Just so you know JR, I'm sitting down and rewatching the game today for the first time. In between doing the laundry and cleaning up the house (life in the offseason when your lady is cool enough to let you follow the Hawks around for 2 years haha), I'm going to attempt to do a Super Bowl XLIX writeup. It's part of the healing process I guess... Anyways, on to your question.
I thought that XLVIII was cooler, personally. First off, the NFL didn't even have any goodie bags for the people that spent AT LEAST $800 for tickets, if not literally tens of thousands, at XLIX. No freakin' gift bag?! I know it might sound petty, and to be fair, I only used the items in said gift bag months after the Super Bowl (used the gloves to not freeze to death while selling pickles in the snow/cold on 6th ave and west 4th street in Manhattan, so they came in handy), but still, what gives?! You've got the performers paying the league now, no gift bags, the league sweeping things like deflategate under the rug... something tells me that the league has now become (always has been?) arrogant? They think that the world would end if the NFL ceased to exist, and that they don't have to go out of their way to show a token of respect to the people who have made their product what it is (the fans and the players). This kind of arrogance will bite them in the ass down the road, for sure. Karma baby!
So no gift bags, just two finger laser lights waiting for you at your seat so that you could join in on the Katy Perry show, which, by the way, Eli (tooshort) and I didn't even watch. By the way, if anyone ever meets Eli, buy him all the beers in the world. He's a saint and was nice enough to sell me his ticket for face value so he deserves a ton of respect and admiration from the 12th Man for being a model 12 and a great human being. I already owe him a lifetime of beers... and oriental concubines. He knows what I'm talking about...
Anyways, back to the games. The atmosphere was worse. With the ticket dangling around my neck, priced at around $10,500 by the NFL-created black market for tickets, I felt like a rich man walking through the poorest village in the world while I ate some of the finest food from around the planet. There were people who were devastated, having found out that Stubhub wouldn't be able to get them any tickets. Good friends and .Netters (Barthawk, LudwigsDrummer, SalukiHawk) who have been fans of this team since the beginning were stuck watching at home, while I was heading in to the stadium. I've got to be honest, I felt dirty. It didn't feel right. That amazing, festive atmosphere that was so prevalent at MetLife, was shattered.
The finer weather was definitely a plus, but pretty much everything else was a notch below what it was at MetLife. This truly felt like a corporate event that I had no business attending. It was definitely because of the price of the tickets. MetLife was the everyman's Super Bowl, in my mind. It was the most affordable Super Bowl in ages, and it felt like true fans of the game/each team were in attendance. Eli and I were trying our hardest to get the swarm of Seahawks fans around us to make noise, but these people were absolutely clueless in what this meant. Compare it to XLVIII and there is no comparison. Seahawks fans were out for blood at MetLife, it felt like in Glendale it was just a bunch of rich folk who used to live in Seattle that now live in AZ who thought it would be cool to say they went to a Super Bowl that the Seahawks were in. There were a ton of Seahawks fans there, and our voices should have been heard even more. I was very disappointed in the crowd noise and participation from the 12th Man in this one, I gotta be honest. There were some, like us, who were leaving their vocal chords in their seats, but most of the others were just standing, looking at those of us who were screaming as if we were some barbaric group of savages from the Last of the Mohicans.
About the only thing that was better was the transportation issue, as nothing will be as awful as the botchjob that the NFL orchestrated before/after XLVIII.
In closing, the NFL are a bunch of shady crooks, and if I didn't have to witness the quest for redemption again next season because it is my destiny, I'd probably never care to go to another Super Bowl ever again.
BUTTTT.... I'll see you in Santa Clara, JR. We've got to write that perfect last chapter...