NFL Experience

So I went to a Ravens pre-season game this past Saturday evening. It was a perfect night weather-wise and I was took a buddy of mine that I work with that had never been to an NFL game up until recently (he went to the Redskins/Bills game at FedEx the week before). We left the house around 2:30pm to give us plenty of time for travel and so we would have some time to walk around the stadium and take it all in.

We hit the road for the 2+ hour drive, get up to Baltimore to get our tickets... pick up the tickets and head up for the Cromwell station light rail parking lot. There were a surprising amount of people already waiting for the train.. I don't have a Ravens jersey yet so I felt a bit left out, but I'll get one eventually (not before I get a Chiefs one though.. Ravens are a close #2). Get on the train for the ride and by the time we hit the stadium it's packed.

So we get out and bam, we are right there in the shadows of the east side of the stadium. We get out and a short walk later we are in. So we get in and since we are a little early the concourse isn't very crowded and it's pretty easy to get around. We walk around for a bit and check stuff out.

Then we peak out one of the tunnels leading out to the field and we see a bunch of players signing autographs and warming up. We venture about half way down but don't go all the way down.. and the ticket check guys at the end wave us down.. so we go on out and down. Pretty good crowd of people already down there oogling at the cheerleaders and getting their autographs. Some players are signing as well.

We figure we should find our seats, so we go find them and we still have some time to kill, so we head on out to grab a sandwich & drink ($32). We come back out and the seats are really filling up.. it seemed like it was going to be fairly roomy around us, but it filled up pretty fast. We sat down and we have some really loud guys behind us. They hate the redskins and we sit down right in the middle of a big argument of how bad FedEx field is (my buddy that I brought is a redskins fan, but likes the ravens too). He's the quiet type and didn't say anything of course.. but I thought it was hilarious the beating he took from them.

OK, game is over and we stuck around to watch Phelps go for his 8th gold.. that was pretty cool. Watching that with like 15,000 people going crazy was a trip... it was easily 10 times louder at that point then at any point during the ravens game, (yes, it was a preseason game though). We left the stadium and we couldn't go through the east side, so we were forced out to the street on the south side. We were heading down the street then all of a sudden the road is barricaded because the players are leaving. We don't feel like waiting so we cut through the crowd and keep on going. Before you know it we see a crowd of people behind a fence yelling out for Rex Ryan (Ravens Def. Cord) and before you know it I turn around and there he is right behind me. The guy right in front of me was proud that he got Ed Reed to sign his jersey and wasn't shy about showing it off. So somehow we got into an area we shouldn't have.. in between players and some of the coaching staff.

A few other players were milling about, but with us staying and watching the race and it being really late with a long drive ahead of us we knew we needed to get on our way. Well, we ended up getting on the wrong train (heading north) and proceeded to get off at the next exit. This was actually a great strategy as it got us up to the next station before and got on before the throngs of people could heading south.

It was a good time, seeing the Phelps thing was pretty cool in a crowd like that.. that alone almost made it worth it. Some pictures of the trip.