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Cowboys' Jones takes responsibility for Super Bowl seat issues

INDIANAPOLIS -- Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is sharing responsibility with the NFL for the Super Bowl seating fiasco at Cowboys Stadium.

Just hours before the Green Bay Packers played Pittsburgh Steelers, the league announced that 1,250 temporary seats were deemed unsafe and moved 850 people to new seats. Some 400 fans were forced to watch the game from standing-room-only locations around the stadium.

Jones told ESPNDallas.com on Friday that he would look at ways to improve seating issues and the way they are handled.

"I do, along with the NFL, take responsibility for the seating issue and some of the things that we would like to improve on regarding the seating issues," Jones said. "The informing of the fans that were involved, the NFL and I take responsibility for. You always like to look at areas you can do better, get better. We certainly intend to and will get much better in terms of the seating and how that is handled."

The seating issue combined with cold, icy weather took some of the shine off the event, but Jones said he was still proud of the North Texas Super Bowl committee's efforts.

In the days after the Packers' 31-25 win over the Steelers, the league gave the displaced fans two options: $2,400 -- triple the face value of the ticket -- and a ticket to next year's Super Bowl, or a ticket to any Super Bowl with round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations.

The NFL said an additional 2,000 fans forced to sit in temporary seats will receive a face-value ticket refund or a free ticket to a future Super Bowl.

"One thing I would point out is that our stadium is certainly, the concept of the stadium, it was designed for the flexibility of temporary seating," Jones said. "You can note those, but we have had several world-class events that were very much enhanced by the way our stadium is designed to increase our capacity by our temporary seating. So that is not at issue as much as it is evaluating what we did to create the criticism, to create the issue, and to do better in the future."

Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press