No No Gillette



Closest I'll Ever Get to Scoring Touchdown for the Patriots!

View from the Pat's Sideline

Visitor's Locker Room - Really Bare Bones

I’m just back from a two day business conference at Gillette Stadium, home of my favorite football team, the New England Patriots.  The conference was kind of boring but I did learn that the two currently most common, overused sayings in business are, “this is a game-changer” and “the elephant in the room”.   I did get a tour of the facility which was extremely cool.  They even let us into the visitor’s locker room which was very Spartan and according to the guide, purposely so.   All in all it was a great experience in this state of the art facility.  It did cause me to recall the last time I was actually in the stadium, and not fondly.  The Patriots are 18 and 1 over the last few years in home games played in December.  Guess which game I went to?  I arrived at my sister’s on Christmas leave from the military and my brother in law took both my son and I to the game.  It was ice cold out but we were both excited about seeing the Patriots, still basking in the glow of their first Super Bowl championship.  We took the train from Providence, RI because driving into and out of this stadium on game day is not for the faint of heart.  The train ride up was enjoyable and involved more than a couple adult beverages.  Our seats were in what is politely called, the nose bleed section, but we still had a great view of the game and were tremendously excited.  Then the game started, then stopped, started, then stopped, etc, etc.  Since this was an ESPN night game there were a lot of commercials and I learned this meant the referees stopped the game in its tracks so these commercials could air.  My brother in law pointed out a guy standing on the sidelines wearing loud orange sleeves.  Whenever this guy crossed his arms the refs would stop the game and everybody stood around waiting.  Now it was in the low 20’s Fahrenheit and the wind was really kicking so we came to dread the crossing of the sleeves.  We sat with frozen feet on ice cold concrete surrounded by increasingly drunk Pat’s fans while the Pats played terribly, when allowed to play by Mr. Orange Sleeves.  All of this occurred after a nine hour drive with the family to New England from Virginia.  By the third quarter I was ready to assassinate the commercial summoner.  We left half way through the fourth quarter and made our way back to the train to warm up a little bit.  We were early enough to get great seats near the front and the bathrooms.  Then I went in to use the bathroom and discovered all the toilets were full, literally overflowing.  We hastily reseated ourselves elsewhere, imagining what that car was going to be like when the train started moving, while I made for the nearest woodline to take care of business.  Talking about this with my brother in law, a sports guru, he smiled at my frustration and said the NFL game pace is totally at the mercy of television because of what they pay to broadcast the games.  These games are paced for the person watching the game at home, not for the fans in the stands, he said.  I swore to myself that I would never go to see a life NFL game again and I have been true to that pledge even with multiple offers of game tickets.  I really enjoy watching the games from home and I guess that is the way it is intended.  The trip to the stadium over the last couple of days was much more enjoyable because there wasn’t a game on.

View from the Conference Window