Me and 2 friends took the ride from NYC to Philly for the epic Monday Night game against the Eagles in 2005. Philly fans are no joke. I remember that when the Seahawks scored a TD on the opening drive (think it was Hass to Engram), me and my friends got up and started cheering. The entire section of fans got up and started SCREAMING at us to "sit the F down!" The exact quote I'll always remember was "I don't know where you **** think you are but it definitely ain't Seattle!" That did not deter us though and by half time, with the game already out of reach, Eagles fans were coming up to us congratulating us as they headed to an early exit. We crushed their spirits that night and it was beautiful. Most fans stayed for Reggie White's induction into the Eagles Hall of Fame at halftime but by the 2nd have it was a ghost town. With all the snow falling and what not it was pretty surreal. Best quote is a drunken Eagles fan looking up at the sky and saying "sorry you had to witness this Reggie. We love you!" as his friend helps walk him down the stairs and to the exit haha
Anyway, my brush with the NFL came afterwards. On the train ride back me and my friends were riding across from Marquis Weeks' (former practice squad RB) mother and his brothers. They were talking to us about getting to meet some of the other players parents, specifically made note of the fact that Isaiah Kacyvenski's dad was a great person, and wanted my friend to make one of the t-shirts he had on (my friend made "Seahawks jerseys" out of plain white tee's. Did all the artwork and made it look almost identical to the real jerseys. They were pretty sick actually and Weeks' mom wanted one). I was so caught up in the conversation that we missed our stop. Little did we know that the next stop was deep in the hood in Philly. One of Weeks' brothers told us to watch out because some other guys that had been sitting by us on the train had a knife on them. We were about to miss our Greyhound bus back to NYC since we missed our stop, but Weeks' mother called Greyhound trying to get them to wait for just a few minutes, since we were going to take a cab.
Then, some guy who is with his girlfriend comes over and tells us that he's actually calling a cab service now and he'd order two cabs. As we're waiting, he notices my Seahawks gear and says "you a big Seahawks fan?" I said yeah and then he started trying to quiz me on the team. "Who was the running back before Shaun Alexander?", some pretty basic stuff. Then he asked me if I knew who that woman I was talking to was and I said yeah, Marquis Weeks' mom. He seemed impressed and then told me that he was Bill Chapin, director of marketing at the time for the Hawks. We ended up having a really good chat about the Hawks and life in general. He left the Hawks to work for the Sounders a few years ago in the same role, but now he's working in Kansas City with a pretty sick job title. VP of Operations maybe? Either way, he was a pretty cool dude and I'm glad that success has found him. He did say that if I ever needed help getting an internship with the Hawks or anything like that that he'd help me out. Guess it's too late now though. Still, it was a great experience. To make matters even better, when the first cab arrived he and his girlfriend insisted that we take the cab because we were going to be late for our bus. We still were and ended up sleeping in a crappy Philly Greyhound station over night with a bunch of methheads but hey, that's life sometimes. It was worth it getting to talk to all these people. No regrets.
I've also got a friend who I went to Wazzu with who worked in community outreach for the Hawks. Has a ton of pictures from training camp and events with a bunch of Hawks players. Really cool girl and some of the pictures are fantastic. She got hired by the Ravens prior to last season and has pictures with the Lombardi trophy, all of the Ravens, at the parade, etc. Talk about living a charmed existance! Some people just have magnetic laps. She's one of the good ones though so it's pretty cool to see.
That's it for me though. Unless someday I'm the one with the magnetic lap and get to replace Tony Ventrella when he hangs up the mic. Until then, it's .Net for life!