The Dallas Cowboys will share the spotlight with the World Series for the first time ever Sunday, October 31, when the Cowboys play the Jacksonville Jaguars at Cowboys Stadium at 1 p.m., a few hours before the Texas Rangers host the San Francisco Giants in Game Four of the World Series down the road at The Ballpark at Arlington.
It will be a hectic day in the Metroplex. But just ask Jake Conaway, the general manager of WanamakerTicket.com in Philadelphia, how crazy it would be if the Cowboys, who fell to 1-5 with a loss to the New York Giants on Monday, October 25, weren’t in the midst of one of the most disappointing seasons in the National Football League.
A year ago Sunday, Philadelphia played host to both an NFL game and a World Series game when the Eagles played the New York Giants at Lincoln Financial Park before the Phillies and Yankees tussled in Game Four of the World Series at Citizens Bank Park. The Eagles beat the Giants, 40-17, on their way to another playoff berth before the Phillies fell to the Yankees.
“It was a beast,” Conaway told TicketNews. “People live, eat, breathe and sleep sports in Philadelphia. I mean, this is the kind of town where if there’s an Eagles game and then a World Series game that night, people go to the doubleheaders. That’s a blessing for something like that to happen here in Philly. Throw a Flyers game in there too? Oh my God.”
Alas, for Dallas fans, there isn’t much of a choice to make between the football and baseball game. Not only are the Cowboys falling well short of expectations in a year in which they were favored to reach the Super Bowl, but star quarterback Tony Romo suffered a fractured left clavicle Monday and will likely miss the rest of the season. He’ll be replaced by 38-year-old Jon Kitna. And Jacksonville is in last place in the AFC South at 3-4 and may be starting a 38-year-old quarterback itself in Todd Bouman.
In fact, as of this afternoon, October 27, StubHub had more than 11,000 tickets to the game, the cheapest of which was an upper reserved seat listed for $17. The face value of that ticket: $149. There were 87 ticket packages on StubHub in which the seat price was listed below $30.
“Dallas and Jacksonville, I can’t imagine that many people wanting to go and see that game,” Conaway said. “The fact that Romo’s got a broken collarbone [and] Jacksonville, their record is very similar to Dallas.”
The demand for tickets to Game Four of the World Series, meanwhile, is much more intense. The cheapest ticket listed on StubHub as of today was a $378 standing room only one. The cheapest actual seat in the house would come courtesy of a Grandstand Reserved ticket listed for $495.
Fans in San Francisco don’t have much of a decision to make, either, if they are trying to decide between attending a World Series game and one of the 49ers’ four remaining Bay Area games. The 49ers were the overwhelming choice to win the NFC West this year but are 1-6 as they head to London for this weekend’s game against the Denver Broncos.
This marks the first time in 15 years that the World Series has pitted two cities whose football teams were already well out of the playoff race by the time the Fall Classic began. In 1996, when the New York Yankees beat the Atlanta Braves in six games, the Jets, Giants and Falcons finished a combined 10-38, with the Jets (1-15) and Falcons (3-13) actually finishing with the two worst records in the game.
Barring a stunning comeback by either the Cowboys or 49ers, this will only be the fourth time since 1996 that neither of the World Series cities sent its NFL team to the playoffs. It also happened in 2006 (St. Louis-Detroit World Series), 2003 (Florida-New York Yankees World Series) and 1999 (Yankees-Braves World Series).
