● Miami’s in the mix for Super Bowl in 2025-2030 window,

Miami is known for its hospitality. But not its patience.

So it’s fitting, then, that Super Bowl 54’s host committee welcomed the NFL to town Monday with a hard sell.

Sunday marks the first time in a decade that the NFL’s championship game will be played in South Florda.

At the week’s kickoff news conference Monday, politicians and game organizers took turns exerting a bit of pressure on their guest from the podium — NFL Executive Vice President

Peter O’Reilly — to bring the game back to town ASAP.

“Hopefully, we’re back in the rotation — right Peter?” jabbed host committee chair Rodney Barreto.

“We hope [the next Miami-based Super Bowl] will be soon,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert was even more blunt: “We want you to come back. It doesn’t have to be a rotation.”

Sadly, that’s not the way the NFL sees things. The next four games are already promised to other cities, starting with Tampa in 2021.

But the expectation in the room Monday was that it won’t take 10 more years for the Super Bowl to return.

Rather, it’s realistic that the 2026 or 2027 game will be at Hard Rock Stadium — and Barreto has already started the process to make that happen.

“They’ve actually already sent me the documents saying, ‘Hey, are you interested in [the] Super Bowl [from] ’25 to ’30?” Barreto said. “‘If so, here’s the next step. Here are our minimum requirements.’ I lined through a couple of them, ‘Said I can’t do that,’ then initialed it and signed it.”

Miami hosted the Super Bowl 10 times in the game’s first 44 years. But this is the first time in a decade the NFL selected South Florida.

Why?

The condition of the stadium now known as Hard Rock. In did not meet the standards the NFL required.

The league and most of its membership wants teams to play in new, if not drastically updated, facilities, and prefers taxpayers to help defray some of the costs.

The Dolphins couldn’t make that happen, so Stephen Ross and the league instead directed upwards to three-quarters of a billion dollars to modernize the stadium, build a tennis complex that hosts the annual Miami Open and break ground on a new training facility.

“The stadium’s an important factor, for sure,” O’Reilly said. “This is now a world-class stadium for our biggest stage. Certainly it is a factor. It’s the reason that we’re here this week. Obviously, they’re continuing to invest in this stadium and the campus to make it better.”

The city selection process has changed in recent years. Instead of cities on their own bidding against each other for specific games, the NFL essentially invites cities to apply for specific years. Most believe Las Vegas will get the 2025 game, but that hasn’t been decided. Those conversations will begin at the annual meeting in March, O’Reilly said.

“The toughness is what we call the one-offers,” Barreto said. “Minnesota, Atlanta, New York. New stadiums get a Super Bowl. They have to be open for a year to get that Super

Bowl. Most of [the new stadiums] are already built out. That’s why we may see a little normalization of the rotation now, which may happen, and then hopefully we’ll be back in Miami.”