I told you not trust my Super Bowl pick, I finished the postseason with a 2-11 record. Geez sounds like the Baylor Bears in the early part of 2000s. I should’ve known that a guy who does a hula dance would be on the winning team. I am one mean hula hooper if you didn’t know then challenge me. I will out hula you sitting down. I promise you I won’t be wrong about baseball season though and if you want March Madness picks let me know ahead of time so I can ask John Garza for you.
This post is about the NFL seating disaster though.
God watched “His team” in Super Bowl 45 along with a record of more than 100 thousand fans right? Well, not exactly, not only were the Cowboys not in the Super Bowl but the NFL, Jerry Jones and the DFW area failed to set the record by 766 fans. No big deal right? Just another record that couldn’t be broken, WRONG! The record should have been broken but the NFL who runs the Super Bowl had to close seating for nearly 1,200 fans because it was deemed unsafe.
Brian McCarthy, spokesperson for the NFL, confirmed that the record would have been broken if all the seats were ready for game time. What makes this worse? Reports are that the NFL knew about this potential problem and decided to do nothing about it until hours before the Super Bowl. It was announced before the game that the temporary seating was closed and that 850 fans were relocated to similar or better seats in the stadium but that still left 400 fans without seating. Those fans could not be seated and were given two options. They were also reportedly taken to the North Field in Cowboy Stadium to watch the game on monitors; many fans said they couldn’t even see the field from this area though. What is the difference between watching at Cowboy Stadium and at home? Nearly $800.
The two options that the 400 fans received were as follows:
1. One free ticket to next year’s Super Bowl game in Indianapolis plus a cash payment of $2,400 (three times the face value of the Super Bowl XLV game ticket held by the individual). The ticket to next year’s Super Bowl game is transferable.
2. One free ticket to a future Super Bowl game of the fan’s choice, including next year’s if so desired, plus round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations provided by the NFL. This offer will be personalized in the ticketholder’s name and is not transferable.
While I would personally select the second option because why would you want to go to a Super Bowl that you may not care about at all next year, I feel like this is not enough. The NFL knows that, the fans know that so why beat around the bush. The NFL could have avoided this whole mess all together and had a record and 1,200 happy fans. This was a really bad case of being reactive versus being proactive by the NFL and I assume that it won’t happen again but hey this is the same league that may go on strike next season at the peak of their popularity so who knows?
God Bless and Sic Em Bears
onthescoreboard 