Tarkblog

I’m not a huge NFL/Colts fan, but I will watch the games if I have time. I follow the Colts passively, if you will. But when the wife was offered some free tickets to the season opener from one of her vendors - sure, we’ll go.

In this case, the free ticket offer probably wouldn’t have piqued my interest because the game was at 8:30PM on a Thursday night. Late, especially when you consider it’s an hour drive for us to get to the stadium (and another hour back home).

But these tickets were golden for one reason: they were suite tickets. As in free food, drinks, nice comfy seats, with monitors showing extra game coverage.

Hell yeah we’ll go.

So we did.

With the 8:30 gametime, the suite and gates opened at 7:30. I knew this would be a bit late for us, so we decided to eat some dinner before getting to the game. The wife was expecting something light, but I suggested the Olive Garden since we were in Greenwood anyway to pick up my new glasses at the eye glass place. Since we don’t have one close by, it seemed like a good idea.

Dinner was good. I ate about half of it before deeming myself “full”. We headed north to the game.

As soon as we got to the RCA dome vicinity, you could tell there was some definite pre-partying going on. Traffic was a bit thick and parking lots were crowded even very far away from the stadium. Mobs of people were converging on the dome, from many blocks away.

No worries, because our suite tickets came with free parking at the state garage, across the street from the dome.

Upon getting there, and heading up almost to the top of the garage before finding a spot, I found that there were still a LOT of open spots. And parking was only $10. I was a bit baffled why someone would pay $80+ for a ticket to the game, but try to save $5 in parking by parking 8+ blocks away.

We exited the garage and headed the block and a half walk to the entry gates. Security was pretty thick, and they were patting everyone down as you entered. My pockets had “too much stuff” in them according to the guy who patted me down, so he made me empty them.

“What’s this? You can’t take that in.”, he told me.

“What, my cell phone?”

“No that other thing you’re holding”, he said.

And behold, I found that I had my leatherman in my pocket. Doh, I carry it with me just about everywhere and didn’t even think about it.

So, add 20 minutes to get walk back to the car and drop it and back to the stadium.

We got inside at about 8:00, 30 minutes or so after the suite opened and 30 minutes before kickoff. There were lots of festivities going on, like the presentation of the superbowl winners stuff and the John Mellencamp concert, so we didn’t want to waste a lot of time.

We headed up to suite entry. We had to show our tickets again to get into the private suite area, then walked the long corridor arond the field to get to our particular suite.

My first impression upon walking in: the suite was VERY nice (and all of the ones we passed looked to be very similar…some bigger than others, but all with the same basic amenities). The lounge area of the suite had a couple of couches facing two big TVs with stadium coverage. There was a bar with a couple of chafing dishes, with various foods like riblets and chicken wings. There were a couple of pizzas under hot lamps, a veggie tray, a cheese and cracker tray, and pretzels and other goodies all about. A fridge held pop, beer, and wine.

The suite opened up into 3 rows of 7 seats out in the dome facing the action. Overhead were two TVs where you could see different camera angles and broadcast stuff (one showed local in-stadium-only coverage, the other NBC’s coverage).

We said our hellos to the sales guys whose guests we were. They gave us some name tags and we small talked it for a little bit. Then they told us to help ourselvses to any food or drink and take any seats we liked. A woman with a portable massage table showed up and offered Annie a free massage, which she took her up on. I watched the pregame show.

There were about 30 people in this suite. Two were the sales guys and their wives. The owner of the company, his wife, and their kids and girlfriends/boyfriends/spouses where there. There were a few other peolpe wearing nametags from various other companies, and their companions (other customers, I assume). And then abuot 8 young looking guys that looked to probably all be employees of this particular company.

Nobody really talke to one another. There was no schmoozing, like I was expecting. I surely thought that the company owner would go around and small talk a bit with some of his customers, even if he didn’t directly know them. But none of that happened. We just kind of kept to ourselves most of the night, and everyone else did the same. Fine by me, I suppose.

Here’s a pic of the vantage point of the suite:

Very nice if you ask me.

Here’s proof I was there:

Most of the evening we just stayed in our seats watching the game. All of the 21 seats were filled, with the rest of the folks kind of hovering in the stair area or in the lounge looking at the monitors. There was a lot of focus on the game, but each party of people did their own thing, talking, cavorting, etc.

For the opening play the crowd noise was deafening. Like, borderline painful. I’m glad it settled down after a few plays because it would have been hard for me to tolerate much longer.

We sat next to another couple most of the night. At one the girl makes a comment that Annie overhears. Apparently, the rumor is that Kelly Clarkson is in the next suite over. This excites the girl to no end. She and her husband proceed to get up and go stand in the stairway, about 5 feet close to the other suite. There’s no division between the suite seating areas other than a handrail, so you can easily see and talk to the people in the next suite over.

It was a while before we were able to confirm, but sure enough, Kelly Clarkson was there (along with the members of the band Hinder, if that means anything to you.). Annie snapped this pic with her camera phone:

The blonde hair girl just left of center is Kelly Clarkson. it took awhile to get this pic, as the previously mentioned girl and her husband basically stood right next to the rail most of the night in order to be closer to Kelly, I guess. They never once said anything to her or asked for her picture or anything.

Anyway, at one point we see Kelly and a few other people get up like they’re leaving. I told Annie to run out in the hallway and snap her pic. So she did. Here are the two shots:

According to the door plate, the suite owner was “Indianapolis Colts”, so it seemed fitting she would be there, since she was pre show entertainment (same with the band Hinder, apparently). We did not see Faith Hill or John Mellencamp, but I saw a few more suites that were owned by the Colts, so they probably just space them out.

As soon as Kelly left, the couple returned and sat in their seats next to us again.

We hung around until the beginning of the fourth quarter. By that point the colts were WAY up and facing a late night and a long drive home, I thought we should probably leave early. I made a pitstop before leaving. In the bathroom I was waiting for a urinal to open up, and a gentleman who just finished turned around and faced me before walking on, and right there he was: Billy Bob Thornon. I did a double take, because why in the hell would Billy Bob Thornton be at the Colts game? it looked just like him though. He nodded and smiled at me, like he knew I knew who he was.

When I got back to the suite, we said our goodbyes, grabbed a few horseshoe shaped cookies, then headed out. On the way out I told the wife I was 90% certain I saw Billy Bob Thornton in the bathroom, but I couldn’t rationalize why he would be there. According to some google searches this morning though, we find that he is a HUGE Colts fan, so indeed I’m going to stick with my story that it was him.

Now, I thought that leaving this early would be unusual, but there were a LOT of people leaving. I guess the late night and huge lead by the Colts was enough for them too. We got back to the car and out with no trouble at all. We listened to the rest of the game on the way home from the stadium. At one point with about 5 minutes to go the announcers said that the seats were mostly empty. Everyone wanted out early too it seems.

We got home right at midnight and went to bed. It was a late night, that’s for sure. But it was quite fun!

During our visit, I was trying to estimate the cost of the suites when we were there. The preseason tickets for the game we went to last year were like $115 a piece, and they were lower level seats but still up high. I figured that the suites probably come with 30 tickets, each with an approximate face value of $300. Food and drink are extra PER GAME. You have a designated person who stocks your room with food, and you order off a huge menu of stuff. All night long you can keep ordering more and more food as yours runs out or you want something different.

So I figure that the suite is probably $15000 per game including food. For 8 home games, this is $120,000 for a season. Maybe I’m way under. The sales guy told me that if you are a suite owner, you can come to any other RCA dome event (as long as you buy a ticket for it) and sit in your suite instead of the regular seats. So I guess there’s that perk as well.

A coupl e of the suites we passed had big dessert spreads layed out. A few had FULL self serve bars, but the one we were at was beer and wine only. ALL of them had their doors open, so you could have just walked right in. During the game nobody was really hanging out in the lounge areas, so it would have been a good time to duck in and grab some food or drinks from someone else’s suite if they had something your suite didn’t have.

I’m certainly glad we went. It was a great evening, even if nobody was social with each other. I kept yelling for “MITCH” (from Peyton Manning’s Saturday Night Live skit) and “THAT’LL MOVE THE CHAINS” (a different SNL skit that’s now a duckism), but nobody really heard me or cared for that matter.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 11:55 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.