A Santa Clara County judge will decide Tuesday whether to issue an injunction in the battle over youth soccer fields and their usage as a Super Bowl 50 media village.
With the big game less than a month away, work to transform the soccer fields next to Levi's Stadium into is already underway, but the legal fight over access to those fields could bring all that work to a halt.
The Santa Clara Youth Soccer League is trying to block the NFL's plans for those fields ahead of the Feb. 7 game. Both sides were in court Monday, but the judge said he would not issue a decision until Tuesday, giving both sides a little more time to work it out.
Crews were hard at work Monday morning to put down plywood and build the flooring for the temporary media center for Super Bowl 50, but the youth soccer league is not happy about it. The Santa Clara Youth Soccer League wants the work halted, claiming the city and the NFL are not making good on a promise to find the league adequate fields to play while their fields are being used.
Judge will issue decision tomorrow regarding preliminary injunction in fight over soccer fields and use during Super Bowl.
— Marianne Favro (@mariannefavro) January 11, 2016The league says the alternate fields, in Sunnyvale, aren't available when they need them.
"The dates they proposed, 90 percent of them do not meet the days and times we need to go to the state cup and play the state cup," league president Tino Silva said.
An attorney representing the NFL argued Monday that the field is the best location for media – and more importantly security headquarters – and making other plans for it would jeopardize Super Bowl security.
"The difficulty for the NFL to bear around changing the location would produce major security concerns at the Super Bowl," said Santa Clara City Attorney Ren Nosky.
Nosky says the soccer league has known since March 2013 that the city granted the NFL possession of the fields starting weeks before the Super Bowl.
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The league is also concerned that, by the time the NFL replaces the field and the new grass grows, it could be two months after the Super Bowl before kids can play on it. For now, the league says, they have no other venues booked to play their weekend games.
