Panthers Football

Yesterday, GB and I drove down to Charlotte for the Panthers game. It was the second time in two weeks for me, but it was actually GB's first pro football game ever. A bunch of friends of mine from the Huddle (A Panthers fan club) have a tailgate at every home game so we got up early to head to that. We got to the Stadium at around 8:30am and the tents were already up, the grill was going strong, the music playing loud, and the AV system almost in place. Did I say that this was a serious tailgate? It's complete with 4 large screen plasma TVs, 3 with various sports channels on and the 4th hooked up to a Wii? It's gotten so popular that we have weekly sponsors that provide all the food and non-alcoholic drinks for free in return for flying their logo on our flagpole, or if the sponsor is a car dealer then parking a car in the middle of our tailgate to be ogled.

Breakfast time is always my favorite. We have sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits, bacon, pancakes, etc. and since we are generally the only tailgate there that early we have the rest of the parking lot to play some football. And it's great to see GB's athletic prowess getting much better. He's got a good arm, as good as some of the adults, and his catching has vastly improved. Long gone are the days of throwing the ball to him, watching it bouce off his chest onto the ground, then having go chase the ball since nobody had any idea where it was going to go when he threw it back.

After breakfast and some football, GB went into the AV tent and started playing Wii with a bunch of the guys there. The alcohol was already flowing and so was the energy level. (The unwritten rule is that on Football Sundays the beer starts flowing at 9am, and the hard alcohol and Everclear jello shots at 10am.) Well, since we have a Wii at home, GB is pretty good at the bowling game and blew everyone away the first game he played. This was quite amusing to everyone except the 3 other adults he beat. That's when the betting started. While GB didn't take part monitarily, much to his amusement it didn't stop people from placing $10 bets on him or against him in the upcoming games.

Around 11am the breakfast stuff gets put away and the steaks, burgers, and dogs come out. There isn't anything better than a perfectly seasoned, ultra tender ribeye steak on a hamburger bun, complete with a cold beer and Panther football.

Speaking of Panther Football, the season hasn't been going to well. However, that has it's own benefit. Like free tickets. When your team is having a down year and the team you are playing is also having a down year, there are going to be lots of extra tickets available. Especially good tickets. (ie - the ones purchased by corporations instead of people.) And what generally happens for games like this is that people with the cheap seats (the diehard fans) will buy better seats for virtually nothing from the scalpers, then give their old tickets away. I was all set to scalp a pair of lower level end zone seats for $10 buck a piece myself (normally $84 seats) when one of the guys from the tailgate asked if anyone wanted his old ones for free. So we took 2 of them and another guy took his other 2.

And his seats weren't bad. They were upper deck, row 4, in the corner of one of the end zones. You could clearly see everything from there. We all settled in, but not 5 minutes later I get a text message from a different friend of mine telling me she has 2 extra Club level seats and for us to come down. Those seats were incredible, 2nd row mezzanine on the 30. She said all the people next to her didn't all show up but the ones that did brought their extras with them. So we're in the $170 seats for free. I told GB not to expect that every time.

Anyway, the Panthers won at home for the first time in well over a year and GB has been dubbed a good luck charm. I've been told I have to bring him to every game from now on. After the game, the club level has a nice museum where we took a few photographs there. I'll get those pictures posted she sends them over to me. Overall it was a great day. I'm looking forward to doing this with him on a regular basis.