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The Saints in Louisiana:

I have the good fortune to live close enough to New Orleans to enjoy it but far enough away not to endure it . It's a love-hate thing. Playoff night it became clear to me what the fulfillment of a shared desire can do for a greater community. Moments after that very well kicked football made its journey between the goal post in the Superdome all of Louisiana plunged into a world-class celebration. I live not far from an industrial waterway. Have you ever heard 30 or 40 ships whistles go off at the same time. They were shortly joined by fire station sirens ,sirens on every police vehicle in the state, the sound of fireworks erupting everywhere and people standing in the street screaming. Most roadways were blocked for the next 30 or 40 minutes because everyone just got out of their cars and started hollering. Not that there were many cars on the road that night. About halfway through the game had to make a 45 mile trip along what is normally a very well-traveled highway in the trip I saw only 12 cars were as it normally would have been hundreds.

A significant portion of the mobile population of Louisiana are on their way to Florida or will be before the weeks out. Every RV vehicle in the state that could be rented is. If you live in Miami are close by I would leave for a few days if I was you. By the way they do not have tickets that's not the point. They want to spend the rest of there life saying they were there on the day.

Lee

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PS: DO NOT SEND MONEY!

Sound's like fan's starved of anything to celebrate football wise, and good luck to them next sunday night,the super bowl is in broward county not dade county which is where miami is located,the sad thing is they won't get anywhere near the stadium as it is a big coporate event and security is like the airports these years.i have tailgated without a ticket at a few super bowls,i did the dirty bird with hundreds of atlanta fan's,the last time any ticketless fan's were allowed in the parking lot..probaly the best place for those without tix to catch the game,would be Hardock hotel/casino..free parking..various bars with specials,showng the game......this is where the after party will be....

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Jaco is called little USA by all ticos

I know what you mean, I'm in that 25min buffer zone from the city too. I love the city and the people in it but wouldn't want to live there full time.

After the final score in overtime and a little time to recover from all the emotions flowing through the room. I walked outside with a couple friends to hear the fireworks going off and all the cheers coming from the houses in the neighborhood. It truly was a magical event.

Now we have just one more game left. WHO DAT !!

Oh yeah - forget Miami -- you know the real party will be in NOLA That's where I'll be

CJ

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Cien?? OK pero dos leches mi amiga

Sex for money doesn’t phuck a guy up, but love for money does.
I can't wait to go back and get phucked up again.

Gonna be some serious post-partum depression in the Crescent City if the Saints lose. I'll just bet the "over"--neither team has a defense worth a damn but sterling offenses. I figure I'll win the bet by half-time.

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"A man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratification of mankind"--Dr. Johnson
"Amen, brother"-ED

Super Bowl ticket brokers pin big hopes on Big Easy
A drop in corporate dollars at the Super Bowl has left more seats open for regular fans, but what they're willing to pay is a different matter.


The median asking price for a Super Bowl ticket at StubHub.com has dropped to $2,500 - down from $3,500 a week ago.
It was a bull market in South Florida last time, thanks mostly to the Bears. Now speculators sound bearish, though that will probably change once the Saints come marching in.

Sports puns meet demand curves every year at this time as the erratic, dicey and largely hush-hush market for Super Bowl tickets revs into action. Brokers say ticket sales have been soft so far, thanks to a weak economy and the fact that teams from small cities are playing in the Feb. 7 championship.

Even so, the pricing bubble for Super Bowl tickets seems virtually puncture-proof. The cheapest seats in Sun Life Stadium sold for about $2,000 apiece Friday even as brokers grumbled about penny-pinching fans from Indianapolis and New Orleans.

``That's the best word I can give you: soft,'' said Jay Smith, president of Sports Travel and Tours in Hatfield, Mass., which is selling Super Bowl packages for $3,900 a head. ``People are not banging down the doors.'' Thousands of tickets were up for grabs this week on ticket exchange websites and online marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist.

``It's certainly a buyer's market,'' said Joellen Ferrer, a spokeswoman for StubHub.com, which had about 5,000 Super Bowl tickets for sale this week. In recent days, the median asking prices on StubHub, which pairs ticket buyers and sellers, dropped sharply to about $2,500 for the Super Bowl -- down from $3,500 a week ago.

THE VARIABLES

Projecting how much to mark up a Super Bowl ticket -- face values start at $500 -- has gotten more complicated this year.

A drop in corporate entertaining at the big game left more tickets available for regular fans. Brokers say they've all but written off the Indianapolis Colts as a significant driver of ticket sales since the team was just in South Florida for the Super Bowl three years ago.

But with the New Orleans Saints playing in their first Super Bowl after 42 years, there's hope that fans will come down from Louisiana even if they haven't bought tickets yet. That could lead to last-minute purchases, and a spike in prices.

Robert Tuchman, an executive vice president at Premiere Global Sports, said South Florida's last Super Bowl saw a similar pattern in 2007, when the Colts also contributed to weak ticket sales. But late-buying Chicago Bears fans ultimately sent the market soaring.

Good seats that were selling for $3,000 on the Wednesday before that game suddenly were commanding $7,000. ``It just skyrocketed,'' Tuchman said.

``We're really expecting the Saints fans to come,'' said Michael Lipman, of Miami's Tickets of America, an online brokerage. ``And they will come. How much they'll pay is another question.''

Lipman expects to sell roughly 1,000 Super Bowl tickets this year.

EXCHANGING HANDS

The National Football League sends 75 percent of Super Bowl tickets to the league's 32 teams, which then distribute them to players, coaches, executives and corporate sponsors. The NFL's share of tickets also gets spread out to sponsors, charities, media organizations, local organizers and fans who enter lotteries.

From there, the tickets begin changing hands. Even though NFL rules bar team employees from selling theirs for more than face value, many do, Lipman said. He said he and his staff court financial advisors and agents representing players as potential sources for Super Bowl tickets.

``It really is a relationship game,'' he said.

For teams that don't make it to the Super Bowl, their players can buy two tickets at face value. For the two Super Bowl teams, their players can buy up to 15. Even so, Lipman said sponsors and other companies with ties to the league are the best sources for tickets -- particularly this year as companies pull back money on sports deals signed before the economy went sour.

``Corporations are selling more tickets these days than buying them,'' he said.

Prices are keeping even die-hard Saints fans away from South Florida, at least for the moment, travel agents said.

``People desperately want to go,'' said Karen Peeler Wild, owner of Lagniappe Travel Services in New Orleans. ``Once you go online and you see how much they're brokering tickets for, that's a $10,000 weekend. We can't afford that.''

Wild said some clients are driving to South Florida in hopes of finding a cheaper ticket once they arrive. She said she would make the trip just to celebrate in the parking lot outside the game, if not for the NFL's policy of banning tailgating before the Super Bowl.

``If I can't be in the parking lot, why even go?'' Wild said. In New Orleans, ``they started tailgaiting Friday for the Sunday AFC championship. They really did..

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Jaco is called little USA by all ticos

Ant no depression in this town tonight. Even the ugly guys will get lucky tonight and ant going to be paying no $100.

Lee

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PS: DO NOT SEND MONEY!

My post shows exactly how much wrong a Der Alter can be. I'm covered in shame and lost the bet.
Congrats to the Saints--they won straight-up in one of the better SB games I've seen. I mean, one takeaway with all that passing? And durned few meaningful penalties. This one will be studied, my Brothers.

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"A man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratification of mankind"--Dr. Johnson
"Amen, brother"-ED