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Adam’s Football Trip
35 Games In 1 Season
by Sam Monson
26/7/2008
 Adam Goldstein is about to live out every NFL fan’s dream. Whilst some of us plan trips to the US to catch our favourite team, or even a little blitz on the home of football, taking in as many games as we can over a 2 week span, Adam is going to take in 35 games this season, one at each team’s home stadium, as well as the London and Toronto games. For good measure he’s found a way to squeeze in his beloved Bears twice.
This kind of trip was never likely to be cheap, so Adam solved that hiccup by selling his flat to partially finance the trip. Who needs a flat, anyway?
Adam’s epic expedition is going to see him cross the country over six times, driving around 35,000 miles as he hops from one tailgating party to the next, from one gridiron confrontation to the next. If the trip takes off he’s also considering going on to the Superbowl and the Pro-Bowl in Hawaii.
Along the way, Adam hopes to meet some of the NFL’s most legendary fans, and get to know some of the league’s dedicated following, and the impact that their team has on them. I hope to spend some time with the great fans that tailgate before games and see what it all means to them. He said. The Saints fans have been amazing so far, they found my site, and I talked to one blog and it just took off. I’ve already been offered three or four complete menus of food!
Like any true NFL fan, Adam puts football first. If I come home at the end of it all with no money, no flat, maybe no girlfriend, I think it’ll probably still be worth it. Adam’s doing what every football nut wants to do every time the NFL season rolls around, then quickly allows silly little things like practicality get in the way of.
The true NFL fan allows nothing to get in his way!
 Adam plans on documenting the whole experience, both by film and through his website with a blog which will track his adventures. He hopes to come home loaded with enough material to piece together a documentary and some books.
His ideas don’t end there however, nor with this trip. I’m thinking I might try and do another trip to see College teams. Obviously I couldn’t see all of them, but maybe a Big XII trip or a Big 10. He told the Diner but I might have to wait a while before I do that trip.
Unfortunately for Adam, the schedulers have not done their best for him, and he’s found himself with some impressively nasty journeys along the way. After a Saturday night game in Texas Stadium, Adam finds himself faced with a 632 mile trip to Arrowhead for a noon kickoff the next day. Or there’s the 724 mile trip he has to make after a Cincinnati Bengals game on Sunday to make the Monday Night Football contest the next day in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
Adam’s trip is the mother of all road trips. Despite all the distance involved, Adam plans to do nearly all of it on the road, taking to the air only twice, though as he puts it it may be necessary to sneak in the odd cheeky flight here and there.
If there was ever anything that could show the NFL brass that there’s a market and fan-base for the sport in the UK it’s not the selling out of Wembley, it’s the passion shown by something like this.
With such a massive logistical operation, Adam’s always on the look-out for as much help as he can get, be it with media exposure, sponsorship, or with the fans and teams during the trip. His original plan was to buy a car, and collect sponsorship that could be displayed on it over the course of the trip, and he says that could still happen, but he’s managed to secure a London Taxi to drive for at least a portion of the trip.
There’s a firm up in Chicago that has a fleet of London Black Cabs, and they’re trying to promote their brand, so they offered to drive me to the game in it. Then they said I might be able to have it for the whole journey. I don’t think I’ll be using it for the entire thing, but I plan to do all of the short hops around Chicago in it. My Dad’s a taxi driver here, so that’s cool.
You can check out Adam’s site at www.adamsfootballtrip.com and keep tabs on his progress.
The Diner salutes a true fan, and our kind of lunatic!
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