Super Bowl 45 has come and gone. The Green Bay Packers were able to hold on and secure the world championship. The Pittsburgh Steelers fell behind early in the game, but managed a second-half rally that had them within three points at 28-25. But the Packers persevered and were victorious, 31-25, and they are bringing the Lombardi Trophy back to its figurative home. Aaron Rodgers was named MVP, but the real killer for the Steelers were the three turnovers; one that turned into a pick-six, and the other two setting up Packers scores.
All in all, a very enjoyable Super Bowl to watch, competitive to the end. And speaking of watching the Super Bowl, Jerry Jones just missed out on setting a Super Bowl record for attendance.
Some 103,219 mostly green-and-gold and black-and-gold clad fans witnessed the Green Bay Packers' 31-25 triumph over the Pittsburgh Steelers inside Cowboys Stadium, narrowly missing the all-time Super Bowl attendance record set in 1980 at the Rose Bowl (103,985) and the $1.3 billion venue's own attendance mark (105,121) set in the Cowboys' 2009 regular-season home opener.
What? With numbers that big, Jerry Jones couldn't do some creative counting to make up for the shortfall? The difference was only 766 people! Elections have been stolen with much bigger numbers than that. Surely there must have been some way to get around it.
Well, maybe not...
Turns out that Jerry and the NFL were already doing some seat wrangling down to the last minute. And that wrangling cost some fans their opportunity to watch the game inside the stadium.
One drawback was the league's announcement that approximately 850 fans in four sections were relocated to similar or better seats to due to incomplete installation of temporary seats, and another 400 in two other sections were not able to be accommodated with seats inside the stadium. Those fans received a refund of triple the cost of their tickets' $800 face values.
Wow, you get all the way to the Super Bowl, you brave the ice and snow, then you get turned away at the game when you have a legitimate ticket? The triple-refund price would help, but I don't think that would totally assuage my anger.
Quick tidbit from the game that is Cowboys related -
Green Bay scored two touchdowns within 24 seconds in the first quarter – the fastest pair of touchdowns scored by one team in a Super Bowl since SB XXVII, when Dallas scored two touchdowns in 18 seconds after having scored two touchdowns in 15 seconds earlier in that game.
From that game:
1st quarter
 |
DAL | Novacek 23 pass from Aikman (Elliott kick), 13:24 |
|
DAL | J. Jones 2 def. fumble rec. (Elliott kick), 13:39 |
2nd quarter
|
DAL | Irvin 19 pass from Aikman (Elliott kick), 13:06 |
|
DAL | Irvin 18 pass from Aikman (Elliott kick), 13:24 |
Next year, the Super Bowl moves to Indianapolis, where the Colts will try to accomplish what the Cowboys couldn't this year - and that's play in the Super Bowl at their home stadium.
"It's exciting. I'm sure Dallas had to deal with those questions all year," [Peyton] Manning said in Dallas this week. "We have a great stadium to have the event and I know the people there are excited. Playing there, it'd be very special. ... That will be the motivation, like all teams, to get to Indy."
Maybe we can crash their party, Right now, we're at 16/1 odds to make it.