You Can Buy a New Boat, or You Can See the Game

News item: Ticket scalpers will get $3,500 for top-of-the-line seats for Super Bowl XXII.

I did a double-take. My eyes widened. My throat tightened. My hands shook. My coffee spilled.

Three thousand five hundred dollars! The number was screaming at me. It literally leaped off the page.

“Are you all right?” my wife asked.

Struggling, I regained my composure.

“Dear,” I said, “how would you like to go to the Super Bowl?”

She yawned.

“When is it?” she asked.

I told her.

“Who’s playing?” she asked.

I told her I didn’t know yet. I told her it didn’t really make any difference. I told her it might be Indianapolis, for heaven’s sake.

“I think I’d rather go shopping,” she said.

“But,” I said, “this may be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. How often is the Super Bowl played five minutes from the house?”

I was trying to set her up for The Big Question, trying to stir a modicum of interest. I told her the halftime show is always great, invariably much more entertaining than the game.

She bit.

“What’s it cost?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “I assume we would go first class. Sit on the 50-yard line. It wouldn’t make any sense to sit in the bottom row in the end zone.”

“OK,” she said. “First class.”

“For two of us,” I said with a smirk, “it would probably cost around $7,000.”

She spilled her coffee. She looked at me as if I were crazy. Her lips tightened.

And she did not say a word.

Not right away.

Slowly and softly, she started to speak.

“You’re telling me someone would spend $7,000 for two tickets to a football game?” she said.

When she said the word “football,” she looked as if she had something bitter in her mouth and was trying to get it out. She didn’t say the word so much as spit it. Obviously, she had little regard for the magnitude of a Super Bowl.

“We could sit in the end zone,” I said.

“For what?” she said disdainfully.

“Probably around $700 a seat,” I said.

“That’s really a bargain,” she said, laughing now. “Why don’t we buy 10?”

I laughed, too.

Frankly, I knew she wouldn’t be interested . . . not even for the $100-per-ticket face value. I doubt she would be interested at $10 a seat. It may be heretical, but not all of America cares.

What’s astounding is that someone out there will cough up $7,000 for a pair of 50-yard-line seats.

Most of us folks would have to rob a bank or put the touch on a rich uncle or take out a second mortgage to come up with $7,000. And I can’t imagine too many banks that might be willing to lend $7,000 for a pair of Super Bowl tickets.

My wife was shaking her head and blotting the spilled coffee with a napkin.

“Can you imagine all the things we could do with $7,000?” she pondered.

My son walked into the room.

“I’d buy a fishing boat,” he said. “By the way, where’d we get $7,000?”

“I borrowed it,” I said, sensing I could sink the hook in this guppy.

“Why?” he asked.

“To buy Super Bowl tickets,” I said.

“To buy Super Bowl tickets?” he said. “Why do you need so many tickets?”

“Who said anything about ‘so many tickets’?” I said.

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Two?” he gasped. “Seven thousand dollars for two Super Bowl tickets? Are you crazy?”

No, I told him, but someone would be.

Who?

No one in my neighborhood, either geographically or financially.

“It’s amazing,” I said. “You could buy a car or a hot tub or take a trip to Europe for that kind of money. And someone’s going to pay $7,000 for two seats to watch a football game.”

Again, who?

Consider the demographics of a Super Bowl crowd. It’s beyond blue collar . . . and probably white collar as well. A Super Bowl crowd is mink coats, private jets, limousines and houses for all seasons. The average income is undoubtedly into six figures, and there aren’t any decimal points.

The person who grabs at those $3,500 seats will be someone who owns a chunk of Nob Hill in San Francisco or an apartment building on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago or oil wells in Houston or all of either Cleveland or Indianapolis. The person spending that money will own a mansion across the Potomac from Washington or half of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. Or this person will be a Carrington from Denver.

“No, dear,” I said in my most reassuring voice. “The person who spends $7,000 for two Super Bowl tickets will not be a Distel from Tierrasanta.”