With the NFL Draft come and gone in Kansas City, Detroit is now on the clock. The motor city will be the site of next year’s event.
On 97.1 The Ticket on Tuesday, host Mike Valenti said the draft is a different animal of an event. He’s not sure if Detroit is ready for a music festival-type gathering.
“Is this city capable of this?” Valenti asked. “Because let me be clear. Hosting the Final Four is easier than this. The Final Four doesn’t need to look cool. You just need bars and a stadium. This is like Woodstock.”
Co-host Rico Beard called the draft a fail-safe event considering it’s about celebrating the game of football with fans of all the other teams. Also, the three days offer something for everyone from the hardcore fan to the local Detroiter who may just want to head down with the kids on Saturday to see what all the hype was about.
Valenti said he was excited about the event and for Detroit Lions fans, but what the NFL is now doing with the draft is different than even hosting a Super Bowl.
Mike made the point that it’s going to be difficult to spotlight the beauty of Detroit. He thought the city is lacking the aesthetic appeal that cities like Nashville, Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City had.
“Unless you’re gonna do on a loop a giant green screen of Motown museum, Spirit, the fist and Aretha’s hat I really don’t know what the hell it’s gonna look like,” Valenti said.
Valenti did acknowledge that from a national perspective, he already knows the rest of the country has the Detroit jokes lined up.
“We’re gonna get crushed in the lead-up to this event,” he said. “Like, we are a pinata for the rest of the country. So no one is really excited about this thing going to Detroit. Just wait.”
“So it is imperative that this looks good,” he said.
It seems like the consensus in terms of a space capable of accommodating a mass of football fans in a festival-style setting is Belle Isle. It is 982 acres in size, and up until this year it hosted an annual IndyCar event the weekend after the Indy 500. Those weekends drew around 100,000 people to Detroit over three days in its heyday.
