You may not have heard of Adam Goldstein before now but he is living out what many of us tailgaters have only dreamed of. This season he is traveling all over the country, seeing as many NFL games as he can and tailgating before all of them. Did we mention he is a guy from London that quit his job, sold his flat and has dedicated the last four months to seeing over 35 NFL games in a single season? His website, adamsfootballtrip.com, has documented every football game he has attended complete with tailgating details and his journey to the game. In this exclusive interview with Tailgatingideas.com, Adam Goldstein discusses how he came up with this idea, why he enjoys tailgating sometimes more than the games and why tailgating nearly nonexistent in Europe.
Tailgating Ideas: How did you come up with the idea that you were going to commit five to six months of your life and essentially go tailgating non-stop this NFL football season?
Adam Goldstein: It all started that I was at the Chicago Bears Monday Night football game a few years ago. I am a Bears fan and they were getting beat. So as a Bears fan I was getting a bit grumpy so I left the game early. When I headed out to the parking lot to get into the car I saw a melee of people sort of shouting and screaming at what looked like the back of their truck. So I went over and I saw that they had the game on a TV. Coming from an English point of view I was thinking, “you come all the way out to the game, you cook out, which is bizarre in itself, and you don’t even go into the stadium and you would rather watch it on TV.” Coming from England and our soccer background it just blew my mind.
Originally I wanted to look at the cultural impact of Monday Night Football and at the time I only thought these things happened on a Monday. I thought Monday Night Football was much celebrated, if you will, it was more of a treat. I wanted to look at each team but then I learned that not every team plays on Monday Night football each year and it would take five or six years to see every team on Monday Night Football. And being from England it would take me so long and I would always be waiting on the NFL schedule to come out. I thought to myself maybe I could just look at each team’s fan base at their tailgate. That’s really why I am doing this. I am looking at the tailgates and to look at all the off the field stuff that comes with the NFL. The community and the fact that people can cook out for hours ahead of the game starting with opposing fans. You can actually have a great time at a game regardless if you like the sport or not. I love the sport but I also love the totality of it all because of the community aspect of it as well.
Probably growing up in England in the 1980’s and especially the late 80’s, soccer was driven by hooliganism and riots. It wasn’t a good place to go with a kid nor was it a very family oriented place. My original idea was I thought no one had ever done this before, was to go to every home team at least once. The problem with my trip was it was not actually a fair experiment. Some teams I can be with for three days doing research and the majority of the Monday Night games I am in and then I am out. So I thought to look at the past three or four season of past schedules to see if I could do it as a road trip. I started to look at where the Sunday games were in relation to the Monday games and blah, blah, blah. Really I was just hoping for an easy schedule.
I didn’t find a publisher or a sponsor so when the NFL schedule came out in April, I saw I could squeeze in a Toronto game and the London game possibly a few Bears games and I was thinking of squeezing in a couple more. And then I thought am I going to do this or not? I mapped it out and figured out that I would have to do one or maybe two flights. I spoke to the NFLUK and they told me that I would see more NFL games than any fan would be able to see in one season. It was going to be a world record but I found out from Guinness that somebody had done this already. They had done 31 games in 16 weeks. I spoke to the people at Guinness Book of World Records and the only way I could break the record was if I broke his record. So I would have had to see 31 games in 15 weeks. So in order to break the record I would have had to fly a lot more and that would have knocked out the London game. So I am now not doing it to break a world record, I am doing it to look at each fan base. I am Bears fan but I am bigger NFL fan. I’ll go watch any NFL game when it is on TV in England. If I am ever in the States and there is a game nearby I’ll go and take a friend. I am fascinated by the sport. That’s kind of what fueled it. Once I realized I could drive it, the apartment went up for sale. So I took about $70,000 from it to go into this trip and I left my job. Until about two weeks ago I had also left my girlfriend in London until she came out here starting on the Monday Night game in Carolina. That was our two year anniversary. She has been with me since.
Tailgating Ideas: You made mention that you are doing this more for research on the whole NFL culture and to study each team’s fan base. Are you planning on writing a book with all this knowledge you have gathered? Planning on making a movie about this trip?
Adam Goldstein: My original plan was to write a book. I do not have an extensive media background nor do I know how to get sponsorships. I wrote to people and I tried to get sponsored. The plan was to do a documentary but being a one man band it was very difficult to film and do all the things that goes into that. I am a photographer at home as well but after the third week I realized the documentary was not going to work. If I can shoot stuff on film it will be good for posterity. Certainly, using my blog as a way to get exposure and media and to find fans and then hopefully from there find a (book) publisher. I can go to the publisher and tell them I get 1,000 hits a day on my website, I have met all these fans and people say that they would be willing to buy a book about my travels. I am not quite sure what format the book will be whether it is a coffee table book or travel writing. I haven’t really figured that out.
If you visit the blog you can see that I am very behind. My laptop broke. My camcorder broke. Once I started hitting the Thursday-Sunday-Monday games part of the schedule I am driving 800 miles a day. If I can get to a computer it is normally to try and find a tailgater that I am supposed to meet up with at the next game. I was a bit upset at first when it all happened and I am also upset that the website is so slow. There is really nothing I can about that because it is a server problem. Yeah, so it really has been a one man band and I would really like to be more up to date on the site. I am going to the games, I’m still taking pictures, and I’m still meeting fans, so I am not going to get down about it. So now it looks like it will be just a book.
My other idea once I am done with the book maybe when I go back to London, maybe next year, is to open up an NFL themed restaurant. I’d like to have a dish from each team and paraphernalia from each team. I thought I might have stadium seats in there instead of tables and chairs where people can come in and watch games on the big screen. Anything that I can do to get people more into the games. NFLUK knows about me and from their publicity I am kind of a walking advert for them. One of the main things is to not necessarily seduce people into the sport. If people don’t like the sport there is really not much I can do about it. That is for the players to be more exciting. But what I can do is expose them to the tailgating lifestyle and the community aspects of the NFL. Because it is a fun event, that is how I can get more people into the sport.
Tailgating Ideas: How does a guy that grew up and currently lives in London become a Chicago Bears fan?
Adam Goldstein: When I was five years old you see things on TV and it must have caught. The Bears won the Super Bowl then and it must have caught my eye. I don’t know what specifically caught my eye but I became a Bears fan as a five year old. My dad got more into it because I was interested in it. I took him to an exhibition game at Wembley Stadium in 1990, the Raiders vs. the Saints.
As I said, in the late 80’s, soccer was very hooligan driven. It was not something people went to. I went to a soccer game when I was eight to a very minor team and there was something like a 1,000 man stampede riot. I just didn’t feel comfortable. Everyone I know it was all soccer, soccer, soccer. I guess liking football made me just a bit different. It was exotic and it was fun. Looking back now, what got me interested was the fact that American sports, predominantly American football, have a lot of bright colors and it is larger than life. The helmets, the gear, the cheerleaders of course. (laughs) It certainly is an event. That’s not the case in England. With soccer you arrive five minutes before the game, you try to avoid a fight, you don’t talk to anyone and that is pretty much about it. I think part of it is that soccer is such a crappy non-event. I think it has changed a bit now. I’d like to see soccer take on more aspects of the NFL to some extent. I’d like to see soccer adopt the tailgating and the community aspect of it. That’s how I got into it.
I play flag football in England when I am home. We had it on traditional TV, channel 4, and now it is on Sky Sports. If you have satellite you can get an abundance of games. You can get two 1 pm games, two 4 pm games and the Sunday Night games. So it is pretty good in that you can choose a couple of games you want to see. It is growing. We had two London teams and I played in a college league and now I play flag football. I’ve always enjoyed the community aspect of it all, the tailgating. Whenever I have traveled and seen Bears fans I would introduce myself as a Bears fan. Looking back on it, it is not like I chose them it is more that the city chose me. I had not relation, no ties to Chicago prior to that. In 2002 I worked here in the summer and I loved it. I’ve seen three Bears games this year and we have won all three. So I am hoping that if the Bears go to the playoffs it would be nice if the Bears sent me. We’ll see. We’ll see.
Tailgating Ideas: Tailgating and tailgate parties are pretty much a uniquely American event and lifestyle. Sure there are people that tailgate in Canada but predominantly it is a truly American activity. Why do you think tailgating has not caught on in Europe and especially England?
Adam Goldstein: There are a number of reasons. I think Americans are addicted to their cars. People drive to the games, even in the downtown areas. We (Europeans) don’t. We have a very reliable and efficient public transportation system. In soccer that is certainly one of the ways they can separate the fans from each other. If it is a big rivalry they will have to separate buses and trains for home and away fans. They have to separate them all the way from the beginning of the game all the way to after the game. The public transport makes it like that. If you treat people like children they are going to act like children.
Most of our teams started off from local roots like as a pub team with small stadiums. They have since grown and grown. We don’t have teams like the Carolina Panthers that just appear there with a huge stadium. That wouldn’t happen in England. It would be much more organic. Most stadiums are embedded in residential communities much like Wrigley Field in Chicago. You couldn’t have large car parks or any of those things. There just isn’t the room. I also think that people aren’t into making that much of an effort in terms of getting the grill out or anything like that. It has got to come down to not enough open space.
We did have at the London game a so-called “official tailgate”, which was food made by sponsoring companies. There was a lot of space that could have been used for car parking but you are not allowed to have an open barbecue. It wasn’t a great tailgate because Wembley is not in a very desirable part of London. It’s not downtown. It is really the only thing in that area. All these fans came to this local tailgate and it was just crammed. It was 80,000 people in a small tailgate. Everything had a line out of it and everything was hard to navigate. It was a bit annoying because of its “officialness”. There is nothing else to do in the area. There are no local bars. In Toronto, they had an official tailgate, it was formal, but there were other places you could check out. The Wembley one they needed to rethink it a bit.
I do think it is probably because of space. Americans do like their SUVs and their cars. The fact that you can tailgate and mix home fans with away fans, I’d like to see more of that at soccer games. What I would also like to do is change the stereotype of American Football. A lot of fans think it is a boring game with a lot of starting and stopping. They think it is rugby with pads. It is a lot more tactical than that. I am trying to get people to go to the games to show people that during the stoppages there is always something to look at. They have something on the giant screen or the mascot is running around. A lot of the things I see at games have been featured on the NFLUK or football related websites. I would like to see it expand to a bit more mainstream, not for my own ego, but for the people that don’t know about it. A lot of time I am writing to people in England who have been to games and know all about it. I’d like to expose the game or the tailgate to those who haven’t got a clue. I was in the national newspaper, the Sun, one of the tabloids, when I was back in London for the London game. People did come up to me that Saturday night before the game and mention that they recognize me.
Tailgating Ideas: Did you know anything about tailgating or the lifestyle that is tailgating before you ventured out on this trip?
Adam Goldstein: Not really. I only had a week to prepare for this trip. I left my job and had a week to find a car and really get organized. I tried to work as much I could to save as much as I could. I knew that some people would turn up to some games with a TV and tailgate. I wasn’t sure how far in advance they would do that. I got a bunch of T-shirts I would give out and I was going to get my own grill and I was going to make my own tailgate. What happened was I went to the Saints website and people started sending me menus. They would say “this is what we are going to cook for you when you come out”. So from there on there was no point in me doing all of the cooking because I can’t cook anyway. By the second game people had actually heard about me and this trip and they actually wanted to tailgate with me. That was in Green Bay. From there I had met Karen and Jay DiEugenio from Tailgater Monthly. They were great and Karen, especially, told me of all these different people at my next stop and she told me to contact those people. She gave me contacts for people to look up at most stadiums.
It may sound a bit contrived that I am going where the people are kind of expecting me but it was a great starter. Someone is there welcoming me with open arms and at least I don’t have to run around the stadium looking for the tailgaters that are not too drunk or etcetera. I was able to have one of the best tailgates at the Raiders game because these certain people had asked me to join them. In some respects I haven’t always been able to see a view of the fans and certainly how aggressive they are. I would always be with the home teams’ fans and nine times out of 10 I had tailgaters expecting me. Those tailgates that had people that were similar to myself, love the sport, love the community aspect, meet true fans, not just trying to get drunk and be an asshole. They know where the line is. There have been games where I knew no one going in and I had to introduce myself to people while there.
I really didn’t have much knowledge about tailgating until I left England and I kind of just played it by ear. Sometimes I have missed tailgates. In D.C. I missed it. In Seattle I kind of missed it just because I am traveling and I am on the road. Getting to New England is very difficult on game night. At Pittsburgh I missed the tailgate so I went back and did another Pittsburgh game to give them another shot. Hopefully with playoff games I can go back to those teams I may have missed the tailgate the first time around.
Tailgating Ideas: What’s the best thing about the entire tailgating experience to you? No matter where you go, what do you like the best about tailgating in general?
Adam Goldstein: If people know of me, it’s the support that they have given me. The fact that they have this “wow factor” has been impressive. These are guys that have been tailgating for years and I am wowed by them. Just the way they react when they hear what I am doing is great. They tell me, “I would love to have done that”, or “you are living my dream”. It really is a metaphorical pat on the back for me. Sometimes I am averaging five hours of sleep and I am asking myself, “why the hell am I doing this?”. To get that kind of response from people who are 60 or 70 years old who have been doing this for years, and I am essentially a tailgate rookie, I am from England, but for them to give me so many kudos makes me feel like this is worthwhile.
I know there are some people back in England that are following my trip. They may be a Miami Dolphins fan but they are also following my trip and their NFL experience is kind of through my eyes. People that I just randomly meet, a lot of the times they ask me, “you’re doing what?”. When I met Mike Ditka he said, “You’re doing what?”. He couldn’t believe it. Once I told him I quit my job and sold my flat he said, “Oh my God, that’s amazing!”. Once the people realize that I am not doing it for money and I am not writing for a company,. They’ll ask me, “who are you working for?”. I tell them, “No, no. I am just a crazy fan and I wanted to go on a trip of a lifetime.”. Once they hear that they’ll say, “Here, have a beer” or “shake my hand” or “give me a high five”. People have offered me places to stay or food. That makes me feel that it is all worthwhile.
I have had a few bad comments on the website. On other websites a few people have said some nasty stuff. Certainly some of the people in England, some of the media, were mocking me before I went out to America. Certainly you are going to get those people who are either jealous or haven’t thought of it themselves or are assholes. Most of the time, 99 percent of the time,NFL fans are appreciative that I am doing this trip. I’m doing it for the NFL and the fact that I am from England takes them by surprise. I’ve had one or two run ins with obnoxious people. I nearly got into a fight in Jacksonville. A guy wouldn’t let me pass. I was trying to take a picture of one of the extreme fans and he wouldn’t let me go down the aisle to take a picture with this guy. He started swearing at me and I told him, “listen, I am trying to get you more fans into your Jacksonville Stadium. I am trying to get fans for each team.” Other than that, everyone else has been very gracious and have encouraged me to take pictures and told me their stories of how they became a fan of that team. Most of the people have been really cool.
Tailgating Ideas: Heading into the final week of the season, you have been to just about every NFL stadium by now, correct?
Adam Goldstein: Apart from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, I have been to all of them.
Tailgating Ideas: Of all the other 30 NFL stadiums you have been to, which one has the best atmosphere? This is apart from the time you personally had at a particular stadium but overall, which stadium puts on the best tailgating? As a guy that has never really been tailgating before that has now seen a lot of tailgating, which stadium would you suggest a fan must visit to experience the best tailgating?
Adam Goldstein: I would have to say and I am sure would agree with me but I would have to say Lambeau Field before a Green Bay Packers game. I enjoyed myself there and the people were extremely friendly. It felt, even though I am a Bears fan and it saddens me to say this, but it just felt like the home of football. The tailgate and the passion of the fans made it feel like it was a college bowl game. At Lambeau, people don’t walk around. At other stadiums people are up and down, getting food, they seem to not care so much. Packer fans were full on watching the game and passionate about it but not the point where they were aggressive or obnoxious. I walked around wearing my Bears gear and I thought, “oh no, they are going to give me shit.”. They didn’t and they were wonderful about it. After Lambeau, in terms of the stadium atmosphere I would have to say Heinz Field is an electric stadium atmosphere. I would certainly say Qwest Field in Seattle is loudest stadium. I am a bit biased towards Chicago but I wouldn’t say the tailgate was one of the best in Chicago. Philadelphia is a very good tailgate. I was very impressed. I was also very surprised by Houston. I had a wonderful time in Houston. It was a beautiful tailgate and a beautiful stadium. Oakland was a good one too. Overall, I would say if an NFL fan wants to the best overall experience, go to Lambeau Field.
Tailgating Ideas: When it comes to NFL tailgating, what would you say was a weak showing or they just didn’t seem too into tailgating?
Adam Goldstein: I’d probably have to say, and I know this sounds bad, but I would probably have to say Atlanta. There are no teams out there that suck. It wasn’t like I was saying to myself, “I don’t even want to be here”, but it had to be Atlanta. Maybe it was because they lost Michael Vick and there wasn’t that big sellout crowd. They have a pretty good team and I couldn’t find much going on at the tailgate. There was one tailgate crew that showed me a great time but he seemed to be the only person that got there early. He seemed to be the tailgater on his own. But on the grounds they had much more official stuff like inflatables and stuff for kids. Inside the stadium there was no atmosphere, no one was cheering. It was a bit of a dead atmosphere inside the stadium.
In terms of other stadiums, St. Louis was dead in the stadium but that was a pretty decent tailgate. I think if it a poor team, the tailgate seems to be a lot more fun. I met Joe Cahn and he said the tailgate is like a reception for a banquet, the banquet being the game. Sometimes I think people get more into the tailgate with their buses and the cooking out and then they get into the game. They eat a little bit and if the team isn’t doing too well they’ll leave early. Because of that, the tailgate becomes more important. I can totally understand that. For me I thought it was silly for people to be watching TV on the outside of their car. It just seemed to be such a waste of gas or a waste of assets. But I can totally understand now. If I was living in Chicago I’d probably do that a couple times a season because tickets were too expensive. The real fun is in the tailgating.
Depending on where you sit in the stadium, if you want to watch the game and study the game, keeping track of players, then I think the game is built very well for TV. You obviously miss the live atmosphere. You miss the atmosphere that you are surrounded by 70,000 fans like last night going crazy. My angle wasn’t the best to be able to see if the team was in cover 2 or blitzing and where. I think for people to even go to a game and they don’t know the rules necessarily and they don’t have a ticket and they are low down they might get a bit confused as to what is going on. For me personally, I like being up high. I like seeing the defensive strategies. I like to see the play sort of pan out.
I know a lot of the extreme fans like to be down front in order to be on the jumbotron. I have noticed that American fans love being on the Big Screen in the stadium. People have suggested I do something extreme to get on the jumbotron and it is really not about me. It’s about me finding those fans. I am an extreme fan but in the media in England they have called me the most extreme NFL fan in the U.K., which is kind of a nice tag line. There is also a part of me that feels a little like a reporter. I don’t want to be a reporter. I am not trying to be someone from England coming out and mocking someone wearing a cheesehead. I am an NFL fan so there certainly are a few roles I am sort of playing on this trip. Getting back on topic of your original question, I would have to say Atlanta although I personally had a good time there. The Falcon fans that fed me and gave me food were wonderful but overall they could have made a bit more passion out of it.
Tailgating Ideas: Which tailgates had the best food out in the parking lots?
Adam Goldstein: Ooooo, Green Bay was very good. Wow, that’s a good question. I’d either have to say Arizona or Houston. In Houston they went a bit crazy for me. I went on some blogs and forums before going there and they went all out. Someone shipped lobsters in from Maine for me. They gave me steak so I would say Houston was very, very impressive.
Tailgating Ideas: Through your travels have you discovered new tailgating foods that you have to have at every tailgate you now go to? If you were going to sample something from all the tailgates you have attended, what would be your perfect tailgate menu?
Adam Goldstein: Certainly the brats from Lambeau Field. I am a big wings fan so definitely the wings from Buffalo. I would have a lot of chips. I am quite the chips fan. I am thinking about doing another trip going around the world eating every flavor of potato chip. My girlfriend talked me out of the one. I don’t know if these ribs were specifically from Arizona but I had ribs in Arizona that were excellent. Some of the tailgating food that I have had was not local.
Many of the tailgaters will cook the away team’s food. So when I was in Miami they were playing the Patriots and they were cooking up food from New England. I was in Philadelphia and I couldn’t get a Philly cheese steak. Both tailgates were cooking up the local food from the opposing team which I thought was a really cool idea. Sadly there are some tailgates that I missed and people have sent me menus. I almost forgot the jambalaya from New Orleans. Some people I have missed and they have had stuff cooking for me and I haven’t tried it. If I did one game a week I would probably be up to eat the local food at each one. Some places I haven’t necessarily been able to eat. That’s why I want to do this restaurant to cover some of the foods from the tailgates I have missed to really do a lot more research into three or four dishes from each team. I haven’t necessarily eaten local food everywhere I have gone. Wherever I have gone the food hasn’t been bad. Compared to England where you might get a shitty, greasy burger and a terrible hot dog, the food has been pretty top notch.
Tailgating Ideas: When this trip and this season is over, what is next for you? Is it you’ll go back to England and try to get a book published and try to open the NFL themed restaurant?
Adam Goldstein: Yeah. I go back to England January 7th. I am going to try to come out and do a couple of playoff games and hopefully the Super Bowl. I’ve already burned through my $70,000 so I am just seeing how far my credit cards will take me. I am trying to sell some T-shirts and make some money off of some other stuff. Assuming I come back for the Super Bowl I am giving myself two months to write the book and try and get it published. I don’t know. It might end up being a book tour. Maybe the NFL might want to give me a job or maybe the Bears, I don’t know. My career might change.
I would certainly have to go back to work in April in the U.K. to try to find some work to pay off my credit cards. A while back I was thinking of doing a college football trip but not as many games as this trip. Maybe the Big 12 or the big 14 game rivalries. In fact in this trip I might do one or two bowl games. I have never really followed the game of college football so that would be quite interesting. But I don’t have the money for that. With the restaurant, I don’t have the money and it might be a bit of a pipe dream like this was once. Maybe if the book comes out and I can get some exposure from that I might be able to get a big enough loan, maybe the NFLUK could help me out. I am still going to write the book regardless if I get a publisher. If no one wants to publish it and I can’t publish it myself I’ll go back to work and I guess I’ll start settling down. Maybe I’ll have a kid and still follow the Bears. It will still have been a trip of a lifetime.
I know currently in terms of a world record, although it is not official, I have seen more NFL games than any fan has seen in a season. And that’s nice to know. What’s also been great about this trip is now I have a human face or sometimes food to relate for each team. Sometimes I’ll turn on the TV and say Seattle is playing the 49ers. Before this trip I was interested in the game but did not have any personal experience to relate to the teams playing. Now I know five or six people from those cities that I met while tailgating. I know what types of foods they like. I know how they act in terms of if it is a fourth and one or whether their team goes for a fake field goal. So I kind of have more of a bond with each team and that obviously will make my NFL viewing more intense from now on.
Tailgating Ideas: Is there anything that I may have missed or failed to ask that you wanted to add?
Adam Goldstein: No, not at all. I believe I talked a lot. (laughs) I was going to ask you, what do you personally think about this trip? I am not asking to feed my own personal ego, but what do you think of me doing this?
Tailgating Ideas: Personally, I think it is spectacular. To be quite honest with you, my best friend and I had thought about doing a trip like this years ago. When we were back in college and the lottery jackpot for that weekend was up to something like $56 million, we both bought tickets and started fantasizing on what we would do with the money if we won. One of the ideas we had was to buy one of those fully loaded tour buses you see rock bands have and to hire a driver, a bartender, a chef and then follow Monday Night Football for the entire season. Obviously that would only be one game per week for an entire season but we still had thought about doing something like that had we won the lottery.
Yours would be the same type of trip we dreamed about but on steroids because you are sometimes going to a Thursday, Sunday and Monday games. Your trip is a lot more intense than the one that we thought about doing. Personally I would love to take an entire football season and sample all the tailgating and take in a game in every city. At the moment I wouldn’t be able to take that much time away from working and from my family. I have a wife and two young kids, but if I was younger and could just pick up do something like this I would definitely like to try it.
Adam Goldstein: Do you think my trip or the way I have kind of gone about this that I could be able to get more fans into the NFL? I don’t know how much of my blog you have read but do you think I am doing the tailgating aspect a good service on my website?
Tailgating Ideas: I honestly think you do the tailgating justice. I haven’t read all the entries on your website but I did read some of the game recaps. Of course I read the game recap where you attended the San Diego vs. the New York Jets Monday Night game. What I think is cool and unique is that even though you have your own personal connection to the Chicago Bears you still are not tainted by being an American born fan. What I mean is that you bring an unbiased opinion because you aren’t a fan who was born in Pittsburgh, whose father placed a Terrible Towel in your crib and all you’ve know your whole life is the Steelers. Same could be said about other teams as well. You are a guy from England that really didn’t know much about tailgating and here you are doing it for four straight months. I think you bring that unbiased opinion seeing how you have not been entrenched in the NFL culture of the United States from the day you were born.
Adam Goldstein: Being from England I can be objective and not take for granted when I see a bus painted like a big dog when I was in Cleveland. That would surprise me where as Americans might just see it as the crazy Dog Bus Guy. Now that I am in the later part of the trip and I have my girlfriend with me, she was amazed that in Jacksonville someone was deep frying a turkey in the parking lot. She was asking me, “they are doing a whole, entire turkey at four in the afternoon?”. I am 30 games in and I say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And I am semi taking it for granted. For her to come along she is wide eyed and asking, “what the hell is going on?”.
There are mascots running around and people have music blaring and people have a barbecue bigger than what we would have at a garden party. Since now that I have had her on board it has sort of kicked me back down to like it was four months ago. Like you said, I think one of the strengths is that I am from England and I am not taking things for granted. I am a fan myself and I am here to get more fans for the NFL. I am not here to mock. I know that some English programs come over and they go to Alabama or Mississippi and they mock the people there. That is not what this trip is about.
I want to change a lot of the stereotypes people have of NFL fans. People in England are very ignorant and have a bit of hatred for American football. When I was there (England) they thought they really pushed the sport through the cheerleaders. And in England we don’t have cheerleaders. I was thinking that is not all. What about the fans? What about the tailgating? It’s a shame that they just thought it was pushing the sport through sex and the cheerleaders. Obviously it is my choice to do this and I am not complaining.
To learn more about Adam and his unbelievable trip, visit AdamsFootballTrip.com.