For example, when the Green Bay Packers built their stadium they had to have known it would constantly be snowing. Same with Kansas Citt Chiefs.
In: Engineering
Couple points from a Wisconsin resident.
For starters City Stadium, which would eventually be renamed Lambeau Field was built in 1957. The first domed sports stadium, aka The Astrodome, wasn’t built until 1965. City Stadium was also community funded, so even if the technology existed at the time they probably couldn’t have afforded it. Football is also historically considered to be an outdoor sport.
And it also is not constantly snowing. Football season starts in September, the first snowfall typically doesn’t happen until late November/early December. And there are very few days that it actually snows.
Unique weather for different locations is part of the appeal of football. There’s an added dimension to having a tangible home field advantage for each city, it adds some character. Some teams play better in intense heat, others in intense cold, rain, snow, etc, so it makes it more interesting.
Standard cold or bad weather wouldn’t cause or threaten cancellation like with baseball, only very uncommon situations like Buffalo getting like 3 feet of snow, KC have absurdly cold weather (still played) or lightning, things like that.
As others have also pointed out, the game was created as an outdoor game and building a dome wasn’t in the cards back then.
Some Northern teams feel that playing in the cold in the snow in the rain is an advantage over teams say from Miami. By the same token Miami probably thinks it’s an advantage to play others in the heat. And I imagine Denver views their atmosphere as an advantage
One reason is the city needs to be big enough to hold stadium show concerts to make the done worth it after January.
When Cleveland tore down the Mistake by the Lake and built the Factory of Sadness there was a huge demand that it be an open air stadium.
The city would have lost their mind and tore that one down too if it was a dome. It wouldn’t be right being comfortable
Snow is heavy. You’d need to build a done strong enough potentially to hold the weight of massive amounts of snow. Normal buildings can distribute that weight across columns, but under a dome, you don’t have that luxury.
Three Words: Home Field Advantage
The home team is use to playing in the snow. A team from a place with a mild climate is going to have trouble coming in to play in a snowstorm.
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