Pre-season week 1. Chicago Bears at Buffalo Bills.

Pre-season week 1. Chicago Bears at Buffalo Bills. Ralph Wilson stadium. 15th August 2009

By Adam Goldstein

Bears 20 Bills 27

This was my longest tailgating stretch before any game...Three whole days! We arrived at the Buffalo Bill’s stadium on Thursday morning. Waiting for us was the Bill’s tailgating team; “Illegal Motion” and the Chicago Bears tailgating team; “Da Bus”. Both of whom I visited on my trip last year and both cook up some excellent food.

The tailgating teams have been handpicked by the Food Network and will be filming a pilot show with famous BBQ chef, Guy Fieri on game day. Both tailgating teams will be competing in a monster tailgating cook –off. Until then we just soaked up the sun, played some beer pong and ate plenty of Buffalo wings and the local sandwich, “Beef on Weck” at the nearby bar, The Big tree, where many of the Buffalo players are said to hang out after the game.

The Buffalo Bills are the only team that allow people to tailgate a few days before a football game. Their car parks usually open Friday for a Sunday game. Plus they actually have a concrete shower and toilet block for the early tailgaters in their car park! Without a shower on our tailgating bus, this is where I showered, and it was surprisingly clean.

On Friday night more tailgaters turned up and everyone began cooking. Another tailgating bus from Chicago arrived named the “Blood Bus” that came to support “Da Bus”. The Blood Bus is an old blood donor bus. The inside has now been gutted to host a whopping eight flat screen T.Vs, four air conditioning units and several couches. Everyone at the tailgate loved our tiki bus and many people signed our deck, plus it was non-stop food all day.

Word was out that although it is a pre-season game tomorrow, the game had sold out already. This is due to the fact that season ticket holders have to buy tickets for the two pre-season games as part of their package. Many of the Bill’s season ticket holders at the tailgate gave their pre-season tickets away to friends or children. Thankfully extreme Bill’s fan, Scott, who paints a Bills logo on his head either side of his Mohican hair cut gave me his extra ticket, right on the front row, which I was really excited about.

Game day

As early as 7am the car park was a flurry of action. Cameras were flying around on scaffolding, huge lights were in place and the two tailgating teams had just two hours to cook. They had to make one appetizer, two entrees, two side dishes and one desert. Fans from both teams were cheering them on as the 100 degree heat wasn’t make things easy for any of us. The small children watching all ended up hanging out on the Blood Bus, as that was the only place with air conditioning. The Food network staff were very well organised and friendly and after two hours of solid cooking the three food judges sampled the results. Jay "The Tailgate Guy", Dr.BBQ and Food network magazine editor, Maile Carpenter all gave their different opinions, but we will not know who won the competition until the pilot is aired on October 17. But being a Bears fan I’m sticking with the team from Chicago.

Several Bill’s cheerleaders, known as the Buffalo Jills were passing through the tailgate, and one in particular, Lisa took a break by climbing onto our bus for a while. She was really friendly and told me how she is not allowed to date any of the Bill’s players. In fact she will lose her job if she even flirts with them. Lisa told me that this fact does not stop the players from flirting with them. I told her where I would be sitting and she told me she would come by and say “hi” during the game. Sweeet!

The action continued in the car park as it was “family day” and large inflatable games were popping up around the stadium. The game day buzz was building for kick off so I grabbed my Bears foam hat and put on my Walter Payton jersey and headed to gate 7. It was a bustling crowd and as I got closer to the stadium something strange started to happen, something that took me by complete surprise, and it didn’t happen once but perhaps a dozen times.

“F**k da Bears” was hollered at me from Bill’s fans, from many angles as I waited to go into the historic stadium. There were other people wearing Bears jerseys, who got the odd “Bears suck”, but none of them got the verbal tirade that I was under. I was shocked and intimidated. All of last year I was the home fan and so I did not really see what it was like for the away fans. Of course I knew this negative attention was because of my rather large Bears foam hat. I thought I would obtain the odd stare or mockery from the home fans, but to have ten people swear at me at the same time was scary. I felt like I was at a soccer game in England!

I guess now I know how it feels for all of those extreme fans who dress up, when they go to away games. I received so much negative attention just because of my hat and I wondered what would happen to me if I dressed up really extreme? I took my hat off and found Scott in the front row at the corner of the end zone, with his Bills logos painted on his head. He demanded that I put my hat back on and that no one would tease me while I sat next to him, and no one did.

I was really excited to see Jay Cutler step out onto the field, and I went crazy when he connected to Devin Hester on the first play, even though it was just for a few yards. There was an exchange of punts, before Cutler found Hester again this time for 20 yards. My visions of the Cutler-Hester tandem taking us all the way to the Super Bowl were short lived when two plays later, Cutler under threw the ball and it was intercepted. Neither team moved the ball much in the first quarter with both teams struggling to run the ball. Finally the Bears broke the deadlock with a simple field goal. The Bills began to unpick the Bear’s secondary, and we looked very open on deep pass plays. Thankfully we stopped the TD but the Bills scored an easy fieldgoal to level the score at 3-3 after the first quarter.

Terrell Owens decided he was not going to play because he had apparently hurt his toe last week. I didn’t see him go off injured last week, and many of the Bill fans around told me he had hurt something far more painful than his toe: “His Vagina!”

The crowd were loud early on and it was awesome sitting close to the action. The starters only played the first quarter and in the second quarter the crowd started up a Mexican wave, which made its way around the Ralph at least ten times. It was at this point that the cheerleading squads rotated and Lisa the Buffalo Jill came up to me and gave me a big high five with her pom pom which was very cool.

It was awesome sitting next to Scott during the game, because he is so passionate about his team and it really made me get more into the game. During the second quarter there was some clumsy play from both teams, both giving up fumbles, and the half time score was a meek 6-6. I stood up and chatted with Scott, until I realized that I was actually being filmed and displayed on the jumbotron. I was unsure which camera was filming me and span round in a tizzy looking for the cameras. When I finally found it I was already off the jumbotron and my 5 seconds of fame had evaporated.

None of the starters were playing in the second half and many of the fans were not getting into the game despite it actually being a better game of football. The Bills scored a touchdown, and the Bears bounced back with a TD after intercepting the ball. It was a tie ball game going into the fourth when the Bears third string QB, Basinez threw three interceptions, which the Bills capitalized on. Finally our rookies did some good work and Bears wide receiver, Iglesias, scored a touchdown with a nice cross route around the back of the end zone, though it was too late and the Bills finished winners with the score at 20-27.

After the game I found the tailgaters from “Da Bus” who were at the game. One of the Bears fans had been given one of the game day balls, and it had the word “Bears” printed on it. He graciously let me take a picture with it while fireworks were popping out of the stadium behind me.

They congratulated me on my jumbotron performance. They thought I was waving my arms on the jumbotron because it looked like I was fending off would-be angry Bill fans. Back at my bus, Jay "The Tailgate Guy" and his wife Karen, had been told of my jumbotron debacle and knew the real reason I was flapping my arms about, because I could not find the camera filming me!
Last week I was wondering what my extreme football fan name would be. Due to my panic looking for the camera Karen and Jay have now come up with a nick name for me and coined me “Jumbotron.”