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EPA chief Scott Pruitt got tickets to the Rose Bowl at face value 5 days before the game

Nick Bromberg
·College football and motorsports writer


Scott Pruitt sure likes using his government connections whenever he has a chance.

According to the New York Times, the embattled Environmental Protection Agency chief scored face-value tickets to the Rose Bowl just five days before the Jan. 1 game between Georgia and Oklahoma. And if that wasn’t crazy enough, the tickets were at the 50.

Hmm… how do you think Pruitt made that happen? There’s no way the former Oklahoma politician went through the Sooners’ ticketing site and randomly found those tickets for face value on his own.

Wait, there’s no way an aide for Pruitt went through the Sooners’ ticketing site and randomly found those tickets for face value on his or her own. The revelation about Pruitt’s Rose Bowl attendance came in a Times article that details how his aides have done personal tasks for their boss.

One aide helped book his travel to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., where Mr. Pruitt had secured seats near the 50-yard line for the face value of $175 each, documents show. The tickets, for Mr. Pruitt and his wife and two children, were purchased five days before the sold-out New Year’s Day game this year.

Mr. Pruitt bought the tickets, the records show, from a special allotment for the University of Oklahoma, which appeared in the game against the University of Georgia. Tickets for equivalent seats were on sale on the secondary market for as much as seven times the price paid by Mr. Pruitt, data from two ticket companies show.

A regent for the school told the Times that he jumped in for Pruitt to help him get the seats from what the school said was its “discretionary” allotment. Pruitt ended up seeing his team lose as Georgia mounted a second-half comeback and beat Oklahoma so the hookup wasn’t as fruitful as it could have been of OU would have advanced to the National Championship Game.

The curious acquisition of tickets is yet another, well, curious happening from Pruitt’s EPA tenure. Pruitt was just recently accused of attempting to use his status in the government to get a meeting with Chick-Fil-A about a franchise for his wife. He allegedly had aides look for a Trump hotel mattress and lotion from the Ritz-Carlton. And he’s allegedly said he flies first-class on airplane trips because he can’t sit in coach due to threats.

We’d go on, but this isn’t a political blog. The bottom line is Scott Pruitt knows it is good to be in the United States government.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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