Will there ever be another Super Bowl in Tampa?

Once upon a time, the Tampa Bay area hosted many a Super Bowl. Four, to be precise. The last one, though, came back in 2009 when the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals in one of the all-time great Super Bowl games.

Since then the Tampa Bay area has repeatedly tried to get the Super Bowl to come back, but keeps failing. Year after year after year, they keep coming in second to shiny, new stadiums. Perhaps last year’s massive renovations will push them over the top, but with the Raiders announcing their intention to move to Las Vegas it doesn’t seem like the flood of shiny Super Bowl hosting stadiums preventing another Tampa Super Bowl doesn’t seem likely to stop.

It doesn’t help that Sports on Earth seems to dislike the area for Super Bowl hosting purposes, ranking them ninth in the league.

The stadium works out just fine, but it's far away from everything and, as anyone who's ever gone there knows, Dale Mabry Highway is not exactly exemplary of a shining city on a hill. There are many fine sections of Tampa. The area surrounding Raymond James Stadium isn't one of them.

Of course, that could be a blessing, too. There’s no real evidence that hosting a Super Bowl or another major sporting event does anything except cost a whole bunch of money, and get you some very short-term tourism revenue that won’t offset that cost.

So maybe the fact that the Bucs are unlikely to win their next Super Bowl in Tampa is a good thing. They can go win it somewhere else, instead.