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The Georgia Dome has indeed hosted its last football game.

Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NFL rules do not permit Super Bowl LI to be broadcast at the recently-abandoned home of the Falcons. Implicit within this reality is the fact that the NFL won’t be making an exception to its rules.

And for good reason. The 70,000 or so who would have shown up to watch the game together would have reduced the number of local households watching the game. Which in turn would have taken a chunk out of the TV ratings.

Still, on a day when more than 100 million will be tuned in for the game, what’s another 70,000? If there’s a way to charge a modest fee and raise some money for charity, it would be a nice gesture by the league and the proprietors of the Georgia Dome.

It actually could become the start of a new tradition in all Super Bowl cities: A giant launch party at the two teams’ stadiums, with a large amount of cash raised to help some worthwhile cause.

Surely, it wouldn’t impact attendance at the Super Bowl itself. And even if stadiums in the two cities represented in the Super Bowl are full to capacity, the TV ratings would still be astronomical.

So instead of a knee-jerk reaction that would mandate clinging to the plain terms of the league’s rules, maybe the right approach would be to consider whether an opportunity exists to leverage the Super Bowl into a compelling shared experience for a good cause.