NFL Super Bowl News
01/18/08
Super Bowl tickets could be a season-ticket holder away
Imagine you're sitting at home watching the NFC Championship Game tonight at Lambeau Field and the Green Bay Packers appear to be headed to the Super Bowl on Feb. 3.
Suddenly, you turn to your significant other and scream:
"We have to go to Arizona! And we have to move on this NOW!"
Assuming there is agreement, what's your next step? Exactly how do you secure Super Bowl tickets, reserve airfare and find a hotel somewhere within the same time zone as Arizona?
Rule No. 1: Don't panic. The Super Bowl is one of the hottest tickets in sports, but there are all-inclusive packages from reputable companies if you're patient and do your homework. Don't just leap on the Internet with your credit card in hand.
Rule No. 2 is a little more challenging. Do you know people? More to the point, do you know people who are Packers season-ticket holders who were lucky enough to win a team-sponsored ticket lottery that guarantees a Super Bowl game ticket?
And is that person willing to sell you thier Super Bowl tickets?
Find lottery winners
Harold and Grace Kurtz of New Brighton, Minn., already have theirs. They are Green package season-ticket holders and were fortunate to win the right to buy two Super Bowl tickets.
The Packers policy allows all season-ticket holders to enter a random drawing for two Super Bowl
tickets. The price: $700 per ticket.
The drawing was held Dec. 27, and the Kurtzes were among the winners. Under National Football League rules, the names of the winners are not disclosed.
"If the Packers win, we're planning to go to Arizona," Harold Kurtz said Saturday. "We like the warm weather."
While the Kurtzes are holding on to their tickets, other Packer backers might be willing to sell.
"Network around your friends," advised David Wade, who runs a Milwaukee travel consulting business. "Our best source of tickets is somebody who won that lottery. Get that guy to sell you the ticket at a reasonable price."
Gary Allen, manager of Front Row Ticket Service, said Packers season-ticket holders should get their Super Bowl tickets on Thursday. That's when ticket sales will really start to pick up, he said.
"That's why I think fans should buy from local ticket brokers. We have the tickets," Allen said.
There are other places to look for tickets, but you have to know where to look. According to the NFL, 35% of the tickets go to the participating teams (17.5% each to the NFC and AFC teams); 34.8% to the 29 noninvolved franchises (1.2% each); 25.2% of the tickets go to the league office and 5% go to the Arizona Cardinals, the host team.
If you don't know anyone in football and you have to look elsewhere, remember the "don't panic" rule. "Ticket prices tend to go down toward game time," Wade said. "It's always at an all-time high when the NFC and AFC championship games end."
Expensive tickets
Indeed, game tickets are pricey. At Razorgator.com, prices for a single ticket range from $3,000 to more than $7,000. At StubHub.com, the average price of a ticket on Saturday was $4,462. At Ticketsnow.com, prices start at $3,000 and up.
Once you have the ticket, your next stop is to find a flight or a hotel, unless you know someone in Arizona to stay with, or you have another way to get there.
Already, there is high demand for flights out of Green Bay and Milwaukee. On the hotel front, Wade said, rates are extremely high, running $300 and up a night.
Wade, who used to work for Funjet Vacations, suggests that fans consider booking flights from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Another alternative: fly out from icy Wisconsin on Feb. 3, the day of the game.
Incoming fans might also consider booking a hotel in Tucson, a few hours away from the Phoenix metropolitan area.
As of now, the hotel picture is a little cloudy. The NFL controls many of the rooms that will be needed for the big game, but everything changes once the two teams are set.
11/25/07
There is no such thing as a perfect game. That's what their redoubtable, hooded coach, Bill Belichick, tells them each week after they've dominated another opponent. But the Patriots may be as close to flawless as any team in the history of professional football. Already the National Football League's team of the decade as winners of three
Super Bowls since 2001, New England has become a team for the ages. The Patriots, 10-0 entering tonight's game against the Philadelphia Eagles at Gillette Stadium, are threatening to become only the second team in NFL history to author an undefeated season, joining the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and the first since the league adopted a 16-game regular-season schedule in 1978. The prospect of going undefeated is impressive enough, but it's how the Patriots have gone about it that has turned their pursuit of perfection into must-see TV. In a league that prides itself on parity and close games, the Patriots, led by quarterback Tom Brady and rehabilitated wide receiver Randy Moss, have turned heads, bruised egos, and sparked debates about poor sportsmanship by posting an average margin of victory of 25.4 points per game and averaging 41.1 points per game, which would be an NFL record. They have jumped out to big leads and then kept scoring against demoralized opponents. "To beat them you have to be perfect," said Buffalo Bills safety George Wilson last Sunday, after the Patriots pummeled his team, 56-10. How rare are such decisive victories? The largest average margin of victory ever recorded by an NFL team - 26.5 points per game - belongs to the 1942 Chicago Bears, who went 11-0 during the regular season. Since the NFL introduced a cap on how much teams could spend on players and introduced free agency in 1993, at least 44 percent of the games each season have been decided by 7 points or fewer. While New England's record is spotless, the team's reputation around the country is not. In September, the league found the Patriots guilty of illegally taping opposing teams' defensive signals. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell fined Belichick $500,000, fined the club $250,000, and stripped it of a first-round draft choice. The rule-breaking is one reason the Patriots have not been embraced nationally and the football cognoscenti, while acknowledging their remarkable play, are holding off on crowning them the greatest team ever. Don Shula, the coach of the '72 Dolphins, suggested there should be an asterisk attached to an undefeated season by the Patriots, although he later equivocated. Mike Ditka, who led the Chicago Bears to a 15-1 record in 1985, said he didn't think it was possible for a team to be as dominant as the Patriots in the salary-cap era.
"It's pretty amazing," said Ditka. "What they're accomplishing is very significant. People say it's the best of all-time. To say that would be presumptuous . . . but they're really good. In this era, they're the best of the last 10 years, the last 20 years."Before they were historically great, the Patriots were already good. Last season, they were one minute away from their fourth
Super Bowl appearance in six seasons, losing, 38-34, to the eventual
Super Bowl champions, the Indianapolis Colts, in the AFC Championship game. After the stunning defeat, Belichick, vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli, and owner Robert Kraft plugged the small cracks in New England's armor and in doing so acquired even more firepower. The team signed the best available free agent defensive player, linebacker Adalius Thomas, to a five-year, $35 million deal; picked up reliable wide receivers Wes Welker and Donte' Stallworth to boost what had been a pedestrian receiving corps; then topped it off with a draft-day deal for Moss, a singular performer who has bonded with Brady. With 411 points and 54 touchdowns in 10 games, New England is on pace to shatter the NFL record for points (556) and touchdowns (70) in a season. Brady has thrown at least three touchdown passes in every game this season and has 38 total for the season, putting him on track to break the record of Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, who threw 49 in 2004. Moss, Brady's favorite target, already has broken the franchise mark for touchdown receptions in a season with 16 and has a chance at the NFL mark of 22, set by 49ers wide receiver Jerry Rice in 1987. "I've never been one that is big on statistics; you can do anything with a statistic you want to do, but they're setting records that are unheard of," said former Green Bay Packers general manager Ron Wolf, who spent 35 years in pro football. However, as the wins and points have piled up for the Patriots, so has the resentment toward Belichick, a coaching genius with a dour public demeanor. The plucky little-team-that-could - the underdog persona the team acquired after winning its first Super Bowl in 2002 - has become a runaway train, rolling over the league. That has sparked allegations that Belichick, embittered and embarrassed by the signal-stealing flap, is humiliating opponents to prove his point. Earlier this season, according to an NBCSports.com report, Washington linebacker Randall Godfrey approached Belichick after the Patriots pounded his team, 52-7, and told the coach to "show some class." "There shouldn't be [resentment]," said Bills general manager Marv Levy, who as a coach led Buffalo to four consecutive Super Bowl appearances. "My feeling about 'running it up' is it's up to us to stop them from scoring again." Winners of 13 straight regular-season games dating back to last year, the Patriots would break their own NFL record for consecutive regular-season wins if they finished 16-0. They won 18 straight regular-season games between 2003 and '04 as part of a 21-game winning streak, including playoffs. But Belichick won't even address that possibility, sticking to the one-game-at-a-time bromide, which is one of the cornerstones of the team's success. That focus could help secure the '07 Patriots a place in the pantheon of pro football, whether they're welcome or not. "Greatness is in its time," said Ditka. "You don't really know who the best is. They're awfully good, and if they were to run the table, then you would have to say they rank up there with all the great ones of all time."
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