[pE71J5Sw]

Because he couldn't get the damn seats built.

LOLOL
That is just hilarious.

[Arrocousa]

Feel bad for the people that bought seats to a game, made travel plans, etc, etc, etc, and get told, oh, sorry, we don't have those built yet.

[Pelefaifs]

Really how long of a time they had to get those seats built? They had a month. No excuse for that.

[Uojeyak]

2 Billion bucks. And some folks get pegged by ice falling off the roof, and the fans were hamstrung by the fact that Dallas has no snowplows or salt for the roads. No more Superbowls in Dallas. Its like he hired Canadians to do this thing.

[Alex]

Feel bad for the people that bought seats to a game, made travel plans, etc, etc, etc, and get told, oh, sorry, we don't have those built yet.

I don't they got standing room behind the club seat plus they get 3X their original $800 value.

[KRbGA0Bg]

Dallas failed to deliver a quality super bowl experience, that's for sure. Fails all around. Except for the game itself.

And I don't mean the city. Can't do much about weather such as they received.

I'm talking about the seating snafu, a terrible half time show, and once again, a singer who can't just sing the national anthem as it was meant to be sung.

[tofRobbroolve]

Dallas failed to deliver a quality super bowl experience, that's for sure. Fails all around. Except for the game itself.

And I don't mean the city. Can't do much about weather such as they received.

I'm talking about the seating snafu, a terrible half time show, and once again, a singer who can't just sing the national anthem as it was meant to be sung.

Christina Aguilera sucks donkey balls. I'm sure I spelled her name wrong too and I don't give a shit. That was one of the worst attempts at singing the national anthem. Girl is a joke.

[EnubreBense]

Christina Aguilera sucks donkey balls. I'm sure I spelled her name wrong too and I don't give a shit. That was one of the worst attempts at singing the national anthem. Girl is a joke.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a flag waving idiot. It bothers me when people have to alter the National Anthem to 'make it theirs'. Just because you can make a one syllable word into 8 syllables, doesn't make you a good singer.

Oh, and it bothers me when the people in Chicago scream and yell during the anthem. I don't care that they do that 'for the guy that sings it'. I don't. In my opinion, it's disrespectful, and that's that. Don't have to agree, that's just my take on it.

[Wluwsdtn]

Dallas failed to deliver a quality super bowl experience, that's for sure. Fails all around. Except for the game itself.

And I don't mean the city. Can't do much about weather such as they received.

I'm talking about the seating snafu, a terrible half time show, and once again, a singer who can't just sing the national anthem as it was meant to be sung.

Eh, can't balme Jerrah for the entertainment or National Anthem. That's the NFL's call.

Dallas will get ther SB again and again, it is an excellent stadium.

[Michael-jeckson2]

Because he couldn't get the damn seats built.

LOLOL
That is just hilarious.

Rose Bowl still has the record.

Suck on that Jeruh.

[medprof]

Just to be clear.

The seats were built, the fire marshall declared a bunch of them to be unsafe.

[ffdfriendforurr]

Just to be clear.

The seats were built, the fire marshall declared a bunch of them to be unsafe.

Rumor has it, the fire marshall is from Philly.

[Ekzamenov]

I don't know, maybe I'm just a flag waving idiot. It bothers me when people have to alter the National Anthem to 'make it theirs'. Just because you can make a one syllable word into 8 syllables, doesn't make you a good singer.

Oh, and it bothers me when the people in Chicago scream and yell during the anthem. I don't care that they do that 'for the guy that sings it'. I don't. In my opinion, it's disrespectful, and that's that. Don't have to agree, that's just my take on it.

Might be a 1st here Whiskey but I am in complete agreement w/ you. Sing the song as is, as quickly and reverently as possible to start a sporting or other event. If you want to make it part of your repetoire (ala Jimmy Hendrix) then that is a different story, but w/ a National or even just a local event, treat the song w/ respect.

[TNgqZhLR]

Rumor has it, the fire marshall is from Philly.

[fuslssdfaa]

DALLAS — It is impossible not to feel bad for the people of North Texas, both those who worked tirelessly for almost three years to showcase their cities to the world and all the local business people who hoped to profit from Super Bowl XLV. There was a great deal wrong with this Super Bowl, but the worst of it was due to an act of God, weather unlike the area has seen in decades, which made the area nearly impossible to navigate and almost as difficult to enjoy. But that in itself isn't why it is also nearly impossible to imagine the Super Bowl returning to North Texas for a long, long time, if ever.

While the weather clearly was no one's fault, somebody has to take the fall for doing absolutely nothing to prepare for it. With the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on an event like this, not spending thousands to have enough rock salt on hand to at least clear the highways and sidewalks of ice was inexcusable.

Apparently there was a limited taxi cab strike going on when we all started to arrive the week before the game, and folks struggled to finds cabs all week long. I talked to several folks who described two-hour waits that forced them to abandon their plans long before the cars finally arrived.

Nobody wants to hear when things aren't perfect, or even when they're a little difficult, for the media because people view us as having these fantasy-like jobs and assume we're pampered and granted all kinds of special treatment. But the main media hotel we were all lodged at — I won't mention which major chain it was, so as not to indict the innocent — was a disaster, and most of the problems had nothing to do with the weather. I had no heat in my room the first two days I was in Dallas while the outside temperatures ranged between 10 and 25 degrees, and it took me four different phone calls to finally get someone to come and fix it, which took all of three minutes once the engineer finally showed up. Many of my fellow scribes spent the whole week without their heat working properly.

We had one entire day when our elevators were out of service, the temperatures in the common areas of the lobby were in the 50s all week, the television in my room never worked properly all week long, and I just gave up on that after five phone calls over the first three days. Each of the seven days I was there, I was unable to get our car out of the garage because the key pass, which I took to the desk every day to get fixed, never worked properly. I am not a complainer by nature, but every member of the media I talked to had similar or even more serious complaints, and we were all charged $235 per night, plus $13 a day for Internet access and $19 a day for parking, plus taxes, for the privilege of being guests of the hotel.

The point isn't that we had it rough. It was mostly annoying, but on balance there are real problems in the world. The point is that this is a major convention hotel that had three years to prepare for our visit and couldn't have failed any more miserably.

Dallas and Fort Worth are both great cities with a number of worthwhile attractions when the weather is decent. But under the best of circumstances they are about 40-45 minutes apart, parking at Super Bowl locations is always difficult and ridiculously expensive, and you really don't want to be driving when you go to the Super Bowl because most of the motorists are also out-of-towners who don't know the area and don't know where they're going. Unfortunately the plan for this Super week was that visitors would go back and forth, and driving and ridiculous delays were your only option in North Texas.

The only real reason North Texas got this Super Bowl was the house that Jerry built, and when the big day arrived, not only was it not ready for prime time, it was possibly the biggest failure of all. Traffic around the stadium was abysmal trying to get to the game, and it was the first Super Bowl I've done in years where access routes weren't marked properly and there was nobody around to help or answer questions. Many of the elevators were either ridiculously slow or malfunctioning altogether, and there was a report early in the third quarter that a number of people were being forced to abandon their $800-$1,500 face-value seats because the roof was leaking from the snow and ice that had fallen all week and was finally melting.

But the worst disaster of all was when approximately 1,250 fans arrived with tickets for which they'd paid $900 each, assuming they paid face value, and were told they were in temporary seating installed just for the Super Bowl that no one had bothered to inspect for safety until the day of the game, and local authorities had found them unsafe. According to a statement released by the league, approximately 850 were relocated to similar or better seats. Unfortunately the other 400 fans, according to that same statement, "were not able to be accommodated with seats inside the stadium." They were later allowed back into the stadium to watch the game on monitors or in standing room. While they were each to receive a refund of three times the face value of the tickets, which may or may not have covered all their travel and lodging expenses, does anyone really think that even starts to compensate those folks? Can you imagine traveling from Green Bay or Pittsburgh, or perhaps further, to see your favorite team in the Super Bowl and then being told when you arrived for the game that you were out of luck because no one bothered to be sure your seat was safe? It is the most bizarre Super Bowl story I've ever heard in 33 years of covering them.

The city of Atlanta has been waiting over a decade for a crack at another Super Bowl since an ice storm that paralyzed it during its special week was the only negative, and yet there are still no Super Bowls in its future. With all that went wrong in North Texas this week, it's awfully hard to envision the Super Bowl ever returning here if the fans have anything to say about it.

[Desflahd]

Unbelievable story Rotary. Yes the weather threw them a big Sucker Punch, but a lot of what is detailed above was just pure Lack of planning and incompetence, and an apparent " these people will take whatever we give them and like it" attitude. The only people I feel bad for are the Small to Medium business people who were promised economic salvation only to be let down by Mother Nature and their City.

[BgpOoGI2]

Unbelievable story Rotary. Yes the weather threw them a big Sucker Punch, but a lot of what is detailed above was just pure Lack of planning and incompetence, and an apparent " these people will take whatever we give them and like it" attitude. The only people I feel bad for are the Small to Medium business people who were promised economic salvation only to be let down by Mother Nature and their City.

That story, which I forgot to properly cite, was written by Hub Arkush, the editor of Pro Football Weekly.

And, I too, was stunned after I read that article. Weather related problems are one thing but, like you said, incompetance and poor planning are inexcusable when the visibilty of this particular event is so high.

[SasV7ReJ]

Well, they can get all of the perks of an ice-cold Midwestern Super Bowl next year for free.

The only thing the fans have to worry about is, well, you know, dying beforehand.

The NFL bombed big time on this, the best thing about the Super Bowl was the game itself.