Spokane Packers fan has ticket to Super Bowl, but no seat … still he feels like a winner

The Texas weather was worse than what he’d left behind in Spokane, the tickets cost $800 and he stood in line for three hours just to get into the stadium – only to be told he had no seat.

No one could provide him with definitive information, help or resolution.

He stood in more lines, circled the stadium, clambered from entrance level to the fourth deck and back. He finally just wedged himself into a spot standing on the concourse and missed the first quarter.

But all things considered, Dan McGinnity allowed, it could have been worse.

He could have been rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“I feel sorry for those people,” the Spokane patent attorney conceded. “At least the result was good for us.”

Packer people, he meant.

They were able to celebrate Green Bay’s 31-25 victory in Super Bowl XLV on Sunday evening, though some a little more ruefully than others. McGinnity and members of his family – mother Nancy, brothers Mike and Jimmy and brother-in-law Jamie Breen – were among 400-odd ticket holders who found themselves holding nothing but an empty promise.

Not surprisingly, their reactions to XLV often ranged to XXX.

McGinnity himself was a little more restrained – is that why they call it juris prudence? – but as more information began dribbling in Monday regarding how much NFL officials knew about the stadium’s readiness and when they knew it, his initial reaction was pretty much cemented.

“Don’t you have things better planned,” he wondered, “if you’re putting on the biggest sporting event in the world?”

The Great XLV Ticket Fiasco was, apparently, more than just Sunday in the making. But not until a few hours before kickoff did the league decide that several sections of temporary seating would not meet Arlington fire officials’ definition for safety – stairs and risers not tightened, guardrails not installed. So it was that those sections were made off-limits.

“The one thing we will never do is compromise safety,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said.

Right. Unless it involves adding two games – and more opportunities for players to suffer concussions and crippling injury – to the regular season.

In the meantime, several entrances to Cowboys Stadium were also closed due to falling snow and ice, so glacial bottlenecks of spectators trying to get through security and inside formed. No wonder McGinnity was “kind of excited, rushing to make kickoff” en route to his fourth-level section.

“When we got there, it was blocked off with yellow tape,” he said. “Our seats didn’t exist.”

And that’s when the ordeal really began.

The family asked on-duty cops where to go for help. They didn’t know. The guest services window? Uh-huh. The group was directed back down to the first level and the Miller Lite Club – but it wasn’t on a stadium map. One man directed McGinnity to a ticket window outside the stadium. At least out there, they could track the game via Jumbotron and loudspeaker – except the loudspeakers were piping highlights of previous Super Bowls.

And then they were told to go back into the stadium.

“By this time, I was done walking around,” McGinnity said, “and we found some standing room on a lower level. Security wanted us to move, but we explained what happened and they were pretty nice and just told us not to block the aisles.”

Some 800 of the 1,250 displaced spectators were found seats – Cowboys employees “volunteered” theirs; a few press chairs opened. The other 400 refugees either wandered around, or made it to the Miller Lite Club and watched on TV there. They have been told by the NFL that they’ll be reimbursed for triple face value of the tickets, and invited to next year’s game at no cost. A letter from the league spelled out some details.

But McGinnity was never given the letter – he learned about it only from fellow Packers fan who happened to be moving from spot-to-spot in standing room.

“Apparently, they’re going to rectify it,” he said, “but I have to do the legwork on that.”

McGinnity grew up in northern Wisconsin before law school and work brought him west. Nancy McGinnity remains a Packers season ticket holder after 20-some years, and if some people focused on the somewhat ragged play of XLV, McGinnity couldn’t help but regard the finish as “a little electric.” And not even the NFL fumbling the ticketing could change that.

“It was pretty frustrating,” he said, “but I’ve tried to keep a little perspective. Bottom line, it’s a football game – an important football game – and Goodell seems to be trying to handle it the best way he can. He can’t replace the first quarter for me, but it’s not like I’m in Egypt.”

Sounds like the perfect slogan for Super Bowl XLVI.