When the NFL admitted on Super Bowl Sunday that it had sold 1,250 tickets to the game for seats that didn’t exist, the league quickly scrambled to release a statement saying 850 of those fans were being moved to seats that were as good as, or better than, the ones they had originally purchased.
Now some of those 850 are coming forward to say the NFL is lying.
Eric Edholm of Pro Football Weekly quotes one of the 850, Sheryl Cerkleski, as saying the seats the NFL gave her and her two brothers were much worse than the seats they bought. Cerkleski and her brothers bought good seats in Section 215A, at the goal line, but were moved up two full sections, all the way to the highest row of the enormous Cowboys Stadium, and into the corner of the end zone.
It was also a nightmare for Cerkleski and her brothers, both of whom have battled cancer recently, to get to their seats. Only after they spent a couple hours waiting in line to get into the stadium were they told they couldn’t sit in the seats printed on their tickets. Then they had to wait in another line before they could get moved to the much worse seats the NFL was giving them. By the time they sat down, they had missed most of the first quarter. All the walking around and standing around was particularly rough on one of Cerkleski’s brothers.
“He complained how exhausted he was,” Cerkleski said. “The two hours to get in, it just drained him. He just finished chemo a month and a half ago. He had no energy.”
Although the NFL says it’s going to do right by the 400 ticket holders who were forced to watch the game on TV in the bowels of the stadium, the league apparently isn’t going to do anything for the other 850 fans. Cerkleski, who paid close to $22,000 for herself and her brothers to make the trip to Dallas and go to the game, says she hasn’t heard a thing from the league.
“It’s frustrating,” she said. “Everyone hears about the 400 who got triple face value and tickets to next year’s game, or whatever. But we paid a lot of money and were treated very poorly. We have been offered nothing.”
Cerkleski describes the NFL as “Greedy, greedy, greedy,” and she’s not even sure if she wants free tickets to a future Super Bowl if they’re offered. She certainly doesn’t want to experience another nightmare at Jerry Jones’ football palace.
“I’d never go to Dallas again,” Cerkleski said. “I know that.”