Super Bowl misses attendance mark

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Ice, snow, a taxi strike and stadium seating issues dominated the headlines leading up to Super Bowl XLV.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was hoping for some good news in the form of a Super Bowl attendance record Sunday night, but he'll have to settle for second place.

A total of 103,219 crammed into Cowboys Stadium to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers, missing the record by 766.

The construction of some temporary seating was not completed in time for the game, resulting in the relocation of 850 fans and refunds for 400 who could not be reseated in the stadium.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed the seats lost just hours before the game were the reason the record wasn't set.

Sunday's total is the second largest for a Super Bowl and second largest for an NFL game in Cowboys Stadium, which opened in 2009.

The attendance included 91,060 fans -- including 3,000 who bought tickets to watch the game on HD screens outside the stadium -- and 12,159 credentialed personnel (league and team officials and media).

The previous record of 103,985 came at Super Bowl XIV between the Steelers and Los Angeles Rams on Jan. 20, 1980, at the Rose Bowl.

The largest crowd for any NFL game was when the Dallas Cowboys played the Houston Oilers in front of 112,376 fans in a preseason game in 1994 at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

Jones was hopeful his $1.2 billion jewel of a stadium would set the all-time attendance record. Jones and the NFL filled the end zone open areas, normally sold as standing-room only tickets, with bleachers.

"The attendance included 91,060 fans -- including 3,000 who bought tickets to watch the game on HD screens outside the stadium."

It was shenanigans that the idiots that payed $200 a pop to watch the game outside, counted towards the attendance anyways.

Some Super Bowl seats not completed

ARLINGTON, Texas -- After a limited number of sections in temporary seating areas at Cowboys Stadium were not completed in time, 400 fans were left without seats at Super Bowl XLV on Sunday.

Two hours before the game, workers were frantically trying to fix the sections or get the fans "relocated to similar or better seats," valued at $800. The NFL found alternate seating for 850 of the 1,250 fans affected. The 400 who were not able to be seated were given a refund of triple face value -- $2,400.

"Incomplete installation of temporary seats in a limited number of sections made the seats unusable," the NFL said in a statement. "The safety of fans attending the Super Bowl was paramount in making the decision and the NFL, Dallas Cowboys and City of Arlington officials are in agreement with the resolution. We regret the situation and inconvenience that it may have caused. We will conduct a full review of this matter."

The NFL tried to placate those 400 fans, taking them inside the stadium to watch the game on monitors in the North Field Club behind the Pittsburgh bench. They also had the option of viewing the game from standing-room platforms in each corner of the stadium. Those fans will still get the triple refund.

The fans "watched game in club w/free food, soft drinks + merchandise," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello tweeted. "The other 850 were re-located to seats in equal or better locations. NFL + Cowboys staff and families gave up seats."

After saying all week that he expected Sunday's game to set an all-time Super Bowl attendance record with 105,000 fans seated inside the stadium, Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones come up short as the announced attendance of 103,219 was just shy of the 103,985 mark set in Super Bowl XIV between the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers at the Rose Bowl.

Based on the 850 seats that were forfeited by the NFL and Cowboys to make room for those who were relocated, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed that the seating debacle was the reason the attendance record was not set.

"Yes," McCarthy said when asked if those seats would've been otherwise occupied had the displaced fans not been moved there. "But we've been focused on the safety and experience of our fans."

Instead, Jones will have to settle for the second-largest Super Bowl crowd.

At about 4 p.m. in a concourse, a Steelers fan in a Troy Polamalu jersey was yelling obscenities into his cell phone at a stadium employee. He couldn't be seated because his seats were in an area near the seats that didn't meet code.

We spent $3,000 on tickets," his friend said. "After parking and $10 beers, it's $3,000. I just want to sit."

Said Jennifer Dunfee, a friend in their party who flew in from Colorado for the game: "We've spent over an hour trying to figure out how to get up there.

The NFL closed four of the 10 entrance points into the stadium Sunday because of lingering ice on the roof of the stadium. On Friday, six people were injured by ice falling onto the sidewalk outside of the structure. NFL officials worked with the Arlington Fire Department to direct fans safely into the stadium. Safe corridors were established around any potential fall zones.

In addition, the Arlington Police Department requested additional officers to the East Plaza ticket offices after the crowd started to become unruly after ticket scanners weren't functioning. There were chants of "Jerry Sucks!" and "NFL Sucks!"

Steve and Dawn Novak traveled from Rochester, N.Y., to find that their $800 seats could be exchanged for three times face value, or else for a $350 standing-room-only ticket. They said the NFL would not reimburse the difference in value. They decided to take a loss on the ticket but attend the game after coming all that way. She is a Packers fan and he is a Steelers fan, and they were both angry about the experience.

"We said one of us was going to be happy at the end of the day and we were wrong," Steve Novak said.

Dallas resident Brian Shake said it generally takes 15 minutes to wait at the gate. He said he waited in line for an hour and 20 minutes on Sunday.

"It was just so long," Shake said. "Problem was, you didn't know if you were in the right line or not. Everywhere you looked, there were just fences and screens and you couldn't get in anywhere."

His wife Kathy Shake called it "frustrating."

"It was very confusing on how to get in as you snaked your way through security."

Paul Bryant, from Milwaukee, said he and his party waited at least 90 minutes in line to get into the stadium.

"Nobody knew where to go. ... They had 14 detectives, and there's got to be 20,000 people going through here. If you do the math, that isn't enough," Bryant said.

Stadium workers were covering the top corner sections of the upper deck behind one end zone two hours prior to kickoff. There were off-limits seats in the same upper-deck rows as seats that were deemed safe. Yellow police tape was used as a dividing line, with uniformed personnel also keeping folks away.

The fans affected were directed to the Party Plaza area, which is located outside the stadium for the Super Bowl.

The temporary-seating sections were erected in what is usually an open area. Fans can purchase $29 "Party Passes" to stand in the open areas during Cowboys games.

Cowboys Stadium's ace falls in hole

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Cowboys Stadium was supposed to be the great equalizer after ice and snow storms shredded Super Bowl XLV week.

Turns out even the $1.2 billion stadium could not deliver as much as hoped.

What did deliver was the game. The Green Bay packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-25, to bring the Lombardi Trophy back home and help wipe away some of the stain from earlier Sunday.

Before a speck of dirt was moved for a new stadium in Arlington in 2006, Jerry Jones, the Cowboys' owner and general manager, had his eyes on the Super Bowl attendance record. The NFL was pumping up the possibility, too.

With 103,219 in attendance, Super Bowl XLV came up 766 short of the record.

What in the name of Christina Aguilera messing up the lyrics of the national anthem happened?

So Super Bowl XIV still has the record with a crowd of 103,985 seeing Pittsburgh beat the Los Angeles Rams at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 21, 1980
It wasn't even the biggest football crowd in Cowboys Stadium history. That was 105,121 who saw the Cowboys lose to the New York Giants in the 2009 regular-season opener. And it did not sniff the NBA All-Star Game, which drew 108,713 last year at Cowboys Stadium.

The official breakdown: 91,060 fans in the stadium and the outdoor plaza area and 12,159 credentialed workers.

More people packed Cowboys Stadium on Sunday than the population of Green Bay, Wis., but that was just a tease.

Sort of like Super Bowl XLV week.

Some of the issues that cropped up could not be avoided because of the weather, but to hear NFL commissioner Roger Goodell laud the efforts of the cleanup Friday seemed a tad disingenuous considering how bad the roads were for most of the week.

The best decision the NFL made Sunday was to keep four of the stadium's 10 gates closed to avoid the repeat of Friday when six people were injured by ice and snow falling off the roof. As a result, however, getting into the stadium was harder than it should have been. Fans complained of long lines and little information.

Those kinds of complaints you can live with, especially when so many in attendance have never been to Cowboys Stadium before.

But how in the world could the doors to the stadium be open before the installation of 1,250 temporary seats was complete? How do the seats not meet code requirements on the day of the game?

During a media tour of Cowboys Stadium in late January, NFL director of event operations Bill McConnell said the league will be working on the seating right up until kickoff. It sounded comical at the time, but he was telling the truth. And it wasn't so funny when the contractor, Seating Solutions, could not complete the seats on time.

Six sections totaling 1,250 seats were closed off, leaving some fans in different locations or displaced altogether.

The NFL attempted to adjust as best as it could on the fly by moving the 400 fans from Sections 425A and 430A, which were in the upper reaches of the temporary seats in the west end zone, to a field club area behind the Pittsburgh bench to watch the game on televisions and standing-room platforms.

Those fans did not buy tickets to see the game on television.

The league will offer $2,400, tripling face value, to those affected. Well, what if those fans paid more than face value? What about their flights to the area, which were probably delayed because of the weather? What about the price gouging at the hotels?

With the second-largest crowd to see a Super Bowl gathered in Arlington, Texas, 400 affected fans might not seem like much of a big deal, but the NFL prides itself on public relations.

This was just the culmination of a disappointing week for North Texas.

Roger Staubach, chairman of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee, said Super Bowl XLV will be determined a success if the NFL decides to bring its championship back here.

A return never seemed like an "if" proposition before.

After Sunday maybe it's not such a sure thing anymore.