INDIANAPOLIS â€" As the small-town hero whose buzzer-beater score earned his team the Indiana high school basketball championship and inspired the Hollywood hit Hoosiers, Bobby Plump knows a thing or two about underdogs.
By AJ Mast, AP
Let the sun shine in, or not. Lucas Oil Stadium, which opened in 2008, will be the venue for the Super Bowl.
By AJ Mast, AP
Let the sun shine in, or not. Lucas Oil Stadium, which opened in 2008, will be the venue for the Super Bowl.
Now, with Indianapolis expecting up to 150,000 celebrities, corporate honchos and well-heeled football fans â€" not to mention a global audience of 110 million TV viewers â€" for Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5, Plump sees some distinct similarities between the 1954 Milan Indians and his adopted hometown.
Hoosiers proved that "perseverance and teamwork will often beat exceptional talent," says Plump, 75. And while the USA's 12th largest city (pop. 820,445) and home of the Indianapolis 500 was once saddled with such nicknames as "Naptown" and "Indianoplace," next month's turn on one of the world's biggest stages will prove "we're something besides a place to fly over and say, 'Oh, there's a 500-mile racetrack down there.' "
"It really is like David vs. Goliath," says Plump, whose memorabilia-packed restaurant, Plump's Last Shot (signature dish: a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich the size of a basketball hoop), is a popular draw in native son David Letterman's former neighborhood â€" a bar-, bistro- and boutique-filled enclave called Broad Ripple.
"Our pace may be slower than New York and the East Coast, but we're speedy enough to get the job done."
'Crossroads of America'Â
The city's beloved Colts won't be playing in this year's Super Bowl; the perennial NFL playoff contenders finished the season with a demoralizing 2-14 record.
But no matter which teams wind up at Indy's domed Lucas Oil Stadiumâ€" its classic architecture is modeled on nearby Hinkle Fieldhouse, where Plump made his famous swish â€" residents are hopeful the "Crossroads of America" will make a favorable impression.
"There's an acute awareness that putting on a first-class event could lead to future opportunities," from hosting another Super Bowl and its expected $150 million in economic impact to luring vacationers far beyond the 400-mile orbit the city typically draws from, says the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association's Chris Gahl.
Indy's game plan: Play up its mania for sports and investments in a compact, walkable city center NFL officials have called the Super Bowl's "most urban" venue ever.
Among downtown Indy's newest additions: a 1,005-room J.W. Marriott, the world's largest, that will serve as media headquarters for the big game. It's one of a dozen hotels connected via climate-controlled walkways to the stadium and overlooks White River State Park, a 250-acre blend of green space, museums, a zoo and what Sports Illustrated called the best minor league baseball park in the country. (The latter, Victory Field, will be covered and transformed into a giant Super Bowl beach party for the likes of Katy Perry, Mark Cuban and Peyton Manning.)
When officials were plotting the city's tourism future three decades ago, notes Gahl, they were clear-eyed about Indy's attributes â€" and lack thereof. No, they couldn't sell mountains, an ocean or even a Great Lake. But they could peddle their Midwest friendliness and a passion for competition, whether it takes place on a court, an oval track or a gridiron.
As a result, Indy has hosted a slew of major sporting events beyond the Indy 500, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year and draws some 300,000 auto-racing fans to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway every Memorial Day weekend. The most recent was last month's Big Ten college football championship, seen as a test run of how well the spiffed-up downtown core could handle crowds. (Aside from grumbles about restaurant lines and a temporary dearth of beer, a good time was had by all.)
Downtown Indy's accessibility will be showcased starting Jan. 27 during a 10-day, kid-friendly, three-block-long "festival of football" dubbed Super Bowl Village.
A vacant Nordstrom store will be transformed into a retail and late-night entertainment spot called "The Huddle," and free events will include more than 80 national, regional and local bands.
At the Indiana Convention Center's NFL Experience, visitors can attend autograph sessions and football clinics and check out a replica of an NFL locker room on game day. Across the street at Lucas Oil Stadium, the Jan. 31 Super Bowl Media Day will be open to the public for the first time.
Race-car aficionados can book a five-minute, $20 ride on a street version of an open-wheeled IndyCar, and four zip lines, strung nearly 100 feet high, will hurtle intrepid fans 800 feet down Capitol Avenue â€" where heated benches, warming stations and shovel-armed volunteers will help deflect the impact of a potentially brutal blast of Midwest winter weather.
Is there a 'there' there?Â
Of course, iffy weather isn't Indianapolis' only perceived drawback.
"Coming from the East Coast, it's almost scary how nice people are," says Connecticut-based business traveler Jonathan Chomicz, bellying up to the bar at downtown's landmark St. Elmo Steak House for a martini and sinus-clearing order of horseradish-laced shrimp cocktail.
"But while you don't hear anything bad about Indianapolis," he adds, "do you hear about anything really great?"
Genesis McKiernan-Allen, 26, is an organic farmer and waitress at Recess, an Indy restaurant where the vibe is urban minimalist and a $52 prix-fixe menu (think sable fish with lemon spinach puree, enoki mushroom and celery root remoulade) changes daily. She admits she got out of town "as fast as I could," but she came home after a decade in Portland, Ore. â€" and the prodigal daughter is glad she did.
"The state has an inferiority complex, and everyone's nervous that we're going to screw this up," McKiernan-Allen says. "But there have been a lot of changes in Indy, and it's an exciting time to be here."
Boston visitor Barb Bolich, in town last week for a convention at the NCAA's national headquarters and Hall of Champions (where you can shoot hoops in a 1930s-era gym and test your balance on a springboard dive platform), agrees.
No, she won't come back if the New England Patriots make it to the Super Bowl next month, when hotel guests will be greeted with free hot chocolate, Snickerdoodles and hand-made welcome cards from Indiana schoolchildren detailing what they love most about being Hoosiers. (Writes 11-year-old Erica from Danville: "We have the best people ever! We have good soil! We have the Indy 500!") But Bolich wishes she could.
"For anyone athletically inclined, there is so much history and so many things to do here," she says. "Sports is about beating the odds â€" and so is Indy."
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