Yesterday was fun – well, for those of you who like hanging out with guys and doing football related things! The big enlightenment of the day for me was that I learned that when they are promoting a “Black and Gold Scrimmage Game”, they are really doing false advertising. Scrimmage = Practice. Plain and simple. Stretching Exercises, Drills and a few fake plays. In the beginning, they weren’t even tackling each other, just touching each other on the shoulders. Lightly. Later on it got better, and then we had the autograph session. Boy, was that an experience.
Click the -More- link to read more about the Saints Family Fan Fest, and the rest of the day overall (yesterday, I’m a day behind!). Consider yourself warned, it’s very long and rambling, but does include lots of photos!! 🙂
Terry and Zack got to the house at about 10 or 10:30, I think. We worked on the computer some to setup Zack for our fantasy football league at Hambones. Come to find out, Yahoo wouldn’t let him play because he’s not 13. Who made up that rule? So, we setup Terry instead, and Zack will just use his id. There, Yahoo – showed you! 🙂 Terry and Tim got the food going (burgers, hot dogs and sausage), and Zack and I hung out and we all waited on Fred to get here. He got here about 12:15 or 12:30 and we all ate. Then we hung out for a while and talked. I got to show off my new Explorer in all it’s shiny new glory. Definitely a highlight for me!
We were talking mid-afternoon and all of a sudden, Daddy announced that he is going home, and is not going to stay and go to the game, spend the night, and basically do all that we had planned to do. Well, ok. This is not the father I grew up with, who made a plan and stuck to it, all in advance and all with lots of notice and communication. Apparently, a lot of that was my mom’s influence. Now that she’s not here, he seems to really enjoy being loosey-goosey and spontaneous and doing things on the fly, or changing his mind at the last minute. Good for him, it’s just difficult for me to get used to. I was used to him being one way for a long time and now suddenly, he’s all different! Oh well, he’s 82, so maybe that’s part of it too! We were really glad he came, and we got to eat and visit most of the afternoon with him. He got to talk sports and hunting and stuff with the guys so I think he had a lot of fun. He left about 4 PM, headed home to Hattiesburg, and we left for the stadium. In the shiny new Explorer. 🙂
We got there and got inside and found out there wasn’t a whole lot going on. In fact, when we were walking in from the parking lot, someone said, “gee, you have good timing, the team just pulled up in their buses”. So, that worked out well.
We went in and found our seats, and tried to find something to do. Since our seats were still in the sun, we climbed all the way to the top, it was shadier and more breeze up there! We climbed up and down the stadium steps several times over the course of the day, so I got some good workouts on my calves!
They had a “chalk talk” thing that Tim wanted to listen to, so we went down close to the sideline to hear them. One of the speakers was Bobby Hebert, quarterback from the early 90’s. We both like him a lot, and were glad we got to see and hear him. He started up in the stands after he finished, and we talked Zack into taking his football for him to sign. I even snagged a decent pic:
After that, we decided we’d try to go outside the stadium to the nearby Back Yard Burgers and get some decent food (rather than greasy stadium food). Well, I could make an entirely separate, equally long blog post about that ordeal. We went from place to place, gate to field, person to person, trying to get some kind of armband to get out and back in, since the guy at the gate said he couldn’t let us back in with just our ticket stub. After quite a long while of doing that and getting absolutely nowhere, I suggested we stay here and eat greasy food or popcorn. Zack was all for that (I don’t think he wanted to miss anything!). So we ended up eating nachos and popcorn for supper. 🙂
The team took the field before 7:00 and started stretching and doing drills:
They had printed on the tickets and kept announcing on the PA that the “game” would start at 7:30. Well, 7:30 came and went and they were still running drills. At that point, I was still under the false assumption we might see actual football. 
Seriously, it was practice and I know that, and believe me, Tim was in hog heaven and Zack seemed to be having a blast, so that made me happy and that was all that really mattered. However, it was funny to see how smoothly those plays run in practice and how they don’t always work out so well in regular games. Sigh. As I’ve known for years, it’s tough to be a Saints fan. They never win and sometimes they look just downright bad. They have a new slogan for this year, and it is soo appropriate – “You Gotta Have Faith”. Bigger Sigh.
Anyway, I tried to take some shots of them “playing”, but it was nearly dark by then, and even though all the lights were on, most of mine came out dark. I have a “night mode” on my little digital camera, but most everything comes out blurry, so even though those pictures are lighter and not as dark, they are more blurry. Here’s one of them lining up:
And here’s Terry and Zack in some chairbacks, enjoying the game. Love this picture!
And of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to get one of me and Tim, you know my philosophy, you can never have enough Tim and Stacy pictures!
OK. After the “game” was over, they were going to let people on the field to get autographs from the current players. We assumed they knew how to handle this and would some how have it organized. Wrong. Never assume. They basically just let 3 entrances to the field open up, and everyone ran to an area where the players were. They put the players behind barricades a few seconds after, and tried to “guard” them with Saints security personnel, local police and who knows who else. What they had was a wild stampede on their hands. People getting crushed, drunk people walking all over kids (another rant and rave I’ll make later, and I’m seriously contemplating writing a letter to the editor of the paper here, I was so disgusted), people pushing and shoving and just general pandemonium. Terry was with Zack and Tim stayed behind, and I went in to fight the hordes. We worked at this for as long as there were players there signing – which turned out to be over an hour, because Deuce McAllister stayed the entire time and signed till his hand must have been about to fall off. I admire him more now than before. I dislike our quarterback, Aaron Brooks, more than I did before, he never came out and signed a single autograph that we could see. Strike in my book.
OK, I went in and got autographs from John Carney (kicker), Aaron Stecker (backup running back), Deuce McAllister ($50 million dollar man, since he signed his 7 year extension last week) – Deuce is the main one we wanted and I had to work hard for that one. Got jostled, stepped on, hit in the face with a backpack, hit on the side of my left eye with an arm, and just generally swallowed up by an angry mob. I finally conquered that, and went on to get autographs from Michael Lewis (punt returner and all around great guy, we love him), and Mike McKenzie (defensive guy they acquired last year from Green Bay). I really liked both of those guys, I talked to them briefly and they lit up and smiled and really seemed very nice and personable. I almost snagged the coach (Jim Haslet), but he didn’t grab my book to sign and didn’t sign long. Oh well.
All in all, it was really fun. Tim loved every second of it and Zack seemed to have a blast. Terry and I were just along for them, I think, but I know I enjoyed every bit of it because of them. 🙂
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