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December 27, 2006
football weekend xi rollup
I can't believe anyone cares, but for the purpose of completeness, here it is.
SEATTLE
The weekend started in a downpour, but we didn't much mind. Donning his Seahawks jersey, Bubba met me at Qwest Field, where we watched the Seahawks continue their ungraceful moonwalk into the playoffs, against the 49ers. Qwest is easily the loudest stadium of this or any weekend. Attribute that to canny fans and an even cannier architecture. Imagine two Sydney Opera Houses pointed at one another with a field in the middle, and you have Qwest. Even an idly chattering, one-third capacity crowd can reach a distorted din. A full crowd during the opponent's third down? Otherworldly.
Quest is among my favorite stadiums. Architecturally, it's magnificent and unique. The seating's comfortable, the sight-lines are perfect, the excellent food's distinctive (local restaurants, chowder, etc.) and the giant scoreboard is visible to most. Major demerits for navigation, though—up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs, down the stairs, you don't need signs, do you?—and for a lack of tables at which to eat the $9 hot dogs. We ate off a trash can. Even Spokane Arena has tables.
During the course of the game the guy behind me, to illustrate how much he hates the 49ers, said that he hates only the Steelers worse. They should be ashamed of themselves for "paying off the refs and buying a championship," he said to no one in particular. The weight of his evidence and sagacity of his argument made be feel very ashamed indeed.
"I wish I had a camera" Award: with the Seahawks ten points and six minutes away from winning their division, thousands upon thousands of fans filed out, right under the enormous "HOME OF THE TWELFTH MAN" sign.
ATLANTA
"Now I know why they put the South so far South," I grumbled as I drove from mall to mall the week before Christmas, trying to find a Verizon store employee who knew how to issue me a replacement phone. It's a testament to how hectic this FBW was that neither Bubba nor I ever had a chance to stop at a cigar store or liquor store. Thanks to the hurricane-force windstorm in Seattle, we were in damage-control mode almost the entire trip. His Canadian flight landed in Atlanta a few minutes before kickoff, and he joined me at our seats, first taking a moment to wriggle into his Falcons jersey. We watched a very impressive Dallas team trade blows with Atlanta. Michael Vick continued to not impress me. Terrell Owens spat in DeAngelo Hall's face. The usual. The Georgia Dome is merely okay. Good sound, good displays, but oversized and its seats are much too far from the field. Ludacris performed at halftime, including my favorite in his library, "Move Bitch," which when sanitized for a family venue is really not much of a song at all.
After the game, we ate burgers at the Varsity, then chased Bubba's luggage to his parents' house in SC on our way to Charlotte. We checked into our Charlotte motel at 5:30am.
"I wish I had a camera" Award: After I dealt with the exceedingly useless employees at the Verizon store in the North Dekalb Mall, I blundered into the office of one of my personal heroes: Rep. Cynthia "The Capitol Police stopped me when I didn't have an ID because they're racist" McKinney. I asked if she was there. She wasn't. Can you guess how many non-blacks she employs? Can you? Can you?
CHARLOTTE
After four hours' sleep, we sped to another of my favorite stadiums, now called Bank of America Stadium. It's only a matter of time before two stadiums in two different cities go by the same name, isn't it? BofA is ten years older, now, and it needs some updating. The video and sound systems are subpar. The actual experience in the seats, however, is second to none. What a lovely, intimate setting. Not a bad seat in the house, and the sight-lines are utterly perfect.
Flying a Steelers flag on my side of the rental car and a Panthers flag on Bubba's, we managed to gag down some tailgate in the spare hour before the game, and Bubba, wearing his Panthers jersey, even swung a brats-for-beer trade that required that he down three beers in rapid succession. So he was fairly useless as company during the game. That didn't matter, though, because some 10,000 Steelers fans showed up to keep me company and root the good guys to a ludicrously one-sided victory. The Panthers fans, true to their rep, were lethargic from word go.
Bonus points to the Panthers for not hanging lame "Division Champions" banners everywhere like they did in the other three venues. Nothing screams "Losers" quite like a banner attesting to your one-time also-ran status. It's the sports equivalent to bragging that your buddy let you sniff his sister's panties. It's just sad.
INDIANAPOLIS
We landed at the Indy airport in the same concourse from which I departed for Washington 14 years ago. I quietly regarded the very spot from which Maddie had watched me board my plane, ending our life together. We hopped in a cab, and I instructed the cabbie to take us to our hotel by way of the White Castle's drive through. I ended up buying the cabbie lunch there; Bubba, perhaps still reeling from his gas station experience a year before, declined. And so we sat in our room watching ESPN highlights of Sunday's games, me eating sliders and him eating boiled peanuts left over from Charlotte. That was fitting. For the record, having tried Crystal's hamburgers while in Atlanta, I can say that they're similar in size only. White Castles are steamed and, to my palette, tastier.
We left for the district surrounding the RCA Dome, where a bartender told a craving Bubba, now wearing a Colts jersey, where he could find a Scottish egg. The bar was five blocks away, we were told, a fact made significant by a mysterious and quite painful injury to my toe that was causing it to bleed. I mention this only because the walk ended up being 14 blocks. I wish an excruciating death upon that bartender. The Scottish egg, however, was quite fantastic, and if you ever find yourself in Indy, before you run screaming for the airport, I highly recommend MacNiven's scottish pub.
With all due respect to the Meadowlands, the RCA Dome is the worst venue in the NFL. Hideous, narrow concrete tunnels pass for a concourse. Half the seating is on aluminum bleachers. The jumbotron was apparently made around the time of the league merger. The worst seats are absurdly high. I could go on, but since they're replacing that upholstered toilet, I see no point. The Bengals did not show, and Peyton and Marvin put on an absolute clinic.
The Colts fans were distinctive in one regard: whereas the stadiums in Seattle, Atlanta and Charlotte were sterile and corporate and utterly interchangeable, the Colts' stadium looked like the Colts' stadium. Hand-made signs were draped from seats, each supporting a favorite player or exhorting the team to victory. After the franchise-produced, professionally made, utterly hollow signs ("Hasselbeck's Heroes," "Stevens' Soldiers," etc.) at the prior three venues, it was refreshing to see the genuine article.
"I wish I had a camera" Award: The best sign of the weekend was in Indy and directed at the Bengals' Chad Johnson: "OCHO CINCO MUCHO STINKO."
posted by john at 11:24 AM • permalink