Desert Hospitality: A Recap of My Trip to Phoenix

So if you've been reading along, you'll remember the Cardinals sending an incredible response to my letter.  One of the things they included was an invite to their game against the St. Louis Rams on December 27.  Considering this was the only offer of this sort that we got and because they sent such a great response over all, I decided I had to make the trip.  So I booked the plane tickets and my Dad and I planned to head over to the desert bright and early the morning after Christmas.  Here's a run-down of what went down:

So after waking up about 4 a.m. to catch a 6:30 flight, overcoming some delays and sprinting through the Houston airport to catch a connecting flight, we finally made it to Phoenix.  Included in our invite was a private tour of the stadium on Saturday, which I must say is an incredible facility. We met up with our tour guides (the author of the unbelievable response letter and another Cardinals employee) outside the stadium and they immediately took us inside.  We started at the bottom and worked our way up, which meant heading to the field.  Now, first of all if you know nothing about their stadium, read up on it.  It not only has a retractable roof, but also a retractable field, which is insane. The field is real, beautiful grass, which is rolled outside on a rail system during the week to grow.  It's truly unbelievable. 

The field had just been painted, but the guy who had just finished painting happened to be on the field and laid down a towel walkway so we could actually go out to midfield.  I do need to note that right about this time, some fans getting a regular stadium tour came through in their group.  Unfortunately for them, the regular stadium tour doesn't take you out on the field, so I was beginning to feel like a V.I.P. at this point. 

The stadium tour continued, as we headed up to the press box, the club level, the Red Zone (their indoor tailgating area) and every other corner of the facility (other than the team locker room, which had been prepped for gameday by this point and was understandably off limits).  As we're on the tour, our guides pointed to the scoreboards and ribbon boards. which now read "The Arizona Cardinals Welcome Jason Spires" which was a pretty sweet touch.  These guys clearly knew how to woo a potential fan.

We wrapped up the stadium tour, and our host even gave us a little more swag.  He gave me a Cardinals bag that had a Cardinals T-shirt, a Cardinals camera, 2 NFC Champion souvenir cups, a car flag, and of course our game tickets and parking passes for Sunday.  These guys are good...

So we left the stadium, then drove over to check out the Dodgers new spring training facility (which was locked up) and then took in both of our first NHL game (Phoenix Coyotes vs. L.A. Kings).  It was even Coyotes Blanket night (no, it wasn't made out of real coyote) so we felt pretty good about that decision as well.

Onto Gameday.  Our first stop on Gameday was the Great Lawn, which is a tailgating area outside the stadium.  There was some pretty intense tailgating going on with a bunch of shiny, new grills which were clearly Christmas presents.  All kinds of tailgating going on out there with a diverse crowd.  It's a little smaller scale than you'll find at an SEC venue, but it was a cool tradition for the Cardinals fans and a nice personal touch for the stadium atmosphere. 

We then headed inside to look around, find our seats, and watch some warmups.  We had great seats on the lower level just above the Cardinals tunnel.  We watched warmups for about 30 minutes, then got ready for the game to begin. 

During the game we had a couple other surprises in store, including a personal visit from "Big Red" (shown with my Dad on the right) as well as the jumbo-tron camera man.  Between Big Red coming right to our seats to find us and the jumbo-tron guy crouching right in front of us and zooming directly in on my Dad and myself (though we were doing nothing too jumbo-tron worthy) I began to suspect that our hosts had sent these guys our way, which was a pretty cool touch.  Of course, they denied but said "somoene must have wanted to see how you'd look as a Cardinals fan."  I'm telling you, they're good.

The Cardinals basically dominated, with a 31-10 victory over the lowly Rams, and a good time was had by all.  It was my first live NFL game, and I had a great time.  This recap doesn't do justice to how incredible the stadium was or how impressive our hosts were in their persuasion techniques, but it was a great weekend and an awesome trip.  It was my first trip to Phoenix, and I've got to say it's a city I wouldn't mind visiting more often.  It's clean, it's beautiful, and the weather is great. 

So did the Cardinals put themselves way out front with this?  Well, it definitely didn't hurt.  At some point in this search, maybe you just have to ask "which team showed they wanted me as a fan?" and if that's the question, there's no doubt who leads the way in that category.  The Cardinals have put on the full-court press like no other team (and more than I expected from any team) and have made this whole search a lot more fun.  Thanks to our hosts and to the Cardinals for an awesome weekend.