ARLINGTON, Texas – Are you kidding me?
For a game that was planned for years, Sunday’s Super Bowl XLV was a pre-game nightmare for those outside and inside Cowboys Stadium. Fans could not get into the stadium for hours because of gate closings and, once inside, some unlucky fans found that their seats were covered by big black tarps and unusable.
Getting into the game was next-to-impossible for the crowd expected to be in excess of 100,000 as four of the 10 entrances to Cowboys Stadium were closed after falling snow and ice from the roof earlier in the week caused injuries to six people. Those entrances where the ice and snow fell were shut down for safety reasons, causing a massive logjam at the other entrances that left fans waiting for more than an hour to get in. That prompted some fans so chant “Jerry Jones sucks’’ in homage to the Cowboys owner.
“This is absolutely ridiculous,” said Glen Long, a Pittsburgh Steelers season-ticket holder who flew in for the game from Baltimore. “That would be fraud anywhere in the world if you sold tickets to an event that you knew you didn’t have. That’s just wrong.”
About 15,000 temporary seats were installed in the upper deck behind the end zones and in other lower areas. Incredibly, some of those seats were not ready less than one hour before the game. The NFL issued a statement that said “There are a limited number of sections in temporary seating areas inside the stadium that have not been fully completed. We are working to resolve the matter and expect that by game time most of the fans affected will have been accommodated in their seats or relocated to similar or better seats.’’
The league went on to state that fans who were not accommodated with seats inside the stadium would receive a refund of triple the cost of the face value of the ticket. “We regret the situation,’’ the NFL wrote.
As it turned out, 800 fans were not able to be seated and they received $2,400 per ticket. That not doubt was little solace to fans who spent plenty of money to get to Texas, paid for flights and hotels and $900 for a seat only to be told there was no seat for them to sit in.
“We don’t want that,” said Odett Karam, a Green Bay Packers fan who flew in from California. “We just want to get into the game. We just want to see the game.”
“There were 850 fans who were put in similar or better seats,” according to the NFL.
With Associated Press