12 THE CORNELL DAILY SUN | Friday, January 31, 2014
SPORTS
De Blasio Chooses to Stay Home To Watch Super Bowl With Son NEW YORK (AP) — New York City is co-hosting the Super Bowl this weekend but its mayor will not attend the nation’s biggest sporting event. Bill de Blasio will not travel across the Hudson River to MetLife Stadium on Sunday to watch the Denver Broncos face the Seattle Seahawks in a game that will showcase the nation’s largest city to a television audience expected to top 100 million people. De Blasio said he would stay home to watch with his teenage son, but the decision not to buy tickets to the high-priced event and to publicly say so is in line with the image he crafted during his campaign: that he was a middle-class family man focused on fixing the city’s widening income inequality. “I’m very excited that the NFL is hosting the Super Bowl in our area, and we’re working
hard to be great hosts of the joked about his lack of disposevent,” de Blasio said in a state- able income. He has one child in ment Thursday. “I’ve enjoyed college and another who will be participating in all the festivities going in two years. Despite being leading up to Super Bowl an avid sports fan who lives near Sunday, but I’ve decided to the new Barclays Center, he has watch the game on TV, just like yet to attend a Brooklyn Nets the vast majorigame due to ty of New high ticket “I’ve decided to watch prices. Yorkers.” Elected offiBy contrast, the game on TV.” cials are prohibhis predecessor, M i c h a e l ited from Bill de Blasio accepting free Bloomberg, was tickets to the one of the richest men in New game and the requirement to pay — with face York, worth approximately $31 values ranging from $500 to billion. Not much of a sports $2,500 — can be difficult for fan, he would often attend games, always sitting just a few those without deep pockets. De Blasio is paid $225,000 a rows from the action. He once year and made $165,000 a year accidentally tripped and injured the last four years as the city’s an opposing player while sitting elected public advocate. courtside at Madison Square De Blasio, who hails from a Garden for a Knicks game. Tickets to the Super Bowl are middle- to upper-middle class Brooklyn neighborhood, has among the priciest in sports. The NFL set the prices at $800, $1,000, $1,200 and $2,500, while another 1,000 tickets were available for $500 each through a lottery. In most cases, New York City officials can’t accept free tickets to the game, according to guidelines spelled out by the city’s Conflict of Interest Board. Elected officials can only receive gifts of up to $50, an amount that would barely cover a handful of souvenirs. The only exceptions, according to the board’s rules, would be if a ticket was given as a gift from a family member or if a politician could make the claim that he or she was attending the game in an official capacity to perform official duties. State laws are similar. Former New York Gov. David Paterson paid a $60,000 fine after improperly accepting free New York Yankees World Series tickets in 2009. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s office has use of a luxury box at the stadium, which was privately built by the Jets and Giants but sits on state land managed by a public agency known as the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority. All of the luxury boxes, including Christie’s, are relinquished to the NFL for the game but the league has allowed the exposition authority to retain its own box. That box was then turned over to the governor’s office, according to a spokesman for the agency. Christie has largely avoided the press in the wake of the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal but has appeared at a few Super Bowl-related events this week. His spokesman would not discuss the governor’s plans for Sunday. The other governor playing co-host to the game, New York’s Andrew Cuomo, has yet to decide if he will attend, according to his spokesman. MetLife Stadium is in East Rutherford, N.J. and that town’s mayor, James Cassella, was miffed he did not get a ticket. He was later invited to the suite given to Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay.