We are doing a three part series on the start of the NFL season for our Substack this September. We will take you all across the USA through visits to NFL stadiums. We hope you will subscribe and join us in our journey.
When I was a kid, I loved the NFL so much I would stay up late on Friday nights to watch the opening credits of the adult soap opera DALLAS just because it showed a one second glimpse of the Dallas Cowboys stadium. Seeing that overhead shot of the football field on Friday nights allowed me to go to sleep peacefully knowing Sunday’s NFL games were almost here. The Cowboys were my least favorite team but my love for the NFL reigned supreme and seeing their stadium was better than nothing.
My grandfather was a big Redskins fan; therefore, I was a Redskins fan, too. I had a Redskins hat, Redskins coat, and Redskins gloves. Everything I could find that had the Redskins logo on it, I wore it. When I attended elementary school I had a set of beloved NFL pencils that were my most prized possessions. My habit was to sharpen the pencils of the teams I had the smallest emotional connection to early in the school year and save my favorite teams until the very end. To my 8 year old self, teams like the Seattle Seahawks, the Cleveland Browns, and the San Francisco 49ers were the pencils that could be sacrificed and used in school. Teams like my beloved Redskins and the mighty 1970s Steelers would never meet such a fate. I would not even attempt to walk up to the pencil sharpener with those teams. They were way too precious.
When Thanksgiving came around each year, like most Americans, I started my day of waiting for the delicious food to finally be served by watching the Detroit Lions play and usually lose, followed by the Cowboys versus one of the teams whose pencils I would sharpen. Football on a Thursday was a gift and a blessing just like the holiday on which it occurred. The true history of Native Americans and the controversy surrounding the namesake of my favorite team and the holiday itself never crossed my young mind. My childlike love and devotion was simple and innocent.
The NFL was a part of my childhood for as long as I can remember yet I never went to a single game in person. It was only something I saw on TV. I will tell you my life was greatly enhanced when NFL Films aired a program in the 1970s utilizing slow motion cameras and deep voiced commentating which elevated my gridiron heroes even closer to heaven. With John Riggins running over would be tacklers or Terry Bradshaw throwing a TD to Lynn Swann, those close up camera angles accompanied by that unique NFL music, went right through my soul.
Growing up in Norfolk, Virginia I was one of the fastest kids in the neighborhood and I had great hands to catch the ball. But I was so thin and little, there was no way I was ever going to play tackle football. My dreams of football were worshipful dreams; I never even considered trying to become a player. I knew it was beyond my physical capabilities.
When I moved to Virginia Beach after my parents divorced I found a new love: a different kind of football called soccer. It would become the sport I would end up dedicating my life and body to for the next 40 years. Soccer is still my greatest passion today but my childhood love for the NFL never fully died. What we grow up with sometimes stays with us forever. My love for the Washington Football Team and love for the NFL has never diminished and I have passed it on to all of my children (except for maybe my daughter Emma) just like my grandfather passed it on to me.
One of the other NFL activities I did when I was young involved accumulating helmets. I would collect miniature football helmets you could get at the grocery store for 25 cents. Every time my mom would go to get food for the week on Saturdays, I would beg her to return with a helmet for me. Mom had no idea which helmets I still needed in order to complete my collection of the entire NFL but she could always tell by my reaction if she had been successful or not. If she got one I didn’t have yet, I would run around the house celebrating and quickly go put the new helmet in line with the others sitting on the desk in my room. Through the years I would always come close to getting the entire NFL collection but there were always a couple of helmets you just could never seem to find in those darn gumball machines.
When my oldest son Jack was a kid, we did the same thing with the helmets at the grocery store. He loved collecting things the same way I did but his devotion to my Redskins was not transferred over. He picked his first and favorite NFL team by using the colors of their helmet and uniforms on TV. His team would not hail from Washington but would instead sail from Tampa Bay. The pirate ship at Raymond James Stadium was too much to compete with and Jack’s devotion to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, one of the worst teams in the NFL during my childhood, was complete. He would see them through the Warren Sapp years all the way to the recent Super Bowl with Tom Brady.
As for little Henry, when he came along, Jack and I decided to let him pick his own team. We put all of the NFL miniature helmets out before his small outstretched hand and let him decide his own future. As we moved all the helmets around to ensure a truly random pick, Henry reached for the Kansas City Chiefs. They say that when kids are little some of the first colors they recognize are red and black. According to the NFL team selections by my kids, this appears to be true. Three teams of red play in our divided house on Sundays and it appears this will always be the case. No one seems to be looking to change their alliances at any point during this lifetime.
I give you all of this background history in order to tell you how emotionally laden our travels across the country became when we would pull into a city with an NFL team. Just like the pencils and the helmets, many years ago, we started collecting NFL stadiums.
The first stadium we got to see was the old RFK stadium. I was in HOG heaven. The funny thing is because we are teachers, we often travel during the early part of summer so there are never any actual games to go see. We would sign up for tours and would often have the stadium to ourselves with only a few other devoted families to accompany us through the sacred Sunday spaces.
When we traveled to Florida to see Jack’s Bucs in Tampa, we finally got a chance to walk on the pirate ship we had seen so many times on TV. To go into the innards of the stadium was something we will all remember. We laughed when they told us that usually the most rowdy fans each year in Tampa came all the way from Green Bay. The Packers’ fans were sometimes so bad in fact, they had a particular holding tank in the stadium reserved just for the Cheeseheads if they created too much of a ruckus.
Years later when we actually traveled to Lambeau Field in Green Bay it proved to be one of the most amazing stadium experiences in the NFL. The Packers, I think, is the only NFL team owned by the people instead of a multi-millionaire and it shows. It has a very workingman like quality to it. In fact, we nearly drove right past it. It is not very big on the outside. It is HUGE on the inside if I remember correctly because so much of it is below ground. Lambeau Field is a bowl packed with history, memories, and lots of cheese curds.
Over the years together, we visited so many stadiums: homes of the Steelers, the Dolphins, the Ravens, the Browns, and many others. Each stadium has its own flavors and vibes. Sunny Miami near the Atlantic Ocean clashes with cold and windy Cleveland sitting right next to Lake Erie. Chilly Chicago and toasty Houston battle for supremacy from September to February and they fight for places in our hearts and minds, too.
Out of all the NFL meccas we made it to, the two most memorable experiences for me were, yep, you guessed it the old Dallas Cowboys’ stadium I used to see on Friday nights and the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio- the place with all the helmets.
Our four part series on the start of the NFL season for our Substack will continue next week where we will pick up with our visits to Irving, Texas and Canton, Ohio. We hope you will subscribe and continue with us on our journey.