Making History in the Meadowlands

On Friday afternoon around 4:30pm, I got a crazy idea. I was reading an article online about how NY Giants fans were selling out and trying to make money on their Patriots/Giants tickets. The Patriots could make history during the Saturday evening game against the Giants in the Meadowlands. And the media made it sound like there were tickets to be had.

I have never been to a Patriots game. I have never been to an NFL game. However, Alex and I love the Patriots and are huge fans. He has become slightly (ok, extremely) obsessed with the NFL this season. It has been fun to follow football this year with Alex knowing every stat of every team and every player.

So with all of this information flying around my crazy brain, I somehow got the notion that Alex and I should attend the game. It was going to be an Historical NFL game afterall. At least it had the potential. And why shouldn't we be there? If the Giants were selling out and the stadium that held 80,000 people was going to be full of Patriots fans, why shouldn't we get to go be part of the fun?

Well, to make a long-ish story short about how we obtained tickets, let's just say I love eBay. You can truly get anything and everything on eBay. And I didn't exactly go through eBay, but I used them as a stepping stone. Tickets were insanely over-priced, but a lot of them were going unsold. So I started emailing the people who weren't selling their tickets. I told them I would make them an offer if they didn't sell them. And by 8am Saturday morning, I had 2 tickets to the Patriots/Giants game.

We left Syracuse at 11:00am. (After a bank stop and a gas fill-up.) We arrived in Hackensack, NJ around 3:00pm. I called Bernard, the man who was selling us the tickets. We had been in touch several times throughout the day already. He had told us where to meet him and we were there. He arrived within 10 minutes. And then, he offered to show us where to park the car so we could get a shuttle to the stadium. Apparently the Meadowlands is under major construction so there are only season ticket-holder parking spaces available. Bernard led us to a fun restaurant called "Grasshopper Also". He brought us inside to meet the hostess and told us how to get tickets for the shuttle. (Grasshoppers had a shuttle bus that ran down to the stadium before the game and then picked you up after the game. And they let you leave your car in their parking lot.) Bernard was the nicest man! Alex and I were very impressed with our experience so far. We exchanged cash for the tickets, we shook hands and off we went to experience a night of a lifetime.

It was only about 3:30 when we sat down at Grasshoppers to enjoy a much needed lunch. Alex had fish 'n chips and I had a nice ham and mashed potato dinner. We learned that the shuttle buses didn't start running until about 6:00. So we had a very leisurely lunch. We watched college football on the giant screen tv's. "Grasshopper Also" was an Irish sports bar/restaurant. They were extremely hospitable and great about letting us hang out at our table until the shuttles started running. Then again, Alex hadn't put on his Tom Brady jersey yet! The place was crawling with Giants fans. Hmmm...

6:00 finally arrived and we were on the first shuttle to the Stadium. The drive took about 5 minutes. The Meadowlands is a HUGE sports complex. Aside from the new Stadium they're building in the middle of it all, it houses Izod Center where the Nets play, there's a racetrack and they even have an indoor ski jump center. The Meadowlands Sports Complex is a "sprawling entertainment oasis". (Description stolen from their website.) And it really was!

Wow.. What a night, what a game, what an experience. I'm not sure what the media was talking about when they said the Giants fans were selling out, they were certainly there in full-force supporting their team. Yes, there were Patriots fans in attendance, but I think 85-90% of the crowd were die-hard Giants fans. They were loud, they were rude and they were pumped. But that's what made this whole experience all that more amazing. The energy in that stadium was like nothing I have ever experienced. By the end of the game, we were witness to 4 NFL records. We saw it in person. And it was awesome.


I have to thank those who made it possible for Alex and I to be able to do this. For all of those who helped talk me into this, thank you. I know it was very spontaneous and I asked a lot of a few people. To my parents: I apologize for any worry that we caused and I wish we could have had more time so that we could have stayed the night. To Eric & Steve: THANK YOU both for doing a tag-team dog watch for Jenny. I really, really am thankful to both of you for your help. I promise to be better about making concrete plans in the future!!

Here are photos from the game.