could be in Chicago is 2018 - Arizona's got 2015, and San Francisco and Houston have 2016 and 2017, respectively.
The draft could be intriguing from the word go, though. If Chicago finds a way to land the draft, there's no shortage of locations large enough to host, and Emanuel's NATO comment applies here too. It's just a matter of the NFL leaving a place that's nearly become iconic with the draft.