Big 10 Football Tour

Well I spent the last few weeks working the phone and email and as a result of my efforts, I now have 2 tickets to the Rose Bowl.  Even better, I also got a free $40 parking pass! 

The tickets are pretty impressive, standing 8" tall and 3.5" wide.

Attending the game with me will be Josh McCormick, who attends the University of Oregon and came up with the Big 10 Tour logo before the season even began.  It'll be nice to reward with with a seat at the game after all of the work he put into creating the logo you see on the home page.

So I still have the obstacles of getting to the airport on time, the cooperation of the Milwaukee weather, and a few other potential hangups. 

It should be one heck of a week out in California.  Follow my progress on Twitter, Facebook, or simply by reading the Rose Bowl recap page. 

My mother sent me the very appropriate gift shown below, and I hope that everyone else received what they wanted for the holidays!  Happy New Year!

So it is complete.  11 Big Ten football stadiums in 11 weeks.  What an accomplishment!

But you've got to understand that I have this problem.  I can't say I'm going to do something and not follow through with it.  At the beginning of the year, I said that I would go to all 11 stadiums and the Rose Bowl to see the Big 10 Champion.  Heck, I even printed the date of 01/01/09 on the back of our tshirts with the location of Pasadena in my intent to be there on that day.

Unfortunately not being a member of either Ohio State or Oregon, not be a member of the media, not being a resident of Pasadena, and not performing in the Rose Bowl parade makes this extremely challenging.  So I pretty much have to resort to scalpers which is unfortunate as this game has sold out every year since 1947.  The scalpers clearly have the upper hand on me in such a situation.

Between holiday airfare, rental car, hotel and more, the trip already figures to be extremely expensive.  Purchasing a few tickets at likely a couple hundred each doesn't figure to make it any easier.

But Jeff inspired me a few weeks ago.  Let me preface this by saying that Jeff is an extremely smart guy and his career will go a lot further than mine ever will.  As he leaned on my desk a few week ago, he said, "I wish someone would hook us up with tickets to the Rose Bowl."   I was quite baffled by this statement, but withheld my urge to scream, "How do you expect someone to hand you tickets when you're not reaching out to anyone?!?!"  It's synonymous with getting a job without submitting a resume, getting a raise without showing up, or winning the lottery without buying a ticket!

So he has motivated me to go out and seek help to make things happen.  Unfortunately when my teammates skipped out on many of the games, I spent a lot more.  My my teammates didn't pay for their share of the tshirts, I lost more money. 

So I'm going to try and cut my losses with your help, you can now get a Big 10 Tour shirt, available in large and extra large for a donation of $10 (that INCLUDES shipping).

If you can't help in that manner, then all I ask that you open your email account and forward my website to as many people as you possibly can and just have them take a look, telling them it's a fun commentary on traveling the midwest.  The web address is www.THEbig10tour.com.

Lastly, if you know of anyone selling tickets for a reasonable price, please forward my information to them!

I must mention once more that over the past 3 years, I've developed a lot of lasting friendships through travel and sports.  So if you enjoy a drink (whether it be a beer or a cranberry juice) and good conservation, please connect with me via Twitter (Big10Drew) or Facebook.

Thank you everyone for following along.  Check back often as I will hopefully recap my trip to the Rose Bowl and provide details of future sporting trips.

Big 10 Tour members defects to see a Pac 10 team play a team who has already lost to a Big 10 team
 
As you can probably guess, the television networks think the USC/Notre Dame game is a bigger deal than Purdue/Ohio State.   As you read this, you probably agree with the networks, but then again you didn’t agree to become part of the Big 10 Tour.
 
Last week, the members of the Big 10 Tour received the following email from one of their members with parenthesis around the what should have been said:
 
"I can't make it to the game on 10/17.  Julie (co-worker) has tickets (from a vendor) to the USC-Notre Dame game that afternoon, and I was invited along...I couldn't turn down the opportunity to see that game.
 
I'll send you the contact info for (a person that you’ve never met nor ever spoken to), but I don't want to ask for more (even though I didn’t ask for these) tickets since they are giving me tickets to one of the biggest, if not the biggest, college football rivalry game.  I would feel awkward asking for something on top of a ticket like that (even though I agreed to help the Big 10 Tour and am clearly only helping myself here).
 However, if you (not me, who knows this person) can spin an
 e-mail with the website, we're looking for help, we work (with others you know), then you (even though I want to be part of the “you” when other games come around) might be able to score tickets to Wisconsin and possibly other teams that (vendor) sponsors."
 
Now as you can probably guess this irritated many of the “tour” members as we all agreed to attend as many games as possible.  “Found a more appealing game to attend” doesn’t qualify as a valid excuse.  Unfortunately when a single person drops from the fold, everyone’s expenses increase & is responsible for doing more.
 
So Purdue – email us – what do you think about Wes’ decision to shaft your school?  The best comments will be posted on an upcoming blog post!

It's been about two weeks since our last post.  Of course as we get further and further into the tour, things come up in life such as your muffler getting a hole in it and you need to spend several hundred dollars to get it replaced. 

In case you missed it, we posted our Northwestern blog last week.  Yet another great time!

This week, we've put up our recap on Illinois and tonight we're packing for our trip to Iowa City.  Our first night game!  Prime time on ABC.  The Hawkeyes try to keep their undefeated streak going and are urging all fans to participate in a "blackout."  A perfect opportunity for the Big 10 Tour sweatshirts.

In other news, there is so much fun to be had in Big 10 Football, we're considering a "bonus week" during the weekend of 11/21.  Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa, Indiana, & Northwestern all hold home games...so maybe just maybe this party will continue for a 12th straight weekend!

In our Illinois blog, we've begun to brag about our bean bag skills - so if anyone can beat Jeff & Drew 2 on 2, you win a Big 10 tour t-shirt.  Check out some of our bean bag photos here!

& if you haven't started following us on Twitter, you can follow our tweets here!

Off to become the mid-20 adults of the corn!

A rainy Sunday in Milwaukee has us reflecting on our 4th stadium, Ryan Field in Evanston, IL (Northwestern).  It was amazingly therapeutic to have a weekend where we didn't have to travel too far from home and to get to sleep in our own beds for a weekend night.

Our blog on Minneapolis is NOW POSTED!  We hope you'll find this to be one of our more entertaing recaps.  We hope to have our Northwestern recap posted later this week and then we are on to visit another Illinois school, this time the fighting Illini.  Once again, we'll have NINE members coming to the game with us.

This weekend we learned more than ever how challenging it is to simulataneously please 4-10 people on any given weekend.  Some members want to stay out while some want to turn in.  Some want to see the sights while others want to stay at the game or the tailgate.  It is very very challenging to keep all members content at the same time.

When we started this tour, we intended to seeing all of the sights at each school/city.  4 weeks in, we're beginning to realize what a challenge that is.  First of all, after working 60 hours a week, planning for the tour, and spending at least one LONG day a weekend tailgating/going to football games/etc, we all generally want to get home as fast as possible on Sundays to rest, update the blog, and plan the subsequent visits.  Oh yeah, we still have to pay bills, do laundry, fix our cars, and other simple tasks that everyone NOT touring the Big Ten has to do.

Anyways, we'll keep pushing on and hope you'll enjoy following us on this blog and on Twitter!  Please contact us with any feedback you may have.  Thanks for following us!

We're back from one heck of a weekend in Minneapolis!  We received a private tour of TCF Bank stadium and competed in some Man Vs Food challenges.  Check back Sunday for a recap of our visit!

In the meantime, the post on Michigan State is live!  Check out our review of the game in East Lansing!

Next up is Northwestern, which thank god is less than 2 hours away from Milwaukee.  We'll be arriving in Evanston, IL early on Saturday morning, and we'd like to meet some Wildcat fans!  Get in touch with us to stop by the tailgate & potentially be featured on our site!

If you know anyone with access to tickets at Illinois, Iowa, Purdue, Michigan, or Wisconsin, please please please let us know because that is proving to be our largest expense and our biggest challenge to overcome on a weekly basis.

A couple of reminders:

1) Big 10 Tour shirts are still available!  Please help us offset some costs by purchasing one via our Merchandise link.

2) TailgateToss.com is offering followers of the Big Ten tour 25% off all licensed bean bag/ladder golf/tailgate pong games.  Learn how to redeem your discount HERE or just enter coupon code "bigten" at checkout.

3)  Don't forget to follow our interesting weekly tweets at BIG10Drew on Twitter!

We're off to the Twin Cities at 7 AM on Friday.  It's said to be a beautiful weekend in the high 70's/low 80's.  We're doing a tour of TCF Bank stadium on Friday afternoon and tailgating at the crack of dawn with some of the notable Minnesota fans, &wearing our Brew's Crew tshirts...well as long as we don't spend the whole weekend shopping at the Mall of America.

Unfortunately Minnesota won't get to meet Blake or Wes on this trip.  Blake is covering for Drew at work and working on his music career after finding this great new guitar in Michigan.  It's unfortunate that we won't have Blake this weekend because he's our best photographer & the good conscience of the group!

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Wes is missing this weekend's trip because he's driving up to Green Bay to see the Packers play some other National Football League opponent.

Last weekend, we had Adrienne Bryl join us for Michigan State and this weekend our unofficial 6th member will be Dan Lins.  Dan will be flying in from Phoenix.  Dan has never been to a Big Ten school, but did attend the Rose Bowl last year.  Damn, we are ameteurs!

Next week will feature the debut of Dan Lawrence at the Northwestern game, where we'll once again see Minnesota play football; this time in Evanston, IL.   Be sure to follow us on Twitter (Big10Drew) and call us if you're in the Cities this weekend.

Please enjoy the BIG BEN Beef Jerky as you read through this post.  We couldn't believe it when we saw it at the Penn State Creamery. 

We are BACK from another successful weekend at Michigan State. The MSU staff showed us on heck of a time and we made some great new friends in East Lansing.

After a significant delay, our post on Penn State is live!!!  Unfortunately we didn't have the time available to us to put as much effort into the blog as we'd like, but when you're traveling for 11 straight weekends while holding down a full time job (& coming down w/ illness in the case of this week) it's more than tough.

Later this week, we'll be inducting the Penn State front office into our Hall of SHAME.  We'll also be adding those who helped us in Penn State and the Michigan State front office into the Hall of FAME.

We're currently in the midst of planning what we intend will be one of the best weekends when we travel to Minneapolis & see the brand spankin' new TCF Bank stadium this weekend.

Our apologies for the delay everyone.  Upon returning from Penn State, Drew came down with the Swine Flu and hasn't been able to pull himself out of bed all week.  We had an unreal experience at Penn State and are currently getting things together for our 6 hour trip to East Lansing, MI tommorrow.  We'll see the Michigan State Spartans in action.  Plan on seeing both Penn State and Michigan State updates posted late next Thursday night (9/18/09).  It was a short week due to the Labor Day holiday and Penn State being so far from Milwaukee, so we've struggled to flatten out the details of our next few stops.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter, username "Big10Drew" as we'll be posting comments from the road such as "Oh my god, we lost Wes again!" or "We've actually spotted an Akron Zip fan!"

Welcome to our followers from Brazil, Ukraine (Seinfeld "The Ukraine is weak!"), Romania, Hungary, and holy cow...Iraq! Egypt, Nigeria, and the Phillipines as well.

As far as the US, Pennsylvania still leads the league in visits, but Wisconsin and Michigan are close behind!

Well our August has vanished and while we can't say that we're really prepared, our BIG TEN tour unravels today.  We'll be leaving Milwaukee tonight and heading for Baltimore, MD.  Why Baltimore, MD?  Because Pennsylvania airfare rates are rediculous!   The assumption is that we'll head to York/Harrisburg, PA tonight and then onward to State College on Friday. 

We're shattered our goal of 10,000 web site visits before the season has even begun.  We've been visited by 6 continents (no luck w/ Antarctica), 21 countries, and 45 of he 50 states.  Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, & Vermont are the only states that we haven't seen visits from.

If you're in State College this weekrend, give us a call at the numbers listed on our CONTACT US page.