I saw my first ever live NFL game this past weekend.

In February, the NFL announced that they would be holding an NFL regular season game in London in late October. The two teams picked to play were the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants. Given that my team (the Giants, in case you don’t know me or if you’ve been living in a hole behind your model home) was playing in the city I was living in, I had to get a ticket.

But, time went along, and over the summer I missed the deadline to enter into the lottery for a chance to buy the ticket.

Next, I resorted to my good friend, Mr. Google, to begin my search. I ended up being referred over to Mr. eBay, where I found a single ticket in the “upper tier” and proceeded to make my first ever eBay bid. I ended up being outbid at the last second. No worries though, because two days later I tried again, this time for a single ticket in the “lower tier near the end zone”. This time, I seemed to have been the only one trying for the ticket, since I put in another bid at the last second only to later see that I had just outbid myself.

Then, the ticket got lost. It turns out that it had fallen behind a desk somewhere in my office complex. Brilliant.

However, I finally had the ticket in my hand, and on Sunday I started my day by going into Central London and eating a delicious Indian meal at Soho Spice (Spice Chicken Curry). I then bought some posterboard and made the following signs:

“HI MOM” -> For my mom
“GO FEAGLES” -> Giants Punter Jeff Feagles, has played in the league since 1988
“I PHIL PHIL” -> A nod to the I (Phil) Phil shirts that we made up my senior year honoring Phil Nichols
“BARRY, I’M DONE” -> Reference to a story about my dad, Barry

Since I didn’t want to drag my camera out for fear of it getting damaged, I took my Kodak FunSaver (Read: disposable camera) with me to the game. Thus, the pictures aren’t the best. But I’ve still posted the better ones on the Gallery.

I took the train out to Wembley, and the experience was similar to taking my first 7 train to Shea Stadium to see the Mets. We had cleared a patch of trees, and the stadium appeared in the distance, highlighted by a beautiful white arch that spans across it. It’s a new facility and only opened earlier this year. The stadium was immaculate inside. It was raining, but the design of the roof covers the spectators so I was dry as a bone. Also, the chicken tenders and fries I ate were some of the best stadium food I’ve ever eaten.

My seat was smack in the center of the end zone about 40 rows up. There were great sights of the entire field, and I felt like I had a Maddenesque view. I even ended up on TV for about two seconds during a Giants field goal attempt in the 4th Quarter.

Halftime was entertaining, as there was a marching band (who if I remember right, were the Band of the Corps of Royal Engineers). They played Rocky. Enough said. Right when the Dolphins were kicking off to start the second half, a ref from down near my end zone started blowing his whistle and running towards mid-field. Then this “ref” proceeded to take all of his clothes off, stand on the 50-yard line and do a jig.

Little kid sitting next to me: “Is he naked?”
Me: “Yes he is. Shield your eyes.”

It took the security guards a few seconds to react before giving him chase and finally grabbing him, much to the dismay of the crowd.

Since the Dolphins gave up a home game to play in London, the event was more Dolphin-centric than anything else. One benefit of this was that the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders were at the game (who, by the way, got more applause than anything else that happened at the stadium). I’d say a majority of the fans there wore Dolphins gear or were Dolphins fans, but I saw pretty much every team’s jersey represented at the game. That includes the two British gents in Jets jerseys who sat behind me and knew a heck of a lot more about football than your average fan back home.

As far as football games go, it was a terrible mess. The rain took away any air game, and it was all about pounding the ball up the field on the ground. The Giants stormed ahead early, but the Dolphins made it interesting with two minutes left by scoring a touchdown and making the score 13-10 New York. However, the attempted kickoff by Jay Feely was flubbed and shot straight out of bounds. The pro-Dolphin crowd booed as the Giants took a knee on final three downs, and the game was over.

All in all, a great day. The only downer was that I wanted to get one of the scarves that they were selling (usually something you see for soccer teams) which had the Giants and Dolphins logos on it, but by the time I got to the front of the souvenirs line, they were sold out. However, a simple talk with Mr. Google found the same scarves on the Reebok website, so I snagged one.

Go Giants!