Looks like the bloom is off the proverbial rose downtown, as a few council members are bickering among themselves — and directing their ire at the mayor — concerning tickets to the New Year’s Day Cotton Bowl game, or so says the Morning News. It seems that in years’ past, council members have been given a couple of gratis tickets to the football game, which none owned up to using themselves but a few said they passed along to relatives/friends. This year, Mayor Leppert and the city attorney apparently decided that accepting the tickets didn’t seem ethical, so they sent the tickets back to the Cotton Bowl people. The problem? Leppert didn’t consult with his council colleagues before taking the action, and I imagine a few had already committed the tickets to someone else, so they wound up looking a little powerless. So Leppert took, from what I can tell, his first public shots from his colleagues in the DMN story. A few more autocratic moves like this one — regardless of whether he’s on the right side of the issue or not — will give us some clues about how thick or thin his skin really is. And as for the council members, too bad they didn’t spend this much time, effort and energy trying to keep the game in town.