The National Football League announced today that Arizona is one of two finalist cities to host the 2015 Super Bowl, which means one thing: thousands and thousands of underage hookers will invade the state to cash in on the testosterone of Super Bowl weekend -- at least that's what self-righteous religious advocacy groups will probably lead you to believe in the weeks before the big game.
The myth of Super Bowl cities being havens for hookers during the weeks leading up to the game was proven false by the Dallas Observer -- a sister paper of New Times -- a few weeks after the Green Bay Packers beat up on the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, and the 100,000-plus hookers -- 38,000 of which were billed as underage -- Christian right groups promised would invade the Big D never showed up.
In reality, authorities in Dallas netted a total of 105 prostitution arrests metrowide during Super Bowl weekend, the majority of whom were "local talent" well-known by the cops. Only two of the hookers arrested were underage -- and they were both from Texas.
Check out the Observer story here.
In some of our own research of the Super Bowl/hooker invasion myth, we spoke to Phoenix police Sergeant Trent Crump who told us that when the Super Bowl was in Glendale in 2008, his department didn't see the dramatic increase in prostitution arrests promised by the religious right. In fact, only 117 people were arrested Valley-wide during local law enforcement's Super Bowl hooker crackdown, none of whom were underage or related to human trafficking.
So bad news would-be Johns: if the Super Bowl comes to town in 2015, the hookers won't be showing up. Rhetoric from the religious right, however, probably will.
