Before I start, basketball affectionatos might have noticed that the Wisconsin Badgers are rated number three in the nation. They’ve won 16 in a row and their record is 20 wins and 1 loss. My trivia question for the day (and a place in the Trivial Blog Hall of Fame) is “who is the only basketball team to beat Wisconsin this year”?
Okay, on to football. The Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts are going to the Super Bowl in Miami. We have to endure 2 full weeks of media hype before they play the game. The ticket prices are prohibitive. There is one sweet young pregnant house wife in Chicago who knows she doesn’t have the “contacts” or the money to travel to Miami (she seems like a really nice young lady). Her proposal using the internet is to offer her expanding belly as a “billboard” to the highest offer for a Super Bowl package. She indicates she will wear a Paris Hilton type outfit with a bare midriff with her pertruding belly displaying any message you want. I bet that someone will take her up on it. To increase the excitement, her baby is due on the date of the Super Bowl. Talk about potentially “dropping the ball”.
Now to my football happening. Each Sunday morning I make a trip to my local news (and tobacco) store located across the street from The Paper Valley Radisson Hotel. Being a creature of habit, I get there about 8:30 AM. On the Sundays that the Packers play a noon home game in Green Bay, the visiting team lodges at the Paper Valley Hotel. Usually the visiting team arrives on Saturday, stays over night in Appleton and then is taken by bus to Lambeau. With close to 50 football players, coaches, team assistants, special friends and media, this event turns into about a 5-6 luxury bus caravan. Then you ad in local police department cars, sheriff department cars from Winnebago, Outagamie, and Brown (whatever county that Green Bay is in) Counties along with vans for special guests followed by fans that know about the routine and you have a football extravaganza. All police lights are blazing and the visiting team gets a special escourt all the way to Lambeau. On Sunday morning, local folks come down to the Paper Valley hoping to catch a glimpse of that special player. You know, Drew Brees, Brian Urlacher or Reggie Bush. Sometimes when it is cold, kids come down still in their “jammies” wrapped in quilted blankets to stand in the cold until their player exits the hotel and enters the bus. This extravaganza makes parking the car a bitch. Sometimes inside the news and tobacco stand, an occasional player or coach will come in to buy a magazine or newspaper.
This football “event” in local downtown Appleton costs nothing to witness. It costs a bundle of money to provide the security escourt to Green Bay. Nobody worries security costs because that is buried in tax revenues.
The City of Green Bay feels that visiting teams should stay in Green Bay not Appleton. They offer up the danger of a bus accident or the high cost of security. Doesn’t Green Bay get enough revenue off the Packers? I hope the teams continue to stay in Appleton. I always get this feeling I am witnessing something really special.
Football generates lots of interesting situations from “belly button billboards” to secured transfer of visting players from one location to another. It provides a place for people to place a passion.
So Grasshoppers, what is my advice? Get a life! It is football for “crying out loud”. Football is extorting your money in ways you do even know. They have a pregnant housewife traveling to Miami to witness the Super Bowl with a “Big Bud Life” scrawled across her pertuding belly as she is ready to deliver. We stand in the cold to get a glimpse of some overpaid Terrell Owens type step onto a bus! Folks, there is more to life than football. Isn’t there?
Love,
Dad