Sorry, your SB seat is not available...

And if the team you went to the game to see doesn't make it next year ... sorry.

 

I was in the stadium by 11 am and the sounds of construction could clearly be heard. Didn't think much of it at the time but turns out they were trying to get the seats finished and didn't make it.

Now I realize they construction crew was probably short-staffed this week due to the weather and that probably knocked them off schedule BUT the NFL started moving into the stadium the morning after the Cotton Bowl (Jan. 8). It's inexcusable that the build-out schedule didn't have them finishing those seats by the Sunday prior to the game.

 

There has to be a large monetary payout here to prevent the NFL or the Cowboys from pulling something like this again or making sure everything is checked out long before the tickets are sold.

If the NFL thinks giving them tickets to next year's game even comes remotely close to making up for what happened, they're sadly mistaken.

There are fans who take out loans to go to games like these. I know Pittsburgh seems to be in the SB every few years, but if you're a Packers fan and your team hasn't been there since 1997 and you think this is your only chance to see your favorite team in a Super Bowl, you might be willing to spend some ungodly sum of money to go to the game. Forget the tickets, there's airfare, hotel (which usually require five nights), time off work, food, parking. Can you imagine if you brought your kids and this happened?

I think $50K per person is a reasonable settlement. That's $20 million total. If this happened, do you think the NFL would ever allow somerthing like this to happen again?

 

So between the seating snafu and Big Ben's two picks, would it be fair to say karma was served twice on Sunday?

 

I wonder if they'll let them scalp the tickets to next year's game or if they'll do something to prevent it.

 

Dallas Morning News:

 

How about playing the game in a venue where temporary seats aren't put up?

 

Anybody still feel like saying this is a good commissioner?

It's easy (and fun) to pile on Skeletor, but Goodell's assumption of blame today took Jones off the hook. Don't forget the stories today about wheelchair seating being obstructed by whatever they were able to put up and those paying customers being f-ed.

There are those who will have you think Goodell is the man to shepherd the league through a labor dispute when he and minions can't even arrange in advance to temporarily seat a few hundred people.

 

I think Goodell is probably pretty far down on the list of people to blame for this. I'm guessing his knowlege of the situation was minimal or he was assured it was being taken care of.

I agree that temporary seating in the first place is bullshit. The NFL deserves to pay dearly for this fuck-up.

 

It wasn't an issue of seating a few hundred people. Several thousand were seated in those sections. In the end, unfortunately, a small portion of those seats weren't ready.

The whole basic design of that stadium was built around the idea that, for really big events, temporary seating would be possible in those upper plazas. For a regular-season Cowboys game, that area is all SRO (and the team and the city limit that capacity to about 10,000). The fact that you can have seating for 100,000-plus for a Super Bowl is the main selling point of that venue to the NFL. And it's why that venue will probably get another chance at a Super Bowl in the future.

 

Be interesting to see a breach of contract lawsuit with this, including the demand for reimbursement of all expenses and punitive damages. The NFL can argue that it's not responsible for things like travel and housing, but the counter could be that those items were purchased based on tickets sold by the NFL for seats it did not have on hand.

 

I'd bet folding money that on the back of the Super Bowl ticket there is some fine print that states something to the effect that it's a revocable license that, at the discretion of the NFL, can be revoked for any reason by the refunding of the face value.