Section 306, Row 2, Seats 1 and 2

Spending time with my dad this weekend had me thinking back to how we became such crazy sports nuts. I don’t know if I can pinpoint the exact time when the love of all things spectator-sport related began (probably when the doctor said “it’s a girl” to which he says he responded “are you sure?” and has since proceeded to treat me like the son he never had…) but I can definitely pinpoint the time when we got crazy about it. It was, sadly, one of my most defining college moments. Or at least one of the ones I can actually point to as having had a tangible, noticeable influence on who I am today.

DaddyMonday’s been going to the Final Four since, well, forever. He’s got this buddy, I call him Mr. Final Four, he goes with, and they’ve got pictures with Larry Bird at one of the FFs in Indianapolis, some story about the FF in Charlotte where they took this other friend and he refused to pay scalpers’ prices for tickets so they watch the whole thing on a TV in the back of a limo (needless to say that guy never went again….), and lots of stories about trying to buy or sell tickets in the rain in New Orleans. It seems it always rains in New Orleans.

When I was a senior in college I was invited to go along. We’d been basketball fans since I was little. We always had Tennessee basketball season tickets as far back as I can remember (and had them up until 2003 when MommaMonday moved away - she was the cash behind the whole thing). We sat in the upper deck, Section 306, Row 2, Seats 1 and 2. I remember the first time I ever went down to the lower section (to see Daddy’s friend, Mr. Final Four who sits really, really close). The players were so big. And more easily defined than just by the tops of their heads. It was amazing. But I went willingly back to 306, no worse for the wear.

Now back to the 2001 Final Four. I was a senior in college and the FF was in Minneapolis (cold and exotic to me back then). We got tickets the old fashioned way, through the lottery. Every year in June they mail out lottery slips to anyone interested. You send them your check for roughly $100 a ticket and pray that you’re picked. Now the best tickets are held by the NCAA for distribution to the schools who make the four, so the lottery tickets given out almost a year in advance are the really, really crappy seats. And by crappy I mean limited view. They hold these things in football stadiums, put the court down on one end (think roughly the 30 yard line to the end zone) and then basically fill the place up with seats. Our tickets would be around the other 30 yard line (it’s like watching 10 guys juggle from 100 yards away and 80 feet up). Yikes. But I didn’t care, I was going to the Final Four.

So here we were, the first night, games 1 and 2. We find our seats, check out the view, then decide to roam around the lower level since it’s early enough that we can do that without much problem. We both stopped around half court and moved down into the seats so I could get some pictures and then sat down in the last row to enjoy the moment before heading back out to Wisconsin. Only problem was….we kept sitting there. And sitting there…And then there was only a half hour before the game started. So we decided to see how long we could go. We saw Dickie V, Bob and Libby Dole, Morgan Freeman, Grant Hill, a bunch of coaches, all come and go past our seats.

And then it happened…………The game started. So dad said “they must only be interested in the second game, they’ll surely come then.” At this point the place was packed….probably 50,000 fans and the only two empty seats had to be up in section Nowhere, Row a Million. Where we were *supposed* to be. Not here at half court, row 35, right under the press boxes.

But they didn’t come for the second game, so we enjoyed ourselves, but you’d better believe neither one of us was about to get up for a coke or a pee. No way were we leaving and chancing not getting it back.

The final game was different. We both thought, “there’s no way,” but we tried it anyway. It was a lot harder to get in this time, they were checking tickets. We had to sneak in four or five sections over and crawl across entire rows. And when we got to the seats there was some guy sitting there. So I said, looking at my ticket for section Nowhere, Row a Million, but never turning it around or putting it down, (and I’ll never know where this came from who what person I transformed into)”excuse me, I think you’re in our seats.”

And he got up and left. And the game started. And we watched the whole game, unspoiled in Row 35, half-court. It was amazing. I’ve never had an experience like that where I just got lucky, and got to see what it was like to live like the rich Iron Dukes who sat next to us. It’s one of those defining experiences, only not the ones like most people have. For me it was about seeing how the other half lives, but not in such a way that I would want to live that exact life, in such a way that I thought, “hey, I’m sitting here and I didn’t have to give a million dollars to some school, I just took an empty seat.”

And that is how I became addicted to not ever playing by the rules when it comes to sporting events. I will never sit in my seat. I can be asked to move 40 times by rightful ticket owners, but it’s always worth paying $10 and trying to get a $300 view. Pick me up, scoot me over, move me around, but I will never go back to only seeing the tops of heads again.

So thank you random Red Sox fans who didn’t show up and allowed me to sit behind home plate for Red Sox/Yankees. Thank you to GirlTuesday for giving me her ID so I could get two student tickets to the 2005 Final Four and DaddyMonday and I could sit on row 3 behind the basket. And thank you to DaddyMonday who always says “doesn’t look like those people are going to show up, wanna move down?”

Now just wish me luck this weekend, I’m going to a Vols game and our tickets are in Section 329, Row 23, Seat 6 and Section 328, Row 24, Seat 11. Yep, we’re not even sitting together. But you just watch. I bet I can figure out how to get us into the luxury boxes.