Super Bowl XXVII : AT THE GATE : Joe Fan Knows This Isn’t Going to Be Cheap : Tickets: Do you pay $1,000 (or more) or wait for scalpers’ prices to go down at the kickoff?

Ron Walton needs two Super Bowl tickets.

He has come a long way to make this request. He makes his home in Evergreen, Colo., a small mountain hamlet located 26 miles outside and 3,400 feet above Denver, but his heart remains inside RFK Stadium, where he has held two Washington Redskin season tickets for the past 30 years.

Walton has held them this long, 15 years after moving away from the Beltway, because he fully understood the Redskin season-ticket credo the day he bought his way in: Til death do you part. With a waiting list of more than 40,000, you dutifully renew every year and do things like name your son “Ronald Walton Jr.” in order to keep the tickets in the family.

“You cannot transfer season tickets there,” Walton explains. “They have to stay in the family, and you can’t change the name. And it has to be the same first name and the same last name.

“We thought about that when Ronnie was born.”

Ronnie is now 26 and living in Washington. The transition has been a smooth one. Ronnie uses the tickets and occasionally Ron will fly in for a game, as he did for the Atlanta game in early September, when the seeds of Walton’s current predicament were sown.

“We talked about it then,” Walton said. “We were hoping that with all the other teams repeating this year, the Bulls and the Pittsburgh Penguins, that the Redskins would repeat, too.”

It seemed so perfect back then. The Super Bowl would be played in Pasadena. Walton has a daughter, Cindy, living in Fullerton. Walton would fly out in January, visit Cindy and the two of them would drive to the Rose Bowl to cheer the Redskins into history.

Walton blames Mark Rypien for what happened next.

In September, Walton bought his plane ticket. In November, he shelled another $650 for playoff tickets and the right to be included in the Redskins’ Super Bowl ticket lottery, if and when.

“The Redskins would have gotten about 20,000 tickets,” Walton says. “And there are 55,000 season ticket-holders. We probably would have had a good chance.”

But then Washington lost in the second round to San Francisco. Walton’s money was refunded, but so were his hopes of buying Super Bowl tickets at their $175 face value.

Walton became just another number, dialing the number of ticket brokers and being told there was not a thing to be had for less than $550. Cindy scoured the classified ads. Private parties were offering seats on the 40-yard line for $1,300 apiece, seats on the 30 for $1,200 and seats in the end zone for $750.

“We didn’t realize how hard it was going to be,” says Cindy, who works in the sports media relations office at Cal State Fullerton. “I’m even in the business and haven’t been able to find any leads. I’ve contacted a bunch of people and the cheapest I’ve been able to find are $550. Dad says he doesn’t want to go higher than $250.”

Good luck, Dad.

It has become the circus outside the circus, scavenging for Super Bowl tickets. The question has been asked: Can Joe Fan get a ticket to the game? At $175 a pop, face value, Joe Fan was left in the dust a long time ago. Those still in play are, mainly, Joe Small Business Owner, Joe Corporate Executive and Joe Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes Winner.

For them, this year’s game has one thing going for it--the Rose Bowl: seating capacity 103,000--and two things going against--the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills. More tickets than usual have been tossed into the mix, which, in theory, ought to drive prices down. But working in counter-balance to that is the fervor of the participating teams’ fans. Dallas hasn’t been to a Super Bowl since 1978. Buffalo hasn’t seen the sun since Labor Day. Thus, their fans have been especially driven, and their enthusiasm has helped pump ticket prices back into the monthly mortgage range.

Ron Walton understands. He attended Super Bowl XVII, also played at the Rose Bowl, for largely the same reasons. The Redskins hadn’t been to a Super Bowl in 10 years and a January in Pasadena tends to be more pleasant than a January in Minneapolis, which is why Walton skipped last year’s Washington-Buffalo affair.

“I’m a fair-weather fan,” Walton says, laughing.

So Walton is here again, only this time with no ticket in hand, contemplating strategies.

Son Ronnie had a good one back in 1983. He snuck into Super Bowl XVII disguised as a vendor and spent the entire game sitting next to Ron and Cindy.

“It was hysterical,” Cindy says. “He had a friend who actually was selling refreshments so he put on the same white shirt and black pants and walked in with a whole group of them. He knew where we were sitting and we watched the whole game together.”

Beyond that, Ron and Cindy figure they have two options.

Option No. 1: Consorting with the enemy. That’s right. Negotiating with Cowboy fans.

“I have a friend in Washington who’s going down to Dallas on business this week,” Walton said. “He knows some Cowboy season ticket-holders. He doesn’t know if their names were drawn (in the Cowboys’ Super Bowl ticket lottery) or not. But if they were, and they’re not going to the game, that’s probably my best chance.”

Option No. 2: Show up at the Rose Bowl Sunday afternoon and wait for the scalpers to come to them.

Traditionally, scalpers’ prices peak on the Tuesday before the game, then gradually decrease. The closer it gets to kickoff, the cheaper the ticket.

According to one fan who has been to nine Super Bowls in the last 11 years, “The way to do it is just go to the game and wait. Be extremely patient. Most people aren’t. But a ticket becomes less valuable the closer it gets to game time.

“Once you get to a certain point, right about when the game starts, that person is still holding a ticket and isn’t willing to eat it. Then, it’s very easy to get a ticket.”

So much aggravation and ado . . . and for what?

So two die-hard Redskin fans can personally watch the potential crowning of the dreaded Cowboys as champions of professional football?

“Oh, Dallas being there has increased my interest,” Ron Walton said. “I was hoping Dallas would beat San Francisco because I’d like to see Buffalo beat them.

“The worst thing that can happen to a team is to lose the Super Bowl. I know. I live in Denver. I’ve seen what’s happened to the Broncos three times. I’m hoping it happens to Dallas.”

Who Gets the Tickets?

If you aren’t affiliated with the NFL (and you don’t want to pay scalpers’ prices). Its extremely difficult to get Super Bowl tickets. Here’s the distribution:

Other NFL teams: 29% (29,100 tickets)

NFL office: 25% (25,250)

AFC team participant: 17.5% (17,675)

NFC team participant: 17.5% (17,675)

L.A. Raiders: 5.5% (5,656)

L.A. Rams: 5.5% (5,656)

Source: Associated Press