Football Fanatic

Those of you who know my husband know he's a big football fan. When it comes to his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, he turns into a football fanatic. Over the weekend, he had me cracking up with some fanaticism that I just had to share, even though initially he thought I shouldn't blog about this because it might make him seem a little crazy. He finally decided that maybe the story was sort of amusing and therefore blogworthy, so I'll try to give you a little back story so that it makes a little more sense.

This October, the KU football team is playing Colorado in Boulder. The next day, the Denver Broncos are playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in Denver. This equates to a lot of interesting football for us in one exciting weekend. Our friend Terry, who has season tickets to the Broncos games, suggested that we should all make a weekend trip to CO to watch both events. We got KU tickets for our group through Terry, but since Terry already had his tickets for the NFL game, we were left to our own devices to acquire Steelers/Broncos tickets.

So several weeks ago Chad started doing research, trying to figure out the least expensive way to purchase tickets for this game. On StubHub, where ticket holders try to sell their own extra tickets, they were running around $150 a piece, which didn't seem like such a great deal for seats probably in the nosebleed section. Chad checked out the Steelers website, which said that the Broncos would be in charge of selling tickets for their own home game. He went to the Broncos website, where he started reading about how we could purchase single game tickets. The tickets were to go on sale on Ticketmaster and at the Denver stadium on July 28 at 11 a.m., but the website said their would be a limited number of mostly single seat tickets available, which didn't sound too promising. As Chad continued to scroll down the page, he noticed something about the Broncos half-price ticket policy. It said:

In accordance with the Legislation authorizing the construction of INVESCO Field at Mile High, the Broncos will offer 2,000 half-price tickets for each game of the 2007 season.

As he read a little more about this program, he found that there were very specific restrictions on these tickets: each household could only purchase up to 4 tickets for one game of the season; they were only available on Ticketmaster and went on sale at 2 p.m. Central on the 28th; you have to pick them up at will call with the ID of the purchaser; and after you pick them up you will be escorted into the stadium to prevent you from scalping them for a higher price. Sounded like a great deal to us!

So Chad's plan was to make an attempt to purchase the half-price tickets, but as the 28th grew closer he got more and more nervous about it. What if he got busy doing something else that day and forgot when 2:00 rolled around? What if there are thousands of people who all go online at that same time and purchase all of the tickets ahead of us? What if the website crashes or the electricity goes out or our cable modem freaks out or his clicking finger becomes paralyzed???? WHAT IF?????

So Saturday rolled around, and Chad set alarms on the clock and his Blackberry just in case. At 10 in the morning, our friend Dante called in the middle of his round of golf, just to remind Chad that 2 p.m. was right around the corner. When the regular priced tickets went on sale at noon our time, Chad went through a "dry run" on the Ticketmaster website, just so he'd be familiar with the way the process worked and as efficient as possible when the actual purchasing moment arrived. He became even more nervous about the volume of traffic on the site as during the dry run, since during his "training" he couldn't even get to the page where the tickets are actually purchased--he would only get a screen that said "There were no tickets available that matched your request." He was pretty confident that the half-price tickets were going to sell out pretty fast, so he created a Ticketmaster account for me as well, so we could both be trying to purchase tickets at the same time!

In preparation for the actual 2:00 purchase time, Chad set the kitchen timer for 1:30 and carried it around the house with him. When it went off, he grabbed me and the laptop and we went downstairs to where the desktop resides and set up our battle station. He gave me a demonstration of how I would select the number of tickets, type in the secret code word, and then wait to see if I "got in" to make the purchase. He would first try purchasing 4 tickets so our Colorado friends Steve and Becky could go along with us, while I tried purchasing 2 at the same time just in case there weren't 4 available. If he "got in" with 4, then I wouldn't complete the transaction of 2, but would only proceed if he couldn't get 4. It was a carefully crafted plan that had to be executed with complete precision! I began to get nervous at this point as well!

For the next 15 minutes, we sat and waited. Chad was brimming with nervous excitement, just like I imagine he'd been before his first junior high football game. He made me laugh so hard (for about the 10th time that day) when he said, "You know, getting half-price tickets would be really great, but at this point it's really more about the competition." His ultimate goal was just beating out all those other people for those coveted 2,000 cheap seats!

While we were waiting, I started playing FreeCell, since I wasn't "allowed" to do anything on the Internet in case I couldn't get back to Ticketmaster in time. At 1:55, I was instructed to shut down my card game and put on my real game face. When Chad's computer clock read 1:59, he made his first attempt at quantity selection and tried 4 tickets, then entered the secret code word. I subsequently tried 2 tickets, but just as I was ready to enter my code word, Chad uttered those two exciting words: "I'm in!" He selected the best available seats and hit the purchase button, and a few seconds later the screen popped up that his transaction was complete! Time: 2:01 p.m. He instantly jumped from his chair with his fists in the air and began singing We Are the Champions.

As I laughed in hysterics, Chad quoted one of his favorite movie lines, saying "I just never gave up hope" (you get brownie points with him if you can name the movie) in reference to his perseverance towards this goal. About 20 minutes later, just so we could see how difficult this task had actually been, we tried once more to select tickets on the Ticketmaster site, and there were none available. Chad called Dante and a few other friends to report his amazing achievement: 4 tickets to a Sunday night NFL game for a mere $151.

So yes, clearly my husband is slightly crazy, but I find his passion about certain things extremely endearing. Not to mention that his antics often have me rolling on the floor laughing. You might call him a little loony, but I call him extremely lovable!! Mile High Stadium, here we come!! :)