An alert FrontBurnervian points to one last outsider’s perspective on the Super Bowl. Only this one’s not really an outsider. She’s from Fort Worth. Sally Jenkins, Uncle Nancy’s buddy and daughter of local legend Dan Jenkins, writes in the Washington Post today that the Super Bowl deeply disturbed her, from the $19 margaritas to the $450,000 spent by the Navy to conduct a flyover on a domed stadium. Further, she says:
[T]his Super Bowl taught me a lesson: Luxury can actually be debasing. The last great building binge in the NFL was from 1995 through 2003, when 21 stadiums were built or refurbished in order to create more luxury boxes, at cost of $6.4 billion. Know how much of that the public paid for? $4.4 billion. Why are we giving 32 rich guys that kind of money, just to prey on us at the box office and concessions? The Dallas deal should be the last of its kind.
(Side note: that Jenkins story ran 1,100 words. It was written in fully formed paragraphs, some of them comprising four and five sentences. By contrast, Kevin Sherrington’s column today runs 690 words, and nearly every paragraph is a single sentence. If the DMN is going to ask people to pay for its content online, it might consider hiring writers and letting them write. Put another way: they should stop treating their readers like children.)
28 comments
I was interested in this post until the end, when you used it to take yet another swipe at The Dallas Morning News. Please try to stay on topic, eh?
Amen – What a great article! The Super Bowl is supposed to be about blood and guts and rabid fans screaming their heads off for their hometown team in a game they’ve been waiting to attend for years. Instead, Sunday was about glitz, glamour, and a bunch of corporate fat cats who couldn’t care less who won the game, but just wanted to cross the Super Bowl off their “bucket list”. The half-time show was a ridciulous spectacle and the National Anthem was a national embarrassment. But then what else would you expect from someone like Jerry Jones – a man who was once described as “a pile of trash poured into a $10,000 suit.”
Sounds like Sally got her expense budget cut by the Post and had to cover those margaritas with her own scratch.
I remember it well: high school sophomore English class. Noah T Smith (the terror of Robert E Lee HS) was my instructor. A single sentence paragraph was so against his rules that to use one in our weekly theme would cause an automatic lowering of one grade level. Needless to say this has remained with me for all these years.
Well written article by a unbiased writer (in fact, as she mentions, she may in fact have a pro-DFW bias). Forget about Jerry and the Stadium, the Super Bowl and NFL is getting out of hand in their grab for money. The seat fiasco should be the tipping point, those people are rightfully outraged, and the offer from the NFL is weak. I expect many lawsuits to be filed over this.
I’m biased but I think she has the best brain in the business.
I’m just glad Sally Jenkins didn’t buy a ticket to the Prince concert.
1Zima2Many nailed it. Very well said, and the article was spot on also.
“Instead, Sunday was about glitz, glamour, and a bunch of corporate fat cats…”
First Super Bowl?
Are we communists now? If people have the desire and can afford to spend that kind of money, why shouldn’t they? Should jack booted thugs steal that money from them to spend on poor kids’ education? Paying $10000 for some rich guy like ARod or some CEO to have a good Sunday evening is nothing so what business does this lady have complaining about something that’s not her business? How much did she spend for her ticket? The Super Bowl is NOT about the average fan and their just isn’t any reason why it should be, because the fans are not paying millions of dollars for 30 seconds of commercial airtime. Nobody is forcing you to watch or to go. So if you don’t like it, go watch Arena league or the CFL or whatever else and keep your money and your whines to yourself.
things i learned at Superbowl 45:
1) Jerrah made a lot of money
2) Media has a PhD in complaining
I know he is an easy target, but Jerry Jones did not manage the Super Bowl at his stadium. It is run by the NFL. They set the prices, sell the suites and tickets, run the concessions, schedule the halftime entertainment, manage security, bend over for the corporate “fat cats,” etc.
Has the Super Bowl become too big? I think it has — hell, give me college marching bands for the halftime show.
The NFL is only responding to the market. And, as long as these games continue to sell out AND get monster ratings, then they will continue with business as usual.
But to blame Jerry Jones is lazy. While he is an easy target he is not the cause of the problems last week.
Funny, I don’t see anyone bitching about all the charity work that was part of the Super Bowl week.
It looks like luniz is missing the point just a bit – and resorting to the tired old imagery of communism and jack-booted thugs is a bit much.
Obviously, the NFL has the legal right to run the Super Bowl however they want – and A-Rod has the legal right to pay a bunch of money for a ticket. But the rest of us also have the right to say that a Super Bowl that excludes the true fans for the sake of more profit just really sucks.
The NFL could decide to hold back 50% (or more) of the SB tickets to sell to fans of the teams that actually make it to the game. Instead, they made the decision to pre-sell the vast majority of the tickets a year ago for top dollar to corporations and the like. That decision shut out countless true fans and made for a bland environment (even though the game itself was great). I personally think that sucks, and I am far from a communist, and am not even sure what a “jack-boot” looks like.
Well, at least “luniz” knows his place and respects his betters.
A $19 margarita? How’d they come up with that? Did they want to make it so folks wouldn’t suddenly feel stupid when they told their friends that, yes, they paid $20 for a margarita? So $19 isn’t so stupid I guess. How stupid of me.
I totally agree with @1Zima2Many especially regarding the obnoxious half time and the Jerry Jones reference. @PR, please DO NOT think for one second that Jerry didn’t have his big fat hand in the middle of everything that happened. His three priorities are 1)Jerry Jones, 2)Cowboys Stadium, 3)Dallas Cowboys -in that order. If we ever get another Super Bowl it will be that he has agreed to leave the planet for six months prior. Will never happen.
We should build upon our 100 year experience of doing Texas-OU:
Dallas alone should bid for Super Bowl L using the Cotton Bowl (holds 92,000) and Fair Park. The theme – “Throwback”. Bleachers and virtually no suites for celebs to hide inside. It would energize the crowd.
No tents in parking lots – use the Hall of State for the red carpet, overlooking the Esplanade and Downtown Dallas. Parties and concerts in all the Art Deco buildings..
Oh and you won’t need a roof on the stadium because ZZ Top at halftime would blow it off!
@1Zima2Many – Each team represented received 17.5% of the stadium’s tickets, the host team gets 5%, and every other team gets about 1.2%, which is just under 75% of the total available tickets. The NFL actually only has access to about 25% of the tickets.
Therefore, 75% IS available to “true” fans. Whether or not they can afford them is for each individual person to decide.
Luniz, we are NOT communists, that is why PUBLIC money should not be spent to support a private endeavor.
The “not using public funds to support private ventures” argument is great in theory, but an owner can always find a community willing to support the team/stadjeeum, etc. Losing a team can decimate a town in ways that can be more than just monetarily.
I don’t mind a .5 cent increase (or whatever miniscule amount it is) in a city tax if it will bring events like the NBA All-Star Game and Superbowl to town.
Amy S,
Unless voters approve such a public-private partnership.
Arlington voters approved of this by a 55% – 45% margin. For a stadium election, this was the highest victory margin in history.
Laura Miller was right, and I’m glad the residents of Arlington are paying for it, and not me.
brett – Please name a town that has been decimated by losing a sports team. I’m not saying there isn’t one, I just can’t think of one.
As usual, while other people throw things out there hoping they will stick, Zach is the voice of reason. And why are we acting like the corporatization of the Super Bowl is some sort of new-fangled idea that Jerry Jones came up with? @1Zima2Many – have you not been watching for the last 25 years?
@PR – Arlington also voted to NOT be part of DART which makes both the football stadium and the baseball stadium inconvenient to get to for a majority of the fans, writers and employees.
@Sammy – Ft. Worth never recovered from losing the Panthers.
@Freeze – Good point but like a lot of things, it is not as obvious until it happens in your back yard.
I don’t know Sammy, Los Angeles has been decimated by the loss of an NFL team, meanwhile Oakland has thrived since they got the Raiders back. And thank the lord that Houston finally got a team back, who knows where that city would have been without one.
I vote for an extra .5 cent tax to be paid by the risdents of Dallas to keep all the db’s out of town for future events.
I know Dallas is rife with them, but it seemed like they bussed them in by the thousands for the big game.
Make that residents