Denver would be ‘phenomenal’ Super Bowl host, but at what cost?

As Super Bowl LIII approaches this week, the conversation on Radio Row in Atlanta turned to if Denver and the Broncos should, or could, ever host the big game.

On Monday, “Schlereth and Evans” co-host Mark Schlereth said that Denver would be a “phenomenal host city” for a future Super Bowl. But being a cold-weather location, he said, the NFL wouldn’t bring one to the Mile High City without significant upgrades to the Broncos current stadium or building a brand new one.

“It’s not going to happen in Denver unless you have a stadium that has a retractable roof, unless you build a new stadium, state-of-the-art, with a retractable roof,” Schlereth said. “If you did that, you’d have a Super Bowl within five years.”

Schlereth’s co-host, Mike Evans, said he takes a certain amount of pride I knowing how well Denver would put on a Super Bowl, but asked whether the requisite upgrades, or building a new stadium, would be worth it.

“It’s really just community pride. That’s all it is. We get a chance to come out to these places, you just kind of look around and go, we could do this,” Evans said. “But is it worth scrapping the stadium you have that you’re already invested in after 20 years and doing something brand new?”

It’s not that Broncos Stadium at Mile High, which turns 18 this year, isn’t nice, Schlereth said. It’s just the newer stadiums being created are “unreal.”

But, with the structure being relatively new and other factors, like location, Schlereth said it’d be easier to continue to upgrade Broncos Stadium at Mile High for the foreseeable future.

“It’s easy to put money into that stadium and keep it updated for the next 10-15 years as opposed to building a brand new one. So, yeah, I don’t know if that’s going to happen,” Schlereth said.

Follow digital content producer Johnny Hart on Twitter: @JohnnyHart7.