Big 10 Football Tour

Let's face it...after getting out of college, most of my friends bought homes, had children, & begin saving for their luxurious retirements.  I chose another path.  Here's why:

Prior to the year 2006, I had never been north or west of the state of Pennsylvania.  In fact, I had never really been anywhere outside of Pennsylvania, Maryland, or Florida.  My friend Dan (one hell of a tatto artist, visit him here), urged me to come visit him in California. I did so & after seeing California, I began to question what I was doing with my life & decided that I was leaving home, significantly away from home.  Turned out that Milwaukee would be my next home.
 
Before moving to Milwaukee, I decided to take a road trip to St. Louis with my brother to see the new Cardinals ballpark.  After bathing in Budweiser for a few days & explaining my hatred for David Eckstein to Cardinal fans, we stopped in Cincinnati and then in Pittsburgh for some more baseball.

Before the Pirates game (which as you guess was a loss for the home team), my brother and I stopped in at a local tavern to have some of that disguisting Iron City beer.  We began reminiscing about our previous two stops when an older gentleman leaned over and remarked "What? Are you visiting all of the baseball stadiums?" I thought about the question and said to myself, 'What the hell do I care if I'm telling the truth or not, I'll never see this guy again.' So I reply "Yes, yes I am."  The gentleman then remarks "That's great! A once in a lifetime experience.  People spend all of their lives accumulating assets, homes, cars, and at the end of the day never have any good life stories to tell."

The next day at work, I pondered the conversation and by that evening, I had printed all 30 MLB schedules and had them sprawled about on the floor.   That was June 13th.  Roughly 110 days later, I walked through the turnstile in Seattle and completed my journey of all 30 MLB stadiums in a single season.  You can view some of my photos from my baseball travels HERE.  By the way, I contacted that man from Pittsburgh when I arrived in Chicago and he provided lodging, tickets and parking to the Cubs and White Sox games, dinner, and a got the local newspaper, the Morris Daily Herald, to do a story on me.  Never take a chance meeting for granted.

The summer of 2007 came around and I began to miss the "glory days" of meeting and interacting with new people.  I missd the challenge of traveling to a new place with few resources and experiencing the unknown.  I thought that I'd take what I had learned from traveling during the MLB tour and apply it to make my next venture bigger and bigger.  This time I was going to take on the NBA.  Little did I know that this experience would be more life-altering than the first.

This time however, there were two significant obstacles.  I no longer had the life savings that I spent on traveling the MLB circuit, and I now had a full-time job.  I let that bother me for about 34 seconds and then decided that the next tour was on.  This time I would take a different approach.  I would create a blog that my friends/family back in Pennsylvania could follow along on.  I would share this tour with the world (& little did I know that I'd receive emails from all over the globe before it was over).

Less than 1 year later, I had sat in all 30 NBA arenas (29 of them paid for by the teams) & was flying home from the NBA Finals.  You'll have to take a look at my NBA blog HERE.  I began to settle into life here in Milwaukee, but...over the next 10 months I'd come to realize that I had a fever.  The only prescription for this fever was more "touring."  No more tackling this alone however, this time I'm bringing a posse. 

So then I asked myself, what to tour this time?  I began to consider how all of my co-workers seemed to have attended schools like Penn State, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, & Illinois.  They all raved about how much fun their experiences were on fall Saturdays watching their football teams.  I then realized that I live in the Midwest, & while I've stopped in a few cities, I haven't really gotten a feel for it.  Furthermore, I yearn for tailgating on almost a weekly basis.  Lastly, I've always been an expert on professional sports, but never really followed the college game.  So it was decided, I'm going to see every Big Ten football stadium in the country.

So for 11 straight Saturdays, it's going to anarchy.  Drinking, football, roadtripping, 'dogs & burgers, drinking, bean bags, meeting people, the roar of the crowd...yeah, you get the picture.  The only shortfall is that I'll have to encounter that damn Chicago Loop like 5 times!  Either way, this is going to be a blast!

If you'd like you can check out some of the links to my stories below:

Yahoo! Sports
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Ball-Don-t-Lie-interview-The-NBA-s-ultimate-fan?urn=nba,71735

Fox Sports Lakers Pregame Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rt0dpKeSj4

Southwest Airlines
http://www.blogsouthwest.com/2008/02/19/nba-road-tour/

Milwaukee Journal
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=738098

San Antonio Express News
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/columnists/roliver/stories/MYSA.03032008.P2.OliversTwist.EN.3096ab6.html

Milwaukee Bucks website
http://my.nba.com/thread.jspa?threadID=570003280
 
Dallas Morning News
http://mavsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/03/give-a-warm-welcome-to-nba-drew.html
 
Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/sports/kings/archives/010311.html

Spurs.com
http://www.nba.com/spurs/gameday/080304.html

The JAUNT - NBA Fan of the Year
http://the-jaunt.blogspot.com/2007/12/jaunt-interview-nba-fan-of-year.html

BrewHoop
http://www.brewhoop.com/story/2008/4/11/101423/519

Cleveland.com
http://blog.cleveland.com/andone/2008/03/drewbert_arenas.html

Leather Pumpkin
http://www.leatherpumpkin.com/2008/03/nba-power-rankings-fans.html

T'Wolves website
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/080322/59/zhe3.html

The Field Report
http://community.foxsports.com/blogs/ryanfield/

Sixers.com - 11/24
http://www.nba.com/sixers/photogallery/snapshot.html

Cavs.com - 12/10
http://www.nba.com/cavaliers/photogallery/phicle_071215_1.html

EBSports
http://www.ebsports.net/blog/?p=195

Pop Gunning
http://popgunning.blogspot.com/2008/03/bball-styles-by-miles.html
 
Deadspin
http://deadspin.com/385077/how-to-get-free-seats-close-enough-to-touch-lebron-but-please-dont
 
Boston Magazine
http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2008/04/30/spanning-the-web-137/
 
NY Knicks Blog
http://www.theknicksblog.com/2008/04/

USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/sports/20070622/b1int_scov22.art.htm

Ball Don't Lie Bedlam Tournament
Round 1
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/BDL-Bedlam-Rd-1-Kobe-Bryant-vs-NBA-super-fa?urn=nba,73050&poll_id=34047&wv=1#poll.34047
Round 2
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/BDL-Bedlam-Rd-2-Pistons-Zoo-Crew-vs-NBA-su?urn=nba,74240
Round 3
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/BDL-Bedlam-Sweet-16-Kirilenko-s-deal-vs-NBA-?urn=nba,74657
Round 4
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/BDL-Bedlam-Elite-8-Mutombo-s-finger-vs-NBA-s?urn=nba,75007