Everyone who knows me knows how much of a football fan I am. It is my favorite sport. So anytime I can go to a football game is a good time. And living in Kansas City for three years I've lived in a town with a pro football team (the Chiefs). When it came to my last year in KC (hopefully as I'll graduate from seminary in May and be looking for a job) I figured I should try and go to a Chiefs game. So I began to scour around looking for tickets. Sure enough, while I was on eBay, I found some cheap tickets. And when I say cheap, I just mean in price because the seats themselves were sweet. Lower level, near the end zone, 10 rows from the field. I ended up getting 4 tickets (plus shipping) for less than just purchasing one of them at face value. It was a sweet deal indeed. So this past Friday, I along with my friends Josh, Ryan and Andrea went to see the Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles. Here are some observations from the night:
*Traffic to the stadium is bad. Granted it was Friday and that included rush hour plus a wreck on one of the interstates plus construction but it was ugh. I thought traffic to a Royals game was bad, this was worse. It doesn't help that it's out on the edge of the city so coming from the Northland it takes about 20 minutes on a good day, it took about double that night.
*Parking is also bad. One of my chief complaints about that complex is that it's the only place to park. You pretty much are stuck with parking there cause there are no other options. We sprung to get reserved parking so we got closer to the stadium but still, it is kinda ridiculous.
*Because of traffic and such, pretty much missed the pregame stuff. We got there right as the National Anthem was being sung and got to our seats right after the opening kickoff. Other than that, it wasn't too hard finding out seats. To get to our seats, we walked through the new Chiefs Hall of Honor, pretty cool stuff. I would have loved to have spent more time around it but the game was going and didn't want to miss it.
*The view from our seats was great. We were in the north end of the stadium and had great line of sight for most everything (except when the teams were on the other far end of the field). Unfortunately, nearly all the scoring except a 4th qtr FG by the Chiefs' Ryan Succop took place at the other end.
*It was funny how after a few bad plays to start out, the Chiefs fans booed the team. That was a first. Then again, my experience at stadiums had typically been with teams who were at least decent if not really good. When the Chiefs did get going and took the lead, then the crowd got into the game.
*Arrowhead Stadium, newly renovated, looked pretty cool. It was one of those stadiums I saw on TV growing up and looked really good, especially with all the work they done to it. The famed noise level....didn't really notice it. Maybe because it was a preseason game and the team is still not at tip top shape but it wasn't deafining. And I've been to preseason games where it's been louder. To this day, I will still say the loudest stadium is Qwest Field in Seattle.
*The game itself was pretty good. The 3rd preseason game is the closest to a regular season game because it's the game the starters play the longest. It was funny but both sides played their starters through 3 whole quarters, rare in the NFL (they usually only play a half maybe a few plays into the 3rd quarter). The Chiefs, after being down 10-0 rallied and even took the lead and held it with about 2:00 minutes to go 17-13. Then then proceeded to give up a touchdown with about :25 seconds left and wound up losing 20-17.
This was my 9th NFL game. I've now been to 4 preseason games, 4 regular season games and 1 postseason game. It was fun times and I'm excited that it's football season again!
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