Canal Street Chronicles, a New Orleans Saints community

"The competition is so great for this, " Goodell said Wednesday as the NFL wrapped up three days of meetings. "They are all great communities, but one of the things that's really changing the dynamics tremendously is the stadium. You are competing against state-of-the-art facilities that have either recently been built or recently renovated. One of the things that was probably attractive about the New Orleans bid was that they were going to be going through their second renovation in the last two or three years."

"This is a sign that we are back," Benson said. "We came together to get this done. A lot of people put in thousands of hours to bring this game to New Orleans and we are not going to disappoint."

"We back! We back!"

"Emotions were running us pretty good," Benson said Tuesday. "Everybody genuinely seemed to be very happy that New Orleans was going to get the Super Bowl. They seemed genuinely happy about it. When you look around, people had smiles on their faces and clapping and things like this. And not these (New Orleans) guys, I'm talking about the other owners out there.

"We're just thrilled about what's going on. We're getting a new Superdome. Now we're going to get a Super Bowl on top of that. It couldn't be any more exciting than that."

"I don’t think Miami and Phoenix are taking it that way," said Benson of N.O.’s two competitors for the 2013 game. "I’m afraid that’s the way to turn people off. What happens is you get down to 32 people voting, secret ballot, and if you rub somebody the wrong way, they say, ‘the hell with you,’ even though they love New Orleans."