NEW YORK -- Here's hoping that the Super Bowl presentations made by officials of the New York Giants and the New York Jets to owners here Wednesday morning were a lot sunnier than the outside atmosphere that greeted NFL visitors for a two-day league meeting.

The clouds hung low over Manhattan. The weather forecast included the terms "snow" and "sleet." Temperatures hovered around the 40-degree mark and the streets were typically gridlocked. All of this on the penultimate day of October -- hey, not even November yet, folks -- and a day for which the local Chamber of Commerce folks would have preferred a do-over.

Inside the ballroom of a posh, old-money Manhattan hotel, however, one would have had a difficult time convincing the Super Bowl drum-beaters that it was anything but shorts-and-T-shirt weather beyond their sanctum.

It was, to the Super Bowl hopefuls, just lovely outside. You almost couldn't help eagerly awaiting the onset of autumn, it you bought the pitch about the seasonable climes of January and February, prime Super Bowl time.

Brisk? Blustery? Heck, deliver a Super Bowl here in 2008 or 2009, and the supporters will all but guarantee to transform those elements into balmy.

"(The weather) is a risk, there is no denying that, but you can still play great football games in adverse weather," said Giants team president John Mara. "It doesn't have to be 70 degrees to play a Super Bowl game."

Maybe not. But there have been precious few contested in dreary weather. Most of the ones that were, like the two atrocities in Atlanta, were played in a hothouse, with climate controlled environment.

The point that seemed to be overlooked Wednesday is that the Super Bowl is more than just the game Sunday evening. It is the week filled with festivities. It is a run-up in which the NFL entertains the people who line its pockets with advertising and marketing dollars. It is difficult to see some corporate CEO sloshing through grimy snow to a Super Bowl dinner reservation or to a party.

Cynicism aside, the brainchild of commissioner Paul Tagliabue, to have a Super Bowl game in either New York or Washington, D.C., is meritorious. Both cities, jolted by the events of last Sept. 11, could use the boost. No one, for certain, can deny that.

It was even Tagliabue's idea to bring the league's annual fall meetings here, an attempt to confirm to NFL owners that New York is in full recovery, the resilient and redoubtable city in rebound. Around the city, handing from the lampposts, were placards reading: "Imagine. A Super Bowl in New York."

Funneling a half-billion dollars or so into New York or Washington seems a solid enough idea. Even if the revenues wouldn't arrive until seven or eight years after the terrorist attacks. But the NFL has never placed a Super Bowl in a northern city that didn't include a domed stadium. That mattered not to the loyalists toting the New York and Washington banners.

"Our (presentation), I thought, went great," said Giants co-owner Robert Tisch. "I feel very positive. I'm very confident. I don't see how they won't give it to us, to tell you the truth."

Ah, but here is the rub: How much truth-telling was going on by Tisch's fraternity brothers and how much spin by the other owners was little more than the required rhetoric? The nicety of the meeting room can dissolve in a heart-beat once owners begin counting noses, trying to ascertain who is in their corner and who isn't a supporter. Having covered a few Super Bowl bids, I have yet to hear many owners openly bash a candidate city.

Given the sentiment that plays strong in New York and Washington now, no owner would dare to be so callous. At least not publicly.

"There isn't a person in that (meeting) room who doesn't feel for this city and for Washington," said one AFC owner. "That doesn't mean we ought to bring the Super Bowl to one of these places."

While most owners offered politically correct observations about plans for an open-air northern Super Bowl, and glossed over the inherent problems so as not to sound insensitive, the truth is that Washington and New York have a lot of hurdles to navigate. And a lot of questions to answer, most of them from those same owners who appeared so supportive on Wednesday, but in truth espoused considerable skepticism when the quotes were unattributed.

The next four championship games already have been awarded: San Diego (2003), Houston (2004), Jacksonville (2005) and Detroit (2006). The 2007 game probably will go to Miami or Tampa Bay, perhaps to Pasadena if the Rose Bowl is renovated, and there is no lack of suitors for future contests. The vote on Washington or New York won't come until next May at the earliest, and maybe not until October 2003.

There will, to say the least, be plenty of time for politicking between now and then. Super Bowl bids are about calling in chips, returning favors, and swapping preferences. The New York contingent has pledged to renovate Giants Stadium and, of course, there is the respect with which the owners revere the patriarchal Wellington Mara.

Supporters of the New York bid were quick to point out the success of the Times Square bash staged for this year's regular-season opener. "The message was that the NFL is open and New York is back," said one city official, who also suggested the fete went off with zero arrests.

The public message here Wednesday afternoon was that there is sentiment to salve the wounds of New York or Washington by staging America's greatest one-day sporting event at one of the sites. The underlying reality, though, is that a northern Super Bowl in a city without a dome remains a long shot, no matter how much patriotism is involved.

You hate to snow on anyone's parade but, if Washington or New York are to indeed land a Super Bowl game, there remains plenty of work and also much arm-twisting to be done.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.