I've been debating it for weeks now and can't decide if I want to go and have the long drive home after midnight. Are any of you fine folks going?

 

I think we have several other members in the Charlotte area and in the Carolinas, so it would be cool to make an impromptu get together. There's always a strong Fins turnout at the Carolina games as well.

 

Yeah, I've seen the Fins play there 3 or 4 times and I've went to a few Panthers games over the years as well. It's a great stadium- the area is just hard to get in and out of.

 

Good bucket list.....that would be a ton of fun!

 

I think my favorite stadium of all time was the Orange Bowl- and it was easily the most beat up, dangerous stadium I've ever been in too. I remember going to so many Notre Dame/Canes games as a kid and the crowds were electric with anger....you'd see fights before, during and after the game because people were so passionate. I do have a great of Dolphin memories as well, but nothing has ever matched the excitement of those Canes games in the 80's. FSU, BC, the Irish...they always showed up for a war and the fans echoed those feelings.

My favorite football story of all time has to be sneaking into Joe Robbie stadium to watch Super Bowl 23 though. My high school worked the games and you'd get workers passes, which were supposed to be turned in after each game. One week the pass would be blue, the next week it would be yellow.....I went to every game from 89-92 and I had a collection of every color under the rainbow. So when the Super Bowl came to town, I figured, "What the heck? Let's go to a game dad!"

For usual games, you had to be there 2 hours early....so that's about when my dad and I showed up to the game. And the first thing we do is start looking at worker passes, what color will they be this time? But they were special printed Super Bowl passes and there was absolutely no way we were getting through security with the ones we had- there were actual cops up there checking badges. The other problem was that we found out employees had to be there 3 hours early this time, so it was feeling like a wasted trip.

So we had two choices- either head home OR try to work the game with my former high school team if we could somehow get a message up to them. Working isn't bad....you sell food/drinks for three quarters and then you're free to find seats and watch the 4th. My dad always sold beer at one of the outside kegs when he went- the parents loved that because they inventoried the cups, not the beer itself. So all the dads would drink away starting around halftime and be nice and happy watching the 4th quarter.

So I went up to a security woman, told her we were there to work the game for Nova High, and she hopped on her walkie talkie to figure out what to do. After some back and forth on the radio, she finally pulled off her personal badge and handed it to me- this was like an all-access security badge that we've never seen before. You could go anywhere with it- the underground tunnels, the staff elevators, the skyboxes, etc. She told me to go to the Nova booth, get two passes, then bring one back down for my dad. And if I could find her, then go ahead and give her the security pass back. I knew right then that I definitely wasn't going to find her- I still have it somewhere all these years later.

Now we're faced with a dilemma....what do we do? I went up to the employee entrance and there were hundreds of people trying to get in, but a cop saw my badge as I approached and waved me right through. I didn't even go in through the employee line...they had me loop around security. Now, I'm 19 at the time and still stupid in life, so all this newfound power is going to my head. I get on the other side of security, wave my dad over to the fence, and then pass him the badge and walk away. His eyes were saying, "NOOOOOOO!" but he took the badge anyway....thirty seconds later we're both in the stadium and wandering around.

The only problem was, it's still a little over two hours before kickoff and the stadium was empty- only employees were inside at that time so it wasn't like we could just go sit down. And we couldn't go up to the upper deck because if my old coach saw me, he'd put my butt to work for three quarters. So we walked every inch of the stadium- from the locker room areas to the skyboxes. Now, we didn't get too close to the players area because we only had one pass (and because my dad kept telling me how stupid I was being with the bravery) but still, it was a day I'll never forget.

There's a definite art form in squatting in other people's seats- we started out in club in the 2nd row right at the 50 yard line. But we got up just before halftime to wander and someone else was in those seats once we got back, so it's like crap...what do you do? So we started hunting again. We had great seats in the lower deck for about 10 minutes and a security guy busted us, so I pulled out the worker pass and said we were just taking a quick break. My dad could have killed me because he didn't have a pass and I was playing with fire, but luckily the security guy didn't seem to care and let us go.

We watched the rest of the game in the nosebleed seats though and it was a great game- signature Montana driving for a last minute win. I still have a few seat cushions from that game, some tickets we found afterwards (w/ $750 a seat printed on them), a few programs, and a disposable camera that we never bothered to get developed. This was all stuff people just left in their seats after the game so we happily brought them home with us.