Commemorative Super Bowl MetroCards available at NYC subway stations

Lucky New York City subway riders might be able to find pieces of Super Bowl memorabilia at their MetroCard vending machines starting this week.

In conjunction with the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee, 1 million commemorative MetroCards will be on sale at about 400 subway stations until Feb. 3.

There are four card designs featuring the Super Bowl XLVIII logo, each with a unique front, and a message on the back reading, “Together, the National Football League and the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee are bringing the greatest game to the greatest region.”

"There's no better region to host the Super Bowl and no better way to celebrate and promote that fact than by saying it on a MetroCard," MTA spokesman Paul Fleuranges said in a statement.

That and $2.75 will get you a ride on the A-train.

The MTA began distributing the commemorative MetroCards earlier this week. The cards were designed and purchased by the Super Bowl Host Committee.

But getting one of the cards from a vending machine is just a matter of random chance, the MTA said.

“The cards are added to an existing supply of standard MetroCards, so there is no guarantee that purchasing there will result in the acquisition of a card featuring the Super Bowl design,” said MTA spokesman David Ortiz.

Although the game will be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, New York City will host several events in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 2 game.

Blimps will be grounded at MetLife Super Bowl due to weather

Long associated with the biggest sporting events in America — airships, blimps, zeppelins or whatever your generation calls them — will most likely not be sailing over MetLife Stadium during Super Bowl XLVIII in February.

So don't expect to see Snoopy —or Goodyear or DirecTV for that matter — hovering above the festivities during the game because none of the ubiquitous lighter-than-air crafts wants to do battle with Mother Nature in the middle of winter.

The Star-Ledger reports:

Greg Poppenhouse, chief pilot for Goodyear, almost shivers at the thought of flying over East Rutherford on Groundhog Day.
"We won’t have a blimp up there," he said of the upcoming Super Bowl. "We put our ship in the hangar in the winter."
It’s not so much the cold that worries Poppenhouse, but what typically accompanies it during New Jersey winters.
Flying through a rainstorm in the summer can suddenly add 400 pounds of weight to a blimp, he noted. In the winter, though, that precipitation turns into snow and freezing rain, which can accumulate on the wide expanse of an airship’s helium gas envelope, adding enough weight to quickly give a blimp the flying characteristics of a brick.

Not even MetLife, whose name is emblazoned on the stadium that is home to the Jets and Giants, will chance its two U.S.-based airships — Snoopy One and Snoopy Two — to the whims of the Jersey winter on Super Bowl Sunday this February.

"They won’t be there," said MetLife spokesman Shane Winn. "Even if the weather was fairly decent, usually by mid-November both Snoopy One and Snoopy Two are put on a program that keeps them to largely warm-weather states."

The white-and-blue Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield blimp, which is based in New Jersey during the summer months, will be grounded by then as well, officials say, hibernating during the winter — like most other blimps who go south — in North Carolina unless the airship is leased by another company.

With flight restrictions in place since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the blimp may not be the only thing not in action in the skies over MetLife Stadium on game day. The Federal Aviation Administration said there will be temporary flight restrictions on jets and small aircraft put in place as well.

So kiss those live sweeping shots of the Manhattan skyline goodbye.