Curious to know what the last-minute ticket situation has been like at other Bowls.

Been waiting way too long for the Eagles to get there, so I'm definitely going to Jax. Flight to Orlando was taken care of with milage, and I'm being hooked up with a hotel room & transportation to & from the game. The one thing I don't have...a ticket. My brother's friend should be setting us up (he's got some sort of affiliation with the NFL), but just in case I want to get a feel for the scene a couple of hours before gametime.

Just can't pay what the tix are going for ($1800+ for upper level, $2300+ for lowers).

Any stories??

Good luck man. Jacksonville is the smallest city ever to host the Super Bowl. The town only has 2200 hotel rooms in the whole city and not much night life to speak of other than the Landing and a few restarants.

I go down there every year for the UGA/FL game. We always stay on St. Simons Island of the GA coast and take a bus down. I have only stayed in Jacksonville once for the game and swore I would never do it again.

By comparison I think New Orleans has around 20,000 hotel rooms, maybe more.

Don't get me wrong the Landing can be damn fun but it just gets old fighting the crowd. Kind of like trying to walk down Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras at night.

I'm an idiot. I just skimmed over the part in your post about being taken care of.

I'll still stand by the fact that the Landing will be insanity but if you have one of the hotels right on the river you can actually take a small ferry straight from your hotel to the Landing. There are restaurants and bars and I'm sure they'll have a huge stage set up with entertainment of some sort.

Just remember this, that damn ferry stops running at some point and you don't want to have to walk across the bridge over the river like this guy. Takes forever and multiply walking time the number of drinks I had. Guh.

two friends of mine are going from philly this year too. they were so confident about the eagles that they booked the flights in december. (and because one guy's so cheap, they're not flying out of jacksonville on monday, but taking a train to orlando and then a bus to tampa. all to save about $100.) i don't know what their strategy is.

i'm not sure how much this pertains to jacksonville or even how easy it is anyway, but i know a guy who's had some luck. he scouts around the hotel a few days prior looking for the people who look like they're not football fans. he said that some of them won super bowl packages and just go for the vacation with the intention to sell the tickets. (easy in san diego, probably not so much in jacksonville.) and they just want some money for the tickets, so they sell them for relatively cheap. (face + a couple hundred?) as i said, i don't know how easy that is, but this guy claims to have been lucky with these people twice. good luck.

that is, if the connections don't go through. i've only been to jacksonville once, when i was maybe 7. so, i am of no help.

I went to the Raiders/Bucs superbowl in San Diego a few years ago. My friend's father works for the Lions, and he was in charge of distributing the superbowl tickets to each player (every player in the nfl gets 2).

We ended up with great tickets at face value, and by the end of the game we ended up in the box seats that the Lions and Eagles organization shared. Not to mention that we stayed in the same hotel as team owners (we were down the hall from Robert Kraft), commentators, former players, Beyonce, & Shania. My father got tickets from the same guy this year.

Even if you don't get tickets to the game, the whole environment is kind of neat if you're into being a drunken football fan. I've never been to Mardi Gras, but I would think that it's a similar experience. I wonder what it will be like next year in Detroit, where it will probably be too cold to walk around.

I went with my dad a few years back in Florida when the 49ers pounced San Diego...I think thats who they played....

He had won tix thru the NY Post..

The day of the game, our hotel was flooded with people selling and looking to buy.....

My dad got caught up in the situation, and we wound up trading our 40 yard line 5th row seats , to a grandfather and grandson, for thier 20 yard line seats, bout 30 rows back, and 1500 in cash.....

Our new seats were still pretty damn good, plus my dad split the $$ with me, so I left $750 richer!

Gooooooo football!

Palo Alto Superbowl XIX? I went to that game.

Reports I heard where hotels & tix are both over a grand.

I think I'm going to win the "best superbowl story" thread. . .

My roommate in law school was Jerry Jones' nephew, and through that relationship, Jerry Jr. became a friend of mine.

In '96, I was a guest of the Jones' at the Super Bowl in Tempe, AZ. Whitney Houston had loaned her tour bus to the Joneses - or more specifically, Jerry Jr.'s friends - for us to use while in PHX.

There were about 15 of us and it was nuts. We went "high end" attire everywhere we went, including Liegh Steinberg's private party at the PHX zoo (where I met Cuba Gooding Jr. while filming Jerry Macguire).

Jerry Jr. is a handsome chap - about 6'2", 220, blonde hair, blue eyes and he's one of the owners of the Cowboys, so, we were always well taken care of -- and never at a lack for introductions to the prettiest girls in the room.

I got to "know" one of the Cowboy Cheerleaders after Steinberg's party, played strip poker with a couple of girls who were the premier models (at the time) for Ralph Lauren and "big leagued" with Neon Dione at the after party for a little while. We never stood in a line, my room was right between Bill Bates and Troy Aikman's and we had "all access" to everything.

OH - and the game was pretty cool too. I sat on the 40 yard line, right behind former OU Sooner and US politician JC Watts and his wife.

. . .And I can't wait to do it all again sometime!!!

How 'bout them Cowboys!!!

you win.

...and I thought the free hotel room/ride from Orlando to Jax was cool. Guess not.

OMFG YOU ARE MY FUCKING HERO. I feel cooler just having heard this story. I am a lifelong Cowboys fan, and even have a jersey #1 with DIAMONDAVE on the back. Dude, next time the Boys go to a Super Bowl, me and FT are rolling with YOU, playboy.

Beats my story. Esp since I was 10 when I went

Damn straight, holmes! Julius Jones is the first piece of the championship puzzle.

I think Roy Williams was the first piece, TNewman second, Julius third, and (hopefully) Antrel Rolle and a WR (Mike Williams? Clayton?) will cap it and send Parcells to the dance in the next season or two...

Roy is solid, and I was remiss in failing to mention Jason Witten. But Newman is a complete and total BUST!!! Absolutely horrible.

I actually don't like Parcells as Cowboys coach. Our boy Big Jerry needs to pull a Steinbrenner and turn it over to someone who will stay around and build a serious fucking team, not fly-by-night experts. Parcells is a great coach, but do you see him coaching the Boys in say 2007? Me neither.

I don't think Big Jerry will ever hand over the reins to someone else. After Anthony Wright, Quincy Carter, Chad Hutchinson, Tony Romo, and Drew Henson, I think JJ has also proven he couldn't pick a NFL QB out of a lineup comprised of 5'10" midgets. (There's your Newman dig). I think that the 'Boys need a good GM and a good coach who don't have to wipe for the big guy, but I don't see that happening anytime soon...

Newman is more than serviceable as a 2nd corner, or as a decent 1-2 combo. He just got torn apart without anyone on the other side and, being a more physical lil' guy, the new rules shafted him but good this year. He'll rebound...

man, i wouldn't know what the fuck i would do if my roommate was the nephew of a sports team i absolutely fucking hated. especially if i could get a vacation like that out of it.

Daaaaaaaamn....after all that, I think I woulda been like, "Fuck the actual game."

Yeah - being in lawschool was the most "rockstar" my life will ever be (note: the superbowl is just one of several ridiculous stories i have because i know the joneses).

The game was sort of secondary to the rest of the week, but, because it was my roommates family, we always showed up early, sported the colors and did the right thing to stay in good graces. . .