2015 Recap: Kelly Stafford's Try to Peddle 5 Lions Tickets Makes QB's Wife a Target

This Dec. 19 repost is the seventh in our set of noteworthy 2015 content, based on readership and editors’ choices. The Top 10 series runs through Thursday. Links to earlier installments are at the end.

Roughing the quarterback's wife is in-bounds behavior online for more than a few people, as Kelly Stafford knows well.

The newlyweds met at the University of Georgia and married last April.

Few No public activities seem off-limits for sniping when you're married to a NFL quarterback, so snipers took shots when Lions player Matthew Stafford's wife put five Lions-Saints tickets on SubHub and promoted them on Instagram.

"Anyone looking for some great seats at MNF?!" asks her social media post Saturday morning for next Monday night's game in New Orleans. "Lemme know, I have 5 tickets! They are currently on stubhub. Section 113: row 6 seats 7 and 8 Section 114: row 17 seats 1, 2, and 3 "

The ex-cheerleader planned to take her family to the Superdome game, she posts (full text at end), but will visit an ailing grandfather instead, 

She listed the two sets of seats at $475 per ticket -- a markup from the $325 face value, according to a tweet by Matt Demorest of Royal Oak tweeted. 

That brought this from the Sports Rag Detroit blog editor: 

So not only is Kelly Stafford selling the tickets on StubHub, she is attempting to make a $150 per ticket profit!!!! https://t.co/1H8d54kUkX

— Jeff Moss (@JeffMossDSR) December 19, 2015

When he tried to buy two to donate to a New Orleans hospital for children, Moss found that they appeared to be withdrawn.

All of the tickets are gone. She must have pulled them. No way they all sold that quick. https://t.co/zN8T5uhQWO

— Jeff Moss (@JeffMossDSR) December 20, 2015

In a follow-up post at his blog, Moss adds: "I tried about 25 times to complete the transaction to no avail."

The outspoken blogger frames the situation this way (five capitalized words changed to italics):

Let’s be clear about the offense here. If Stafford wanted to unload these ducats on the ticket exchange app, nobody would have taken issue with it because nobody would have known. StubHub is an anonymous platform and the wife of the filthy-rich QB could have tried to recoup her investment.

But to go on Instagram and try to hock these extras was absolutely astonishing. She was using her stature as a player’s wife to sell the tickets to a bunch of people who are only following her on that website because she is the QB’s wife!!!!

It’s gross and it shows a total lack of self-awareness. Stafford later posted that she was just trying to sell them because her grandfather was ill and her plans for MNF had changed.

At that point she had two options:

Try to sell them on StubHub without broadcasting it publicly, or:

• Donate them to a charity.

• But to go on a social media site and advertise the sale of the tickets was insanely stupid and the immediate firestorm that occurred was extremely predictable.

Around 6 p.m. Saturday, Kelly Stafford posted a seven-sentence Instagram statement (below) that says: "I'm beyond tired of getting badgered for this."

The quarterback and former cheerleader during their engagement.

Pointed questions and criticism flowed earlier onto her thread at @kbstafford89. Samples:

• "Why not donate to a family in need? You could probably make someone's Christmas." -- Jenn Byrne
• "Pretty tacky. Yikes." -- Joni Gayle Reed
• "Yeah cause you don't have enough money already right?" -- Andre Eugeni of Saline, Mich.
• "This is really bad taste. You should obviously donate them, not promote them on Instagram to make money on StubHub. Or offer them to a charity organization. Matt does a lot of charity work for the city of Detroit. if you are going to sell them, maybe keep it to yourself instead of shameless self-promotion. . . . This gives the wrong Christmas vibe." -- Mrs. Ramaut

The Lions' quarterback, 27, marrried the former Kelly Hall last April 4. They became college sweethearts when she was a University of Georgia cheerleader and he played for the Bulldogs. 

Kelly Stafford's Instagram post Dec. 19: