SUPER ‘BULL’: A section of seats that had already been sold to fans is cordoned off in Cowboys Stadium during last night’s Super Bowl after they were deemed unsafe just hours before the game.
(
)
Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones tried his damnedest to set a record, and he did — for the worst fumble in Super Bowl history, a monumental screw-up that originally left 1,250 ticket-holders without seats.
In his quest to set an all-time Super Bowl attendance record, the ego-driven Jones and the NFL sold tickets for hastily constructed, temporary seats at Cowboys Stadium that wound up being incorrectly installed and deemed unsafe just hours before kickoff.
About 850 of the unlucky fans eventually were given other seats to watch the Packers down the Steelers, 31-25 — but 400 were left out in the cold.
“I got to my seat, which was row 33, and guess what? There was no row 33,” said a furious Jim Sass of Milwaukee, who spent $12,000 on a package that included tickets for him and daughter Tammy to celebrate her 29th birthday.
Sass told The Post that when he looked around for help, “Some smart-ass from the NFL told us, ‘Hey buddy, don’t bother me. You’re just going to have to stand somewhere and watch the game.’
“My daughter was crying,” said Sass, wearing a Packers No. 12 Aaron Rodgers jersey. “If I was younger, I’d have decked him.”
Rich Sonson drove to the much-ballyhooed stadium in Arlington, Texas, from Pittsburgh and waited in line for two hours to have his ticket scanned.
When it was denied, the stunned fan said, he was pointed toward a tent a half-mile away outside the main parking lots.
“There were older people — someone in a wheelchair — going over to this tent, where there was no one there,” Sonson seethed.
“We went back to the NFL official and were brought into a room. There had to be 1,000 people in that room pushed up against a chain fence, trapped like we did something wrong, like we were animals.”
Angry fans, waiting to learn their fate, shouted, “Jerry sucks!” and “NFL Sucks!” witnesses said.
“[Jones] sold tickets he didn’t own,” fumed Glen Long, a Steeler fan from Baltimore. “They call that fraud anywhere in the world.”
The NFL struggled to explain the super snafu.
“Incomplete installation of temporary seats in a limited number of sections made the seats unusable,” red-faced NFL officials said in a prepared statement after being told by the fire marshal that they wouldn’t be allowed to seat anyone in the questionable sections.
The dissed ticket-holders had their fate sealed in a form letter hastily handed out in the afternoon. “Your assigned seat is unavailable for today’s game. The NFL and the Cowboys sincerely regret this inconvenience,” the letter read.
Some of the useless seats were cordoned off with yellow tape; others had black fabric draped over them, as if in mourning.
The relocated 850 fans had purchased tickets for sections 205A, 215A, 230A, and 240A — midlevel seats facing goal lines at the $1.2 billion stadium.
They were given equivalent or better seats, league officials said.
Sacked fans in the upper reaches of sections 425A and 430A — in the top deck high above the end zone — were out of luck.
League officials said those ticket-holders would be “taken inside the stadium to watch the game on monitors in the North Field Club behind the Pittsburgh bench” or “had the option of viewing the game from standing-room-only platforms in each corner.”
“In addition, these fans will each receive a refund of triple the cost of the face value of their ticket. The face value of these tickets is $800,” the officials vowed.
Anna Rusch, 22, of Washington DC, had a ticket for 425A, before she and her 65-year-old dad were ushered down to a high-end, field-level club location.
There was just one problem: Players and game officials blocked all the action.
“We were on field, but we couldn’t see the field — we watched everything on TV,” said Rusch, whose dad, from Gillett, Wis., has held Packers season tickets for a half-century.
The father and daughter checked out what would have been their seats and were glad fire marshals shut it down. “It looked very unsafe. People were saying the bolts were flying off,” Rusch said.
The relocations weren’t enough to satisfy the displaced pigskin diehards.
“We paid $800 face value for our tickets, plus our flight down here and the cost of our hotel room,” Packer fan Steve Nordess of Minneapolis, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
He brought his 80-year-old dad to the game — only to find they had nowhere to sit. “This was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime for my father,” he said.
NFL officials promised that the displaced 400 would be supplied with free food, soft drinks and merchandise in addition to getting triple their money back.
But at least five of the fans told The Post that they were never told of any potential goodies.
Jones had been pushing to set a Super Bowl record with about 105,000 attending the game.
And for all the trouble, last night’s game still fell short of the Super Bowl attendance mark of 103,985 set in 1980 in Pasadena’s Rose Bowl. The Packers and Steelers drew 103,219, including the displaced fans. Even for fans with tickets and seats waiting for them, just getting into Cowboys Stadium was a hassle. The NFL and stadium operators had to close four of the 10 gates, fearing that falling ice would hit fans. Six people were hurt Friday by falling ice outside the stadium.
Jack McGovern of Brooklyn told The Post that he waited almost three hours to get through security, nearly missing kickoff.
“I have been to nine Super Bowls, and this has been my worst experience,” McGovern said.
Sonson watched the game on a TV screen inside a stadium bar.
“This is my first Super Bowl, and this is my view,” he lamented. “How do we know the Steelers are going to get back here in my lifetime?”