SUPER BOWL XXIX : Games Within the Game : Pro football: Visionaries see future NFL fans enjoying a much more interactive experience when they reach their seats.

Someday, a seat at an NFL game could be better than a first-class ticket on an airplane. Bring a headset, plug into the armrest and dial up either the local radio broadcast or thein-house public address system.

In front of you, shared with the fan in the next seat, will be a four-inch monitor that will allow you to not only watch the game but call for instant replays. Should you work up an appetite, call the food server by pressing a button, and someone will come to take your order.

“These are dreams, only dreams, but I would love to see a pop-up screen at your seat, and if you wanted to see a replay on the monitor, you would hit a button and basically the last play could come back in slow motion,” said Jeffrey Auerbach, vice president of business development and broadcasting for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Former quarterback Pat Haden foresees consoles built into the armrests with interactive capabilities “where fans can guess what the quarterback is going to do on the next play. Compare yourself to Steve Young and Jerry Rice.”

These innovations previously seemed destined only for luxury boxes. But should NFL dreamers get their way, technology will turn a stadium seat for the average fan into its own sort-of luxury box.

“If you get too gimmicky, there is a danger,” Auerbach said. “State-of-the-art stadiums and changes need to enhance the game-day experience for fans, rather than pull them away for these little mini-experiences, and that’s the delicate balance that will be worked out over the next five to 10 years.”

Auerbach and Eagle owner Jeffrey Lurie are among the NFL’s forward-thinkers who hope to take advantage of new technology and combine it with the game-day experience. Another is Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, whose dreams of the interactive age include a theme park adjacent to his stadium, where a theater with virtual reality technology could pit fans against Roger Staubach or Troy Aikman.

The Eagles were ready to install an interactive football game in their luxury boxes last season that would allow suite holders to compete against one another, but, by the time they were ready to install it, the technology was outdated. A new version is planned.

The impact of all this on ticket prices, though, is unknown. Auerbach, while acknowledging that innovations could raise prices, also believes costs could be circumvented by selling advertising.

“In the case of the personal monitor at your seat, if you sell advertising on it, you could sell a sponsor for each replay,” he said.

Cowboy vice-president Stephen Jones doesn’t foresee prices rising higher than the inflation rate, although that has not been the situation in the past.

“I think they (prices) will always escalate,” Jones said. “Just like a car or the cost of living, it’s natural for anything to go up. But I don’t see any increases more significant than in the past.”

Ticket prices have increased approximately 30% over the last four years, growing at a rate much higher than inflation, which rose 11.9% nationally during the same period.

Last season, the average ticket price was $31.05, with a family of four spending $184.19 to attend a game, according to studies by Team Marketing Report in Chicago.

The same family pays an average of $236 to attend a San Francisco 49er game--the highest in the league--a cost that includes four soft drinks, two beers, four hot dogs, parking, two souvenir caps and programs. The best deal is in Green Bay, at $151.02. Overall, the cost for a family of four has risen 27% over the last four years.

There are some fans, however, who will seemingly pay any price for the NFL. In St. Louis, it will cost from $250 to $4,500 just for the right to buy a seat for Ram games, then another $25-$45 a ticket.

Alan Greenberg, a businessman from St. Louis, ordered two of the highest-priced seats at a cost of $9,000, which gives him the right to buy two season tickets within the 30-yard lines. Fees for Personal Seat Licenses are not tax-deductible.

“It’s implied that you will be able to sell the seat later if you want to, instead of turning it back to the club if you decide not to keep it,” Greenberg said. “I bought two of the good ones, and if I ever want to sell them, my theory is that they will be the ones that will go up in value--though that may be a flawed theory.

“Actually, a local columnist wrote the other day that if you are thinking of a PSL as a good investment, you need to go see a stock broker. It may not be a good investment at all, but we have no choice. I know a law firm that bought 34 (PSLs) and a friend of mine bought 16 of them--all the most expensive.

“We lost football twice, with the Cardinals to Phoenix and then the two expansion teams, because the city couldn’t come together. If you are going to do it, you have to pay the price.”

For Ram fans left behind in Southern California, the NFL’s Sunday ticket package is the latest broadcast offering. The package, which requires a satellite dish, was available for only the last five weeks of the regular season in 1994, but, in the future, it will enable you for a cost of $139 per season to see every game in the country except those involving local teams that are blacked out.

Last season, 239,000 subscribers bought the package, which became more economically feasible when the 18-inch compact dish--which sells for $699--went on the market in October.

“The program has the greatest advantage in L.A., where people have come from other areas and they want to see their team play,” said Tom Bracken, vice president of DirecTV of El Segundo.

The future of free televised games by networks, however, appears safe for a while. The NFL denies that it will offer games only on a pay-per-view basis, a concept that Congress opposes. Legislators do not like the thought of their constituents paying to watch a Super Bowl as they might a heavyweight championship boxing match.

Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, has also said that football games will not move to cable because 60% of the country--the number of cable subscribers--would be getting every game and zapping from channel to channel, a shuddering thought for sponsors.

Meanwhile, back at the stadiums, owners are dreaming of fiber-optics and state of the art cabling, wondering how real virtual reality can become for their fans.

“In time, I could see it because fans are changing,” said Don Klosterman, the former Ram general manager who founded N.T.N. Communications, which has provided interactive entertainment since 1983. “They want to participate in the game much more than they did before.

“The technology is there; it’s just a matter of costs. I would imagine you would have to have a surcharge and then the fans could play against everybody in the stadium or anybody across the country. The nightmare would come if the system wasn’t working properly. What if you had it in a section of 35-40 seats and the program didn’t work?

“But if you could work out all of the technology, people would love it.

“They love to play games inside of a game. “