$12 Super Bowl Tickets

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January 31, 2007

If you look at the NFL Films presentation of Super Bowl I – which was actually called the AFL-NFL Championship Game in 1967 – you'll see a shot of a long, wide stairway in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. There are many, many empty seats – fewer than 70,000 fans attended the game –but halfway up that long stairway in what is known as the "peristyle" end of the Coliseum, you'll see a man in a bright red sweater and a kid in a light blue shirt sitting on the aisle seats. The kid was me, and the man was my Uncle Henry. I was 10 years old and maybe the most excited person in the entire stadium.

The night before the game, my uncle called to ask if I wanted to go to with him. I immediately said yes, but had to check with mom and dad. Once they gave the okay, it was off to bed for a sleepless night waiting for the sunrise so I could get ready to go. The Kansas City Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers were the combatants that day, and even though I was a die-hard Rams fan, I was so pumped up that I felt as if I would pop out of my own skin. My uncle picked me up at 10:30 a.m. – game time was at 1 p.m. – and we were off for the 30 mile drive to downtown LA. One slight problem, though – my uncle didn't have any tickets. Even at age ten, I knew this wasn't a good situation. While many people will tell you there wasn't much publicity surrounding that first game, they'd be wrong. The game was the subject my friends and I talked about for a week, and I was the envy of my young peer group when I called everyone to let them know I was going to the game. So here we are in my uncle's Pontiac LeMans, speeding toward the Coliseum for the biggest game in the history of pro football. Without a ticket!

While the captains of the Packers and Chiefs met at midfield, a ten year-old Joe McDonnell grinned in the end zone seats.

In my mind, I'm already preparing to be driven back home right away when we get to the Coliseum and find no tickets are available. When I told my uncle how disappointed I knew I was going to be, he turned to me and started laughing. "We're going to get the tickets from a scalper," he said, as if that would ease my mind. I had no idea what a scalper was, and told him so. Uncle Henry then explained that these were people who had tickets and sold them for more money than they were worth. I didn't really comprehend all that – remember I was just 10. But I didn't care if he said he was going to buy the tickets from a giraffe as long as we got into the game.

So, we arrived at the USC campus right next door to the Coliseum, found a parking spot, and began walking toward the stadium. I can remember it plain as day when I asked my uncle where these scalpers, these saviors of my dreams were. He pointed at one normal looking guy and said, "there's one." Then he pointed to another…and another…and another.

As I got older, I calculated that there was about one scalper for every 500 people in attendance at the first Super Bowl. It was an amazing sight, as hundreds of people were going from scalper to scalper looking for the best deal. Seriously, there were so many people who had the same idea as my uncle that the prices went up every two minutes. I was listening to one scalper tell a potential buyer that if he bought three tickets for $75 each, he'd throw a fourth one in for $25. Done deal. The tickets had a face value of either $10 to $12! In 1967, that was a lot of money for an average fan. And $25 was crazy. But the man took one look at his wife and kids and took the deal, probably forking over a week or two worth of paychecks.

I began badgering my uncle, asking him when he was going to talk to these guys about our tickets. "Right before the game starts," he replied. Once again, my spirits began to sink. Now I'm thinking all the tickets would be gone and we would still be making the long trek back to the San Fernando Valley ticketless and with me having to face my friends with no program or ticket stub to prove I was there. And I couldn't even really lie about it if we didn't get into the game, because the telecast was blacked out in Los Angeles. A feeling of dread swept across my 10 year-old kid space.

Then, about 20 minutes before kickoff, my uncle makes his move. He spots a guy who looks very panicky and has a literal handful of tickets. Uncle Henry approaches, and asks the guy if he had a pair. The guy says sure, 25 bucks apiece. My uncle tells the guy his price is ridiculous, and that with about 15 minutes left until the game starts, he's going to get stuck with the tickets if he doesn't lower his price. So, as time dwindled, they continued haggling, voices raised at times. Finally, my uncle handed him some money, walked back toward me, and handed me a ticket. We were in!

So, we get to our seats and I notice the price on the tickets is $12. I really didn't worry about the price – I was in, and that was all that mattered to me. But curiosity got me, and I ask my uncle how much he spent. "How much do you think I paid?" he asks me back. I was guessing about 40 buckss for two seats, which at the time, was all the money in the world. Nope, turns out he hammered the guy so much that he finally sold my uncle two seats for the face value of one –$12! For the Super Bowl!

The Packers throttled the Chiefs 35-10, saving the honor of the NFL. And I was the most popular kid in school the next day.

Since that day I've covered a dozen Super Bowls, as a reporter and talk show host, and they're really not that big of a deal anymore. But the first one was – and always will be – to a ten year old boy who had a dream fulfilled on that warm January day in 1967.