Jan. 26, 2005 - JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Portability is a familiar concept in the NFL. Television-network villages, tons of bulky football equipment, and entire teams journey weekly from city to city.

For Super Bowl XXXIX, however, the cutting-edge league is experimenting with something new. Like so many Port-a-Potties, 3,500 hotel rooms will be whisked into town before the big game and moved out again the day after it concludes.

At least one-fifth of all Super Bowl-related rooms in and around Jacksonville next week will be located on five luxury cruise ships that will dock on the St. John's River, not far from Alltel Stadium, the site of the Feb. 6 NFL championship game.

"Everyone in the NFL was intrigued by the novelty of the idea," Peter Rummell, cochairman of the Jacksonville Super Bowl Host Committee, said yesterday, "as long as we could pull it off logistically. We did. I guess necessity is the mother of invention."

The need for invention arose in 2000 when Jacksonville, the smallest city ever awarded the game, bid for it. For an 80,000-seat facility like Alltel Stadium, the NFL required a guarantee of 17,500 upscale hotel rooms.

This booming municipality, bisected by the north-flowing river, was 3,500 short.

"It was clear from the beginning that we had a great stadium and things like that. But what we didn't have were hotel rooms," Rummell said. "Actually, we had enough, but they were Holiday Inns and Comfort Inns. They weren't the higher-end accommodations the NFL requires."

Rummell, the chief executive officer of St. Joe Co., Florida's largest real estate developer, recalled having seen cruise ships used as floating hotels at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. Since the stadium here sits on the wide river and since many Super Bowl week activities will take place along its banks, the last-minute solution made enormous sense.

In fact, Jacksonville's desperate move might have provided its edge over fellow bidders Miami and Oakland, Calif.

"The cruise lines have been a hit from the beginning," said Michael Weinstein, Jacksonville's former economic development director and one of those who authored the bid. "What we used to fill a deficit became an attraction."

The five Norwegian Cruise Line and Carnival ships will also help close what might have been a hospitality gap in a city not designed to handle 100,000 to 120,000 visitors. They house 16 restaurants, 41 bars and nightclubs, and 5 fully equipped spas.

"We're not New Orleans," Rummell said. "We're not normally a tourist destination. The ships come with their own amenities package. They're self-contained."

Fans from Philadelphia and Boston will be able to visit the ships to eat, drink and party, but they can forget about staying on board.

"The NFL has reserved them for its biggest corporate sponsors," said Heather Surface, the host committee's communications director. "Only 10 percent of Americans have ever been on a cruise, so for a lot of them, several days on a ship could be a real treat."

Two of the ships will arrive here next Wednesday, the other three a day later. They will sail in from the north, dock at three locations, all within 11/2 miles of the stadium, and then return to their home ports on Feb. 7.

Jacksonville, which calls itself "The River City," is a bustling port. The St. John's depth is maintained at 36 feet, deep enough for the nautical behemoths the cruise lines are now sailing. (In fact, since the NFL decided to come here, Carnival and Celebrity have made the city a home port.)

But a few of the ships the committee considered were too tall to squeeze beneath the Dames Point Bridge, even though that two-mile span, which connects northern Jacksonville and its beach area, sits 175 feet above the river's main channel.

"The newest of the Carnival ships wouldn't fit," Rummell said. "They just keep building these things bigger and bigger. Some of the newer ones have 2,500 rooms."

The committee secured a general commitment on the idea from several cruise lines before finalizing its Super Bowl bid. Afterward, it assumed those companies would be clamoring to provide ships for what is this country's highest-profile sporting event.

"We didn't have quite the leverage we thought we would," Rummell said. "We thought they would be so intrigued by the prospect of all the publicity that we could make a nice deal with them. But they basically said, 'Thank you very much, but we're already leaving Miami 95 percent full. So we don't need you and the schedule disruptions it would create.' "

The committee eventually leased the five ships for $11 million, far more than it had budgeted. The extra cost was going to be offset by proceeds from Super Bowl day parties, for which visitors could buy tickets to come aboard and watch the game on TV.

But the NFL, which prohibits anyone else from charging admission to watch the game, quashed the idea.

The enormous ships also will create some security concerns. The Coast Guard, which has a facility here at Mayport Base, will ban personal watercraft on the river and, on the day of the game, lock down the area around the vessels and the stadium.

"They are diving beneath the ships to check the hull before they leave South Florida, and once they get here, they will do it again," Rummell said. "If you're in a party boat, you won't be able to just tool up here and dock."

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