Jets, Giants players give Super Bowl warm reception

When it comes to Super Bowls, Eli Manning and Santonio Holmes know what they are talking about. One threw a game-winning touchdown pass - preceded by perhaps the most incredible escape and heave in the history of the game - and the other caught a game-winning touchdown. But the two players, both now in New York, have decidedly different views about where Super Bowls should be played.

NFL owners voted Tuesday to award the 2014 Super Bowl to the Giants and the Jets, putting the game in an outdoor, cold-weather stadium for the first time. Manning has trumpeted games when conditions are brutal, saying he has fonder memories from the 23-below wind chill at the NFC Championship Game in Green Bay than from Super Bowl XLII in Arizona. But Holmes is disappointed.

"I like a Super Bowl where the elements don't have any factor in the game," the newest Jets receiver said last week. "I would prefer to keep all Super Bowls somewhere in the South. I don't want to play anywhere where it's cold. We play in it enough during the season."

He seemed to be one of the few thinking that way, as players for the Jets and Giants celebrated the news as if their teams were going to be playing in the big game 3 1/2 years from now. Jets coach Rex Ryan called the decision to have the game in New York a "no-brainer," Justin Tuck called New York "a world class champion" that "deserves to host the biggest game in our new stadium," and Darrelle Revis said the Super Bowl will be "one people will always remember."

Manning, speaking on Fox News' "Studio B with Shepard Smith" Tuesday afternoon, downplayed the big concern about the location: weather.

"Obviously, it will be cold, but that's what playing football is all about," he said.

Though Giants and Jets players might be excited now about the possibility of hosting a Super Bowl, the reality of roster turnovers means that most of them are unlikely to even be around their current teams - perhaps even in the league - by the time the New York Super Bowl caps the 2013 season. There are nine Giants and only three Jets players who are even under contract with their current team through the 2013 season. Neither Ryan nor Giants coach Tom Coughlin are under contract that far ahead.

That doesn't seem to be stopping them from celebrating this "victory" for their teams. And most are downplaying weather interfering with play.

"I know a lot of people have talked about the weather," Osi Umenyiora said. "All I know is that when we won the NFC Championship Game in Green Bay in minus-23 wind chill, it felt like Miami Beach to our team and our fans. I was ready to have an umbrella drink on the 50 when Lawrence's [Tynes] kick went through in overtime, and I don't drink."

Of course, the pressure is now on for the Giants and Jets to actually be participating in Super Bowl XLVIII sometime in February 2014.

"Our goal every year is to be Super Bowl champ," Brandon Jacobs said. "If it's even possible, knowing our home stadium will host the Super Bowl gives us even more incentive."

With Roderick Boone