Guest Columnist!

My cousin Doug and his wife live in Anderson, IN, very near Indianapolis, so I asked him if Super Bowl will interfere with life as it is generally lived there. Our Man on the Ground wrote back:

"Indeed it will. Our proximity to Indy (about 30 miles or a 20-minute drive along I-69) makes our community a hot spot for those seeking low-budget accomodations.

Thousands of people are staying in motels and dining in local restaurants both in and around Anderson and also 18 miles to our East in Muncie (home of Ball State University and David Letterman.)

Since I-69 is the corridor from Muncie to Anderson to Indy, there is a considerable melding of Super Bowl tourists seeking local fare at reasonable prices. My wife and I just returned from having pizza and beer at our favorite spot called Art's Pizza, which is a locally-owned establishment that is renowned as offering some of the best pizza anywhere. The place was packed, which is unusual. We saw quite a few "unfamiliar faces" above NY Giants jerseys in that small local establishment where just about everyone knows everyone else, so I'm sure they were guests here for the Super Bowl week events.

You also have to remember, Anderson is the training camp home of the Indianapolis Colts, and as such a second Hoosier home to Peyton Manning, so many Hoosiers are cheering for Peyton's little brother and his NY Giants.

Anderson is also the home of the Hoosier Park Horse Racing and Casino (which attracts more than a million visitors a year;) a destination for many racing fans during the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400 weekends; a sanctuary for NCAA tourney fans since Indy is always a tourney site and often the finals location. It's the international headquarters of the Church of God, whose annual camp meeting can attract 15,000 - 20,000 people from around the world for a week-long religious confab. So we do get residual impacts from major events and we are accustomed to having sizeable tourist groups.

Oh! And no black out of the game. The NFL doesn't do that with the Super Bowl since it attracts a stadium full of non-locals.

The Indy 500 is always blacked out since the track can accomodate far more people than Lucas Oil Stadium. "