ARLINGTON, Texas – Angry fans outside a Cowboys Stadium fence chanted “Let us in,” “Jerry sucks,” and “We want seats” while being denied inside access for Super Bowl XLV on Sunday.The ticketed fans, estimated between 200-400, were denied entry inside the stadium because temporary seating sections to be installed for the game had not been completed. In the meantime, the NFL has moved the fans to the Party Plaza area – the stadium’s standing room only section.
For fans who don’t eventually get granted seats, the league will issue refunds “triple the cost of the face value of their ticket.”
Ron Soncini, a Steelers fan from Reno, Nev., wasn’t happy with the NFL’s offer.
“The game is what I came here to see, not to be rejected,” he said about 90 minutes before kickoff. “I don’t understand this. This is ridiculous.”
While the league didn’t explain the nature of the delay in its release, fan Amanda Saldana of San Antonio says they were told that “stuff was blocking our seats.”
Many of the rejected fans said they were skeptical of the unofficial refund letter given to them at the gate. They also were opposed to watching the game in a hospitality area.
Phil McCollough of Orlando, Fla., thought he would be attending his 13th Super Bowl. He paid $1,700 for his ticket. “I could have been home playing with my grandchildren instead of this.”
Others said they had paid up to $3,000 for their seats and were not happy about the NFL’s offer to give them three times the amount in a refund.
“What about our travel and hotel expenses,” one man shouted. LINK
What could the Peas possibly do that we hadn't already burned out on? Bring out the Tron dancers, as it turns out. If you felt like Tron Legacy missed a bet by not having Jeff Bridges lead a war platoon's worth of boogying hoofers at the climax, Super Bowl XLV made up for that missed opportunity.
Black Eyed Peas Vs. Tron: A Super Bowl Contest No One Wins
As it turns out, there are far, far duller ways to pass the time at a half-time show than counting the wrinkles on classic rockers. Like counting the times in just the past few months we've seen the Black Eyed Peas on television doing pretty much this same schtick they did at the Super Bowl. If you want to make sure you have the least anticipated Bowl half-time in modern history, a sure bet is to book a group that would show up to play a supermarket ribbon-cutting.
We all know why this happened. The Super Bowl's producers spent the last few years trying to avoid any chance of another wardrobe malfunction, after the Janet 'n' Justin fracas, resulting in a succession of post-50 superstars like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and the Who. But the Bowl honchos were apparently susceptible to the criticism that this made them appear old and out of touch. So when they reversed that trend and booked the Black Eyed Peas this year, it was clear they were out to court the youth audience and avoid agemalfunction.
But there might not have been this uneventful a Bowl intermission since the Up With People era of no-name half-time shows. Come back, AARP-rockers... all is forgiven.
What could the Peas possibly do that we hadn't already burned out on? Bring out the Tron dancers, as it turns out. If you felt like Tron Legacy missed a bet by not having Jeff Bridges lead a war platoon's worth of boogying hoofers at the climax, Super Bowl XLV made up for that missed opportunity.Also, Usher did the splits. We can only imagine the legions of seamstresses employed to make sure those pants could survive nuclear fission.
Otherwise, it was been there, seen-and-heard that. Special guest star Slash, playing lead guitar while Fergie sang "Sweet Child of Mine"? That was a yawner back when they did it on the U2 tour a couple of pop eons ago. Dancers with boxes on their heads? That conceptual gambit isn't any fresher now than it was when the Peas brought out the box-heads on multiple TV appearances last fall.
The live-or-Memorex questions that typically fly after a halftime show were rendered moot here. The Peas' hits usually involve more shouting than singing, anyway, so staying on pitch was not going to pose many problems except in a handful of Fergie moments. When Will.i.am sings nowadays, it's through the most blatantly distorted AutoTune in the first place, so the real question is how faithfully his vocals' robotic nature could be replicated just as robotically. Usher's singing was clearly less live when he came out to perform "Oh My God," but the camera angles made it tough to tell if he was even pretending to sing, before he pulled off the leap-and-spread stunt that was his cameo appearance's sole raison d'etre.
Still, the cast of seeming thousands on the field was more fun to watch than the usual fake fans brought in to cheer the oldies acts. Initially appearing all in white, they appeared like the universe's most enthusiastic cult, before scattering across the field like schools of fish and switching on their Christmas lights.
It all seemed like a commercial for something, following directly on the heels of an ad for a product having to do with "the cloud" that featured animated versions of the BEPs. But what were they selling? Was it "love"? (Or "LOIE," as the lighted platforms seemed to spell it out, possibly due to a short-out from one of those dancing black lights?)
As Steve Martin tweeted after halftime: "I learned so much about love during the halftime show. Andthen at the end when it said, 'The Beginning,' I thought 'Wow.' Just. Wow."
Ah yes—in lieu of the obvious soda deal, this was all a commercial forThe Beginning, the BEPs album that currently sits at No. 26 on the sales chart, after just nine weeks of release. That's right: This week, the Black Eyed Peas are less popular than the Black Keys (see: chart position No. 20).
Way to anticipate that youthful zeitgeist, Super Bowl producers! For 2012, we can only hope for P. Diddy and some swing-dancing Star Wars stormtroopers. LINK
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