Not your Father's football game

TALES FROM THE TAILGATE
My years as a season-ticket holder are broken up into two parts. Part I was from 1987 (yes, the strike year) through the 1990 season (yup, the 1-15 season). Part II started a few years later in 1994 (the Tuna's second year) and is still going. The first time I had season tickets I was 25 and bought two in Section 210. The map said it was on the 15-yard line but that sure looked like the goal line to me. The Pats had been to the Super Bowl two years earlier and won their division again the next year. Things were good. Won't mention the drug scandal the day after the Super Bowl loss. Right. The biggest loss in Super Bowl history at the time. Won't mention the score. Or how the star young receiver "accidentally cut his hand in the kitchen while in an argument with his wife" the week before the Super Bowl. Never mind that. Things were good.

And then they weren't. By 1990 the Pats had fallen about as fast as a sports team can fall. The record had dropped to 5-11 and Super Bowl coach Raymond Berry aged 80 years and was fired. Going into my fourth year with the tickets the team had chosen as coach the only guy that every fan was in agreement should not get the job. Rod Rust. No doubt if Rod Rust's team had won nine or eight or even five games I might feel differently. But they won one game. And lost 15. And that one win came on the road. Eight home games. Eight losses. Please don't send me a season-ticket renewal form. (To the fans that stayed on through the next few years and were later rewarded: You really deserved that).

Even before the 1-15 season the mood among the fans was pissed off. This was not the Gillette Stadium experience that you get now. No McDonald's fries. No wide concourses with lots of bathrooms. No cup holders. And no seatbacks. This was the Sullivan Stadium experience. 90 percent guys ages 20-50. About eight bathrooms in the whole place. Ice cold aluminum benches. And no seatbacks. My Dad was not a big fan of standing outside in the cold so he had only been to a few early season games over the years. The Pats were playing the Packers in an exhibition game and the weather was great so my Dad said he would go. At the very least we could spend three hours talking about what a bum Rod Rust was... and he hadn't even coached a game yet. We picked up a few extra tickets (when your team is 5-11 tickets are pretty easy to come by) for my brothers and a few cousins. After a low-key tailgate we headed into Sullivan Stadium. Or as I called it the giant concrete toilet bowl. After a 40-minute cattle crawl through the gates we moved with the crowd up the ramp to the concourse. The concourse was really an extra big hallway under the seats. There was hardly a time when it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder under there, mostly because the lines at the few bathrooms spilled 30 or 40 out the door and into the hallway, er, concourse. As me and my Dad made our way past the bathroom we came to a chain link fence that a row of guys were taking a leak through. And another row of guys behind them waiting for their turn. I looked at my Dad and could see he wasn't quite sure he was seeing what he was seeing. He was.

Early in the game the Pats showed hints of what was to come that year and the crowd got soccer-level drunk in the sun. I'm not sure how many fights security breaks up in a season these days but I bet the number is pretty close to the number in one game back then. The place was an out of control party that when the team was good was a blast and when the team was bad was a different kind of blast. One not suitable for those who were not males 20 to 50. Sometime in the second quarter the fans were in full self-entertainment mode when two sections began a back-and-forth with the "Tastes Great. Less Filling" ad campaign from Miller Lite. One section yells "Tastes Great." The other section responds "Less Filling." Back and forth. Louder and louder. My Dad and I laughed as we watched them shout. "Tastes Great!" "Less Filling!" "Tastes Great!" "Less Filling!" "Tastes Great!" "Less Filling!" "F--- You!" "Eat Me!" "F--- You!" "Eat Me!" Louder and louder and louder... My Dad and I looked at each other again. "I don't think I'm coming to another game," he said. He never did. No matter how many times I told him that things were different and the Krafts had cleaned the place up.