"A touchdown for everyone," he said. $600 million for the NY/NJ metropolitan region, she said. Hooey.

A torrent of pieces this past week debunking the widely-cited yet completely unfounded estimate of the Super Bowl's local revenue injection—somewhere in the range of $500 to $600 million—reaches its logical conclusion with an economics columnist for the Times getting ignored by a spokeswoman for the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee.

A "report" came up with that figure, the spokeswoman says. A double secret report.

McGillion added, “a decision was made” not to release the study that generated the numbers. She could not say why it was never released, who created it, what the underlying assumptions were, or even whether it represented just benefits or included costs. After a while, she stopped returning my calls and emails.

Even amongst less reticent academics, there is no consensus as to how much money will pour into the local economy. One economist the Times speaks with says it's zero. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates between $113 and $202 million. Professor Victor Matheson says the average for the host city from 1970 to 2001 was $92 million.

Kurt Rotthoff of Seton Hall told NY1 the actual number was closer to 10% of the insane estimate: "So if we see an economic impact of around $60 million, I think that's probably more accurate. Unfortunately, they're claiming it's going to cost around $70 million to host the Super Bowl."

And the people who need that money the most aren't likely to see any of it. Matheson explains to NJ Spotlight:

“The desk clerks and housekeepers aren’t seeing their wages tripled and quadrupled. The money that’s coming in … goes back to corporate headquarters and shareholders around the world.”

According to Matheson, there is one local business that tends to see a real windfall: Strip clubs tend to do well. I think most of those are locally owned."

Yet even this vision of Bada Bing's being bolstered by crisp meathead cash is flawed. The mom & pop poles have been replaced by 25-foot monstrosities in Vivid Cabaret, which boasts the city's tallest. Vivid is owned and operated by Rick's Cabaret International, a publicly traded company.