Super Bowl XLVIII MetLife Stadium East Rutherford, New Jersey February 2, 2014

I guess you could say Kathy and I are sports fans. Some of the sports events we’ve seen include the Daytona 500 (“The Great American Race”), The Indianapolis 500 (“The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”), the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma County, the Talladega 499 race, four NBA playoff games that the Sacramento Kings were in, one MLB playoff game (SF Giants in 2010 when they had amazing comebacks to win the playoffs and World Series), several SF Giants games in other stadiums throughout the U.S., the U.S. Open Golf Championship in San Francisco, the Amgen Tour of California bicycle prologue, The 107th Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships, several World Team Tennis matches, the BNP Paribas Tennis Tournament (men’s, woman’s and doubles finals) near Palm Springs, several Sacramento River Cats AAA baseball games, the AAA All-star game, a Cubs game in Wrigley Field and the 34th America’s Cup Yacht Race in San Francisco (the greatest comeback in sports history for the U.S. team). I’ve also seen the Grand Prix of Monaco, an NHL game and I once bowled in a USBC Pro-Am tournament (OK, I know most people don’t consider bowling a sport). In addition, Kathy and I have been to the Pro Football, Baseball, Basketball, Tennis and NASCAR Halls of Fame.

About five years ago, I started thinking that it would be great if we could get tickets to the Super Bowl. I know I didn’t want to pay the ridiculous after-market prices for tickets so I did some research online to find out if any “face value” tickets are offered for each Super Bowl. I found out that the NFL makes about 1% of the seats available to the public at face value. Face value prices for this game were $500 - $2,600 and I think all of the 1% tickets were $500. You have to send in written requests by registered or certified mail and only one request per address. The entry deadline is before the season starts and the random drawing winners are notified in October before the playoffs start. Once the winners are notified, they have about a week to decide if they want to purchase the tickets. Of course that means that you don’t know if the team or teams you like are going to actually be in the Super Bowl before you purchase the tickets.

Here’s a breakdown of how the tickets are distributed by the NFL. 74.8% of the tickets are split among the NFL teams:

• 5% to the host city's team
• 17.5% to the AFC champion
• 17.5% to the NFC champion
• 34.8% are distributed among the remaining teams (1.2% per team)

25.2% of all Super Bowl tickets are controlled by the NFL and distributed among companies, sponsors, media and networks. I’m not sure which of the above tickets end up on the after-market sites such as Stub Hub for up to $20,000 each.

For the last five years, I’ve been entering the random drawings. In order to increase my chances, each year I sent in about six entries using friends or relatives addresses to increase my chances. I was surprised when one of those entries finally got picked this year. Kathy and I figured that if picked in the random drawing, we’d go regardless of what teams were playing. This year, it happened that our team – the San Francisco 49ers had a good shot of making it back to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.

As we were going clear across the U.S. to see the Super Bowl, we decided to spend a week around the game seeing the sites of New Jersey and New York City. We normally wouldn’t plan a trip to this area in the middle of winter but that’s when the Super Bowl is held so we figured we’d take our chances.

Since this was the first Super Bowl to be held in an outdoor stadium in a cold weather area, much of the talk leading up to the game was about the weather and what happened if there was a blizzard on game day like the Farmer’s Almanac had predicted. That didn’t deter us from going either.

We flew in to Philadelphia, rented a car, and drove to Atlantic City for one night, then to northern New Jersey for one night before staying in a hotel in Brooklyn for three nights before the game and one night after the game. We spent the last night in Trenton, New Jersey.

We had tickets to see the taping of the David Letterman show in the Ed Sullivan theater on Broadway on Thursday night. Thursday happened to be the first night that they opened “Super Bowl Boulevard” a 13-block NFL/Super Bowl themed street fair on Broadway between 34th and 47th Streets. So after the taping, we walked down the entire fair in which fans could watch some of the cast of “Rock of Ages” perform, try to kick a field goal, see the Lombardi trophy and slide down a 60’ tall, 180’ long, 8-lane toboggan run (really a super slide). The lines were long for most of these so when we got to 34th Street, we decided to go up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building as there was absolutely no line for that.

The organizers of this game were promoting it as the “first mass transit Super Bowl” as only a small percentage of the MetLife Stadium parking spaces were going to be available. 8,500 VIP parking passes were sold for $150 each (2,000 of those went unused). Also, you weren’t allowed to take taxis, limos, etc. to the game. So this left trains and buses as the way to get to and from the stadium. After some research, we decided to pay $51 each for a round trip pass on one of the special Fan Express Buses. I’m glad we chose the bus for reasons I’ll explain later.

On game day, we took a subway from our hotel in Brooklyn to Washington Square in Manhattan where we caught the Fan Express Bus. Before the bus departed, two New York City police officers brought a bomb-sniffing dog on. When they left after not finding any explosives, we applauded and thanked them. We also saw police stationed all along the route to the stadium. The bus trip to the Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey took just under an hour and we arrived around 4:30 – two hours before the game was scheduled to start.

The line to get in to the airport-style security check only took about 10 minutes. Us “one percenters” had a special line because we did not have tickets (and we only knew our seats would be in the top level). After showing the credit card I purchased the tickets with, they gave us quasi-tickets that had our seat numbers on them. The NFL will mail us the coveted actual tickets within a week or so. Once we got those tickets, we weren’t allowed to leave the stadium as I guess that is how they prevented scalping. Funny that they don’t care about all the other tickets that get scalped.

As we were entering the stadium, I told Kathy that I would get an official Super Bowl program if they didn’t cost more than $20 (a figure just off the top of my head). Well we found a program stand and they were $20 so I guess I had to buy one.

There were lots of activities going on outside of the stadium but we just wanted to find our seats. I figured we’d be in the last row on top in the end zone but was pleasantly surprised to find we were about even with the back of the end zone and about 12 rows from the top. I think most of the people in our section were fellow “one percenters” as we saw them wearing many different team jerseys other than Seahawk or Bronco Jerseys.

MetLife Stadium is the second largest professional football stadium in the U.S. with 82,566 seats. All three levels go completely around and all seats have a good view of the field. There are four large High Definition TV screens at each corner of the stadium. I really like this stadium which is the home of the New York Giants and New York Jets.

We wanted to get something to eat before the game started so we wouldn’t miss anything so I headed to the snack bar where to say I encountered sticker shock would be an understatement. I ordered two foot-long hot dogs (each came with a small bag of chips) and two bottled beers. I gave the cashier a $50 bill and she gave me four dollars change! Guess we were going to have to pass on the $11 hot chocolates if it got really cold.

Speaking of cold, each fan had a cold weather survival kit waiting on their seats which included a seat cushion, a hand warmer, ear muffs, a Gaiter-dana (some sort of bandana), texting gloves (I don’t do texts – was probably the only one at the game who didn’t text someone saying: “hey, I’m at the SB!”), three hand or feet warmers (they heat up by chemical reactions), a packet of tissues and lip balm. In addition to the cold weather stuff, the kit contained a radio to hear the game broadcast, an Extra Points credit card (?) and a warm beanie that has LED lights on the front. Since it was 49° F (9° C) at the start of the game and it never rained, snowed or got windy, I never even opened any of the items except the beanie which was to be used in the half time show. Since each item had the Super Bowl XLVIII logo on them, maybe I can sell them on eBay.

Just before the game, Queen Latifah sang “America the Beautiful” and “Grammy award winner and soprano superstar” Renèe Fleming sang the National Anthem. Both were good but I was really impressed with the low-level helicopter flyover through the smoke from the fireworks as the National Anthem ended. It reminded me of a scene out of “Apocalypse Now” (perhaps it was an omen for the Broncos). They later introduced the pilots at half time.

After Joe Namath flubbed the coin toss, I believe a football game broke out during a Bruno Mars concert. As one sports writer put it “This was the least competitive Super Bowl in decades”. The Seahawks dominated every aspect of the game: offense, defense, special teams, coaching decisions, fans, cheerleaders and water boys. The final score was Seattle Seahawks 43, Denver Broncos 8. Seahawks fans had to love it but the rest of the world watching had to wonder if this was a pro team playing a high school team. Congratulations to the Seahawks and condolences to the Broncos.

The Seahawks fans were louder than the Denver fans from the start and kept screaming every time Denver had the ball, even at the end of the game when it didn’t matter. Both teams are from the only two states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use. In Denver, it became legal on January 1 but I believe it won’t be legal in Washington for a few months. I mention this because I think the Denver fans were too stoned to cheer (I did notice them buying more munchies). To be fair, the wind was taken from their sails early on.

Even though our team came up short this year, Kathy and I were proud to wear items with our team’s logo and colors. I only saw two other people wearing 49ers items and one of the them came up to me and gave me a fist bump. I knew we would take some harassment and ribbing from Seahawks fans but didn’t care. One Seahawks fan on the bus saw my hat and said to us: “Don’t you know you lost?” Kathy told her: “When you win five, we’ll talk”. While boarding the bus after the game, another Seahawks fan couple saw our logos and told us they were more nervous during the week leading up to the NFC Championship game against the 49ers than the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and the NFC Championship game was their real Super Bowl.

The halftime show was OK. We got to be part of it by wearing our beanies with LED lights on the front. Somehow, they made the lights flash in different patterns all around the stadium by some kind of high tech remote control. I just hope we all don’t develop brain cancer in 10 years! I thought pairing Bruno Mars with the Red Hot Chili Peppers was like Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees back in the 70’s but I guess they were trying to please fans of all ages. We later found out the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitars weren’t plugged in but they were signing live over recorded instrument music.

After the game ended, we stuck around for the presentation of the Vince Lombardi trophy and then headed for our bus. On our way back to the bus, we noticed from the top level that there were thousands of people corralled in an area standing shoulder to shoulder waiting to get on the train. I was hoping we wouldn’t get stuck in that mess but we were able to walk straight to our bus and the bus left right away.

NFL officials estimated that 8,000 people would take trains to the stadium and NJ Transit planned for 16,000 — but the system was overwhelmed by a record 29,000 passengers who took trains to the game and 34,000 who rode the rails home. Apparently some people who paid for the Fan Express Bus like us were told all buses wouldn’t leave until an hour after the game ended and they didn’t want to wait so they took the trains. Hmmm…considering this SNAFU, I wonder if the mayor of East Rutherford dissed Governor Christie.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, this is why we were glad we took the bus. We got back to our room in Brooklyn just around midnight and I understand fans were still waiting to board trains at the stadium in the rain at midnight. Other than that, we think the New York and New Jersey organizers produced a great event.

So was it all worth it? Based on just the game – no. I almost feel sorry for Denver fans who shelled out thousands for a ticket. But based on experiencing all the excitement of such a huge event seen on TV by millions of people in 198 countries – definitely! It even beat being in Times Square for New Years a few years back.

To view 39 photos from Super Bowl Boulevard and the game, click on the forward (right) arrow below this photo.