This whole Caitlin Clark thing.

Caitlin Clark gets a sample of WNBA defense against the Connecticut Sun.

People that know me know that I have been involved in the promotion of girls' and women's basketball since the 1970s, not long after the Federal government made Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments the law of the land and established that expenditures for men's and women's athletics had to be equalized as a means of offering equal opportunity to women.

It could have happened sooner, in fact, but I was pretty much an arrogant ass when I was in high school. I had a job covering sports for the local weekly newspaper and I was going to all of the boys' games for free and making money and feeling really good about myself. And then one day, I was asked by my girlfriend (Jackie Cross, who was 5-foot-11, the starting center for the Mansfield High girls' team and a far better athlete than I could have ever hoped to be) why I never covered any of her games.

Jackie Cross (left) in an exhibition game.

"It's only girls' basketball," I said smugly, like she should understand and accept that she was inferior.

I don't mind telling you that the look of anger in her eyes is something that has stayed with me to this day -- and was also a motivating factor long after we parted company for me to change my ways.

When I entered my post-collegiate professional life, I still needed a few reminders of why it was important to start promoting equality for female athletes. But once I got on board, I never jumped off. And it has been one of the most rewarding decisions of my life.

It hasn't always been easy. A lot of male sports fans called me every derogatory name in the book, often questioning my sexual identity, because I wanted to get the girls' games into the paper along with the boys' games. There were even obstacles to overcome within the management structure of the newspaper, some members of which clung to old notions of male dominance in the sports world a lot longer than they should have. After all, we were welcoming another 50 percent of the population into the audience of a section previously deemed off-limits to them.

These days, those arguments are heard a lot less -- but there are still walls of resistance that say women's college and professional basketball are inferior products.

And then came a woman from Des Moines, Iowa, named Caitlin Clark -- and suddenly, huge cracks have appeared in those walls. 

Caitlin Clark became a sensation.

Clark is a 6-foot gym rat who, in case you've been residing under a rock for the last four years, shattered all the NCAA Division I scoring records for the University of Iowa and became the No. 1 overall draft pick in the WNBA. Along the way, she started filling arenas everywhere she went and raised interest in the women's college game to levels it hasn't even come close to over the previous half-century.

And that pissed a lot of people off.

It pissed off the old guard of misogynists that still believe, as the Kansas City Chiefs' placekicker, Harrison Butker says, that women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

It pissed off a lot of Black athletes already in the WNBA, who claimed that the only reason why America was going gaga for Caitlin Clark is because she's the great white hope.

It pissed off players like former LSU star Angel Reese (drafted by Chicago) and teams like the University of South Carolina. They have championship rings and Clark doesn't, but she's white, haven't you heard? 

It pissed off even some of the old-guard white girls in the WNBA, most notably former UConn star Diana Taurasi, who is one of the best women's players in history and yet, in an alternate broadcast of the NCAA title game hosted by her and fellow UConn and WNBA great Sue Bird, made a point that Clark would be in for a rude awakening when she started playing the veteran athletes in the pros on a regular basis. It wasn't an invalid statement, but it did come off as a little mean-spirited by Taurasi, who makes no apologies for having an element of "punk" in her persona.

And I won't even get into the social media debates by people that probably never watched a minute of women's basketball in their lifetimes until this past year. The word "newbies" wasn't coined just for them, but it should have been.

Anyway, Clark played her first regular-season WNBA game last night for the Indiana Fever, right nearby in Uncasville, Conn., against the Connecticut Sun. And in case you're that clueless about the WNBA, the Sun is about the closest thing that Boston can claim to having a franchise. Yes, the city that has 17 NBA championships in its back pocket has never lifted a single finger to play host to a WNBA franchise. 

It wasn't the happiest of career openers for Ms. Clark. Connecticut won the game, 92-71. She finished with 20 points (many in what we'd call "garbage time" when the outcome was all-but certain), but had 10 turnovers (a WNBA record for a player's first game) and just 3 assists. She shot 5-15 from the field overall and was 4-11 from three-point land.

I watched most of it. It wasn't hard to tell at the start of the game that Clark was pressing to make things happen, but she was writing checks that her teammates couldn't cash. She tried her signature no-look drop passes and eye-of-the-needle bullets into the paint, but most of her 10 turnovers were the result of her new teammates being unprepared or unable to handle Clark's feeds.

And she was being hammered. Connecticut played her physically -- sometimes way too physically -- but that's how the pro women's game has evolved and Clark is just going to have to get used to it. 

The bottom line is that it was one game, the first of her career. There's not enough data to make any sort of judgment. But that didn't stop a lot of the Great Unwashed from having their say.

The misogynists said she was a flop and that the league still sucks and we'd all be better off watching reruns of "The A-Team" instead of the WNBA.

The folks that claim Clark's popularity is based in racism were gleeful that Whitey White Girl had her come-uppance in the opener.

The Diana Taurasi acolytes claim that the world owes their heroine apologies for accurately pointing out that Clark would be humbled by veteran ballplayers. 

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Look, as I said, it's only one game. I've come away with some obvious conclusions -- first, that Indiana is not a very good team, which is why they've had the No. 1 draft pick two years in a row. Connecticut, one of the best defensive teams in the W, was fundamentally stronger at almost every position and every needed skill, and the results bore that out. 

Second, it may require some adaptations on the part of the Indiana coaching staff to let Clark be Clark -- moving, creating, taking the big threes -- until her teammates get on the same page with her. I've seen a lot of basketball in the past 60 years and I fully believe that some of what Clark can do with the ball is other-worldly. But the talent level is higher and while I fully expect Clark to adapt, it still behooves her coaches to not break her spirit during that adaptation period. Let Caitlin create.

And finally, it cannot be denied that Clark has brought the game to the masses. The arena at Mohegan Sun was banged out, with 8,910 tickets sold, an all-time record for the Sun franchise. The game also pulled in a TV rating of 2.12 million viewers on ESPN2, which beat the Bruins-Panthers playoff game (2.0 million) that was showing on ESPN. And in the past several weeks, many WNBA franchises have switched games to larger arenas within their host cities to accommodate ticket demand.

Will this evaporate if Clark doesn't instantly become the greatest thing since sliced bread? That's entirely possible. A lot also depends on what college ball presents in the post-Clark era -- and for my money, I'm hoping that UConn's Paige Bueckers has a tremendous and injury-free final year to keep the momentum of the women's game building, because before her knees betrayed her, Paige Buckets was Caitlin Clark before there was a Caitlin Clark.

In the meantime, the WNBA is talking expansion. San Francisco and Toronto are already on board, and the league has revealed that NBA cities Philadelphia, Portland, Denver and Miami are under consideration, as well as non-affiliated Nashville.

But where is Boston? 

One of the most liberal cities in the nation, a bastion of the women's movement and the capital of a state which has a female governor and a female U.S. Senator, does not have a WNBA franchise. And that's ridiculous.

That's why I've been saying for some time now that if Celtics' owner Wyc Grousbeck doesn't want to get on board with the future, perhaps the richest Boston team owner should. Patriots' owner Robert Kraft is worth $11 billion according to the latest list of American billionaires compiled by Forbes Magazine, and his NFL investment basically takes care of itself no matter how bad the team is. The Revolution soccer team is nothing more than an afterthought in the Kraft empire, or else they would have already built a soccer-specific stadium somewhere and spent ungodly sums to bring championships to the Revs' tiny fan base.

Kraft can do better things with his time.

Almost every year around April (well, four times since 2018), Kraft has welcomed the girls' basketball team from Foxboro High School to look at his trophies and take the same tour of the stadium to honor the state championships the Warriors have won. It's almost old hat. But if Kraft, now 82, wants to add positively to his legacy, maybe he should seize upon the moment and spend some of that $11 billion to bring the WNBA to Boston.

It's not a huge investment -- other than rent at the TD Garden, the players get ridiculously small salaries and there are only 13 or 14 of them. It's also a short season at a time of year where there's little else going on other than the disappointing Red Sox. Above all else, it might help Kraft buy back some of the good will among women that he may have lost as a result of his embarrassing dalliances at that massage parlor that Tom Brady doesn't want me to joke about. 

C'mon, Bob. You know you can't take it with you. And Jonathan is just going to mess everything up anyway. Do something good for the female athletes of the region that are begging for opportunities.

Odds and Ends: A few related thoughts to end this diatribe.

* Old friend Sarah Behn has a new job, and it's back in high school coaching.

Foxboro's Sarah Behn.

The one-time leading scorer in the history of Massachusetts girls' basketball (2,562 points at Foxboro, another 2,523 points at Boston College) has accepted the top girls' job at Archbishop Williams High School in Braintree.

Behn has been inactive in the coaching ranks since leaving Brown University in 2020, but she hasn't been out of the game, running an AAU program and giving instruction at her new camps. She coached in the past at North Attleboro High, Framingham State, Franklin Pierce, Franklin High, Foxboro High, UMass-Lowell and Brown.

Archbishop Williams, formerly a terror in MIAA Division 3, has been enduring hard times lately. Last year, D1 state champ Bishop Feehan got out to a 27-2 lead in the first quarter of one of its two Catholic Central League games against the Bishops (don't call them the Archies!). So it's clear that Behn will have her work cut out for her.

Best of luck to the best high school athlete I every covered, in any sport.

* My best argument for WNBA expansion may be the plight of a former local standout, Lauren Manis of Franklin, who starred for four seasons at Bishop Feehan and went on to become the only Holy Cross basketball player of either gender to score more than 2,000 career points and grab more than 1,000 rebounds.

Feehan's Lauren Manis

Upon graduating from Holy Cross, Manis became a draft pick of the Las Vegas Aces in 2020. She was released by the Aces in training camp, and went on to play professionally overseas. She had another shot with the Aces in a subsequent camp and drew interest from the Seattle Storm, but in each instance, she was released and returned to the international circuit.

Manis, a 6-1 forward with a great long-range shot, has played in Belgium, Hungary, Israel, Greece and is currently in her second tour of duty with the Halcones team based in Xalapa, Mexico. At every stop she has been a double-figure scorer and rebounder, and she clearly has the skills to play at the next level. But there are a lot of even more talented athletes in the WNBA and not enough teams or roster spots available. 

With two more teams coming on board in short order and a third very likely soon after, maybe there's hope that Manis, who'll be 26 on May 29 and is in the prime of her career, may have a shot to finally get to the W.

See you all soon with another post and podcasts as well.

Mark Farinella has covered women's basketball at the high school and college level since 1977. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.

What's old is new again.

Mansfield High School, 54 years old and still going strong.

I've been reading stories in my old newspaper about scoreboard replacements and the need for new schools and how "the taxpayers are getting screwed!" and so on, and I just have to chuckle.

Anyone in a town whose last "new" high school was built in the 1970s has absolutely no right to complain about anything. Unless they spent the money to properly maintain their "new" high school over the many years since it was built, they've gotten their money's worth. And if they had spent the extra money, maybe they wouldn't be faced with the need to build a new high school now.

I just want to point out a few facts about my hometown that has preserved it from some of this angst -- and not just because I think the town is superior to its neighbors (it is, of course), but just because what they did in Mansfield over the latter half of the 20th century seems to have made so much more sense now.

My dad's high school, now the Town Hall.

When my father entered Mansfield High School in the fall of 1933, the school he attended was 21 years old. It was built in 1912 -- yes, the year that Fenway Park went up and the Titanic went down -- and my father graduated in 1937. He got married in 1945, moved back to Mansfield, went to work in the family clothing store and in 1954, I arrived on the planet -- the same year that Mansfield opened a new high school on East Street.

The old Mansfield High School still stands today. It was repurposed into the Park Row Elementary School for many years, and then was renovated from top to bottom to become the town hall in 1997.

I entered the East Street school in 1967 as an eighth-grader (yes, we listened to the World Series games between the Red Sox and Cardinals over the intercoms), but already, the town had looked at at growing enrollment numbers and realized that the school would soon be obsolete. Over winter vacation in the 1969-70 school year, the second Mansfield High School on East Street opened. I graduated from that school in June 1971.

The Qualters School added new wings.

So, the school at the South Common lasted 42 years as MHS. The first one on East Street served in that capacity for just 16 years (although through the perception of youth, I thought it had been there forever before we moved out of it). It, too, has been repurposed as the Harold L. Qualters Middle School, named after the former MHS principal.

And the current MHS has been in place for 54 years and is still going strong. It's been renovated and enlarged (some of the enlargements aren't needed right now), and boilers and roofs have been repaired. And we're even getting around to finally replacing the 54-year-old gym floor this summer for the use of our outstanding basketball teams and other related necessities.

So why aren't we talking about the need for a new high school as neighboring North Attleboro is? 

Well, maybe it's because we paid when needed to take care of this building. We didn't decide to artificially lessen the tax rate by letting things slide when maintaining a building was necessary.

North's history of high schools is similar to Mansfield's. Mansfield had two older wooden buildings serve as the high school before the Park Row school was opened to accommodate changing times. North had two high school buildings burn down before the one downtown (now called the Community School) was opened in 1919. It lasted as NAHS for 54 years before the current school opened on Wilson Whitty Way, and that school is now 51 years old. 

The debate is ramping up in North whether to build a new high school or simply renovate (although it looks like a new building is becoming inevitable). And thus, in a town where the bottom line on the tax bill has always been artificially low, taxpayers are facing high sticker shock because not only are they likely to have to pay $250 million for a new high school in the near future, they are also having to foot the largest share of the bill for a new Tri-County Regional Vocational-Technical High School in Franklin because they send the largest number of students to it.

Someone plug it in!

So when people learned last week that the new $300,000 scoreboard at the high school football field might not work because there isn't enough electricity flowing into the stadium project to power everything, it was panic in the streets in Big Red Country. I won't bore you with all of the details or the reactions, but in a nutshell, North has spent $6 million or so to renovate the football stadium. Of course, people with axes to grind complain that that is causing the potholes in the streets to go unrepaired. And now there's a subculture emerging that says that families that don't have kids in the schools shouldn't have to pay for public education.

If you want to amuse yourself, just go to The Sun Chronicle's Facebook page and read the comments below stories about the North school building projects. Most telling are the number of respondents that react like this is the first time any of these issues have ever come up, even though something like the stadium project has been underway since the stands were condemned in 2018. You know what they say about "an informed electorate," right? 

Hey, this may happen soon enough in Mansfield, too. At some point, the needs of a 21st century education will outstrip the infrastructure of a building built in 1970, no matter how much we try to keep up with the changes. I may not be around by then, but it would be interesting to see where the town could build a new high school. There's not enough room next to the existing one to put up a new one and keep the old one operating. Across the street, the Robinson and Jordan-Jackson elementary schools take up a lot of space. Town-owned Memorial Park on Hope Street might have to be sacrificed to maintain a campus atmosphere for Mansfield's school facilities, but surrounding wetlands and nearby residential properties make that a can of worms to be opened another day.

But in the meantime, there is no panic in the streets in Hornetville. Not just because of what's available to read, either; people in this town seem to have an honest commitment to their children and the quality of their education, not to mention a fuller understanding of what it means to live in a "community."

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

Tom Brady didn't help his national image with that curse-filled Netflix roast.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while cursing the heavens for the cloud cover Friday that prevented me from seeing the Northern Lights for the first time since the late 1950s, when my parents brought me to the Plainville Drive-In to see a movie, and all I could do was look out of the windows of our '56 Chevy and marvel at the light show in the skies:

* I was not terribly impressed with the recent roast of Tom Brady that appeared on Netflix. In a nutshell, I thought it was overly profane, sometimes in very bad taste, and Brady didn't do himself any favors by coming off as a conceited douchebag during his roast-ending rebuttal time.

Maybe I'm not qualified to judge a modern comedy roast. I remember watching the old Dean Martin roasts on NBC when I was young, and those were sometimes funny and sometimes pretty boring, sanitized as they were for the network-television audience. And I'm not a total prude, or else I wouldn't be able to tolerate any number of the specials that appear on HBO and Showtime. I know that comedy today is "edgy," and pulls no punches. I know they use the words that you couldn't use on over-the-air TV. I've been known to use a few of those myself, although when I call Donald Trump a "diseased fuck," I really don't mean it to be funny and I don't apologize for it. Truth is my defense.

But for most of the Brady roast, I got the feeling that host Kevin Hart, some of the comedian guests and even some of Brady's former teammates made a point of dropping F-bombs just for the sake of doing it. I don't know how many times "fuck" was said during the course of the three hours, but I might actually re-watch it and use a hand-clicker for the purpose of counting them all.

"Wolf" was filled to the hilt with F-bombs.

By the way, the recent movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, is generally recognized as having set a record for big-budget mainstream flicks that have used the F-word prodigiously. Technically, it's regarded as the No. 3 film of all time (there's a documentary and a low-budget movie that no one saw supposedly ahead of it) with 569 uses. Others in the top 10 include "Uncut Gems" with Adam Sandler (560), Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam" (435) and "Casino" with Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone (422). Interestingly, both "Casino" and "Wolf" were directed by Martin Scorsese. 

Anyway, I did enjoy the segment in which Nikki Glaser delivered her jokes. She's known as someone that unabashedly pokes fun at her own sex life and holds back very little, but there's also something endearing about how she does it. She's funny. I also think that Brady's predecessor at QB, Drew Bledsoe, was engaging and extremely funny. 

Not everyone else was.

I did my share of cringes over jokes based upon Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder and killed himself in his jail cell. Maybe that's because I was covering the Patriots when all that happened and I found very little that was funny about it, so the jokes fell flat.

There was also an overabundance of "dick jokes" and a few too many references about Brady possibly being gay because he's such a pretty boy. It just got tiresome. The references to ex-wife Gisele Bundchen and her supposed dalliance with a martial-arts instructor seemed awfully mean-spirited at times. And yet Brady chose not to protect the mother of his children (well, most of them) from the barrage, and instead had the gall to tell one of the comedians not to tell another massage-parlor joke about Patriots' owner Robert Kraft, whose well-publicized side-trips to the Orchids of Asia spa in Jupiter, Fla., is the stuff of high comedy because of its hypocrisy.

For the most part, however, the roast seemed like an opportunity for these athletes to act like immature schoolboys once more, just because they could. It was on a streaming service, where anything goes. 

I'll admit it, I laughed at some of the jokes. I even found myself grinning at a few that Bill Belichick told, although he still needs to work on his delivery. A lot, in fact.

It came as no surprise, however, that Peyton Manning could walk on the stage and come away unsullied by the lowest-common-denominator tone of the roast. Manning is one of those rare individuals that can walk into a room and deadpan his way through a multitude of comedic lines and leave everyone completely entertained.

I could go on and on, but I'm sure many readers will consider these thoughts the ramblings of a humorless old fart. In fact, many of my former colleagues in sports journalism praised the roast as a tour de force and a sign that real comedy is back! 

Well, there's no accounting for taste. 

I admit, I'm not a fan of runaway political correctness. In today's overly-sensitive climate, a movie like "Blazing Saddles" could never be green-lit -- and I'm of the firm belief that Mel Brooks' classic may have been the funniest movie ever made.

But by the same token, I'm not a fan of runaway profanity or bathroom humor. My tastes clearly run somewhere in the middle. The jokes that ran to the high side of that determining border made me laugh. The others just bored me. I wasn't invested enough to be offended.

I'm not sure it was the best decision for Brady to agree to do this. If his intention was to improve his image to the 95 percent of America that already hates him, I don't think it helped much. But it wasn't his worst decision of the night.

The worst decision was the awful hairpiece he was wearing. It made William Shatner's rug look completely natural by comparison. I mean, that had to be a hairpiece, right? Why in God's name would he want his real hair to look that bad?

Ba-dum DUM! Thank you, thank you, ladies and germs. Don't forget to tip your waitresses. And try the veal!

* Speaking of jokes, sometimes I chuckle at the many told these days at the expense of the Boeing Corporation, which has had a spectacular run of bad luck with the problems its commercial airliners have experienced of late. I guess I'm lucky to be laughing, because I've never been on a plane that lost an emergency exit door in mid-flight. 

Although ... 

The fateful trip to Florida boarded at JFK.

When I was in my early teens, I flew with my parents on a Boeing 727 "Whisperjet" flown by Northeast Airlines bound for Jacksonville, Fla., for our annual visit with the grandparents. Somewhere over North Carolina, the cargo door came ajar, resulting in a full depressurization of the aircraft, the loss of breathable oxygen, and the need to actually use the oxygen masks that did, as promised, drop from the overhead compartments. Long story short, no one was hurt other than a few ruptured eardrums and a few panic-induced fainting episodes. And a lot of screaming once the pilots leveled the plane at 10,000 feet and the air was breathable again.

I figured that from that episode, I had expended my lifetime storehouse of potential airline calamities, and I was never afraid to fly thereafter. And that's a good thing, because I flew a lot over the years to come.

But the point of this commentary is that I feel badly for Boeing because it was one of the largest contributors to the war effort in the 1940s, and one of the main reasons why we, and not the Germans or Japanese, emerged victorious.

Boeing produced two of the most famous bombers in warfare history, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress as well as contributing to the design and production of a number of other warplanes used during World War II. Both gave the United States a huge advantage in that they were the long-range bombers that the Axis powers failed to develop. In the Cold War era, Boeing produced the ultimate long-range bomber, the B-52 Stratofortress -- which, remarkably, remains the vanguard of American air power today.

And of course, Boeing has produced the most iconic jets of the passenger aircraft industry -- the 707, which revolutionized air travel; the 727, which brought jet service to smaller cities and shorter routes; the 737, still the versatile workhorse of the fleet; the 747, the wide-bodied "queen of the skies," and the 757, 767, 777 and 787, many of which make up the bulk of airline fleets today.

I have flown on all of those except the latter two, which are the newest widebodies devoted mostly to transoceanic travel. I probably would fly on them if I had any real desire to go anywhere. But I see them flying over my house every day at about 38,000 feet (yes, one of my hobbies is plane-watching).

No doubt, Boeing's production standards have slipped some. The problems that get the big headlines could destroy the company if not corrected. And I imagine nobody is shedding any tears in the corporate offices of Airbus, whose planes I have flown frequently as well. It's my fervent hope that Boeing can rediscover the greatness that made it a world-wide leader in aviation -- and end the jokes.

* I can say without fear of contradiction that I have absolutely no interest in that trial involving a woman from Mansfield who is accused of killing her cop boyfriend at a party in Canton some time back. But it's definitely the sort of in-the-gutter crap that will hold a particular audience and never let it go. 

I just wish the newspapers and broadcast media would stop calling her "... of Mansfield" in every reference. She's not a native. And it's giving my hometown an undeserved bad name.

* In a similar vein, porn star Stormy Daniels had her day in court this past week during the Trump hush money trial in New York. The trial is about whether our former president authorized the payment of $130,000 to keep her from revealing her story of a sexual tryst long before the 2016 election, but with the potential of derailing his candidacy. If it can be proven that Trump funded the payoff through campaign funds, he's guilty of a felony -- one of many with which he has been charged in various cities.

Stormy got her day in the sun.

The best part of the coverage was watching the anchors of the various news services cringe at having to read some of the testimony, as Ms. Daniels described the fateful evening in which she had sex with the married Trump (whose mail-order wife, Melania, had just given birth to Barron) in a hotel room at a golf tournament.

You want comedy? Here's real comedy. Watching seasoned pros like CNN's Jake Tapper struggling to read highlights of the testimony about Trump changing from silk pajamas to a T-shirt and boxers before bedding the actress was just plain hilarious. And then, the networks started calling the testimony "salacious" (Webster's definition: "rousing or appealing to sexual desire or imagination"). I'm not sure that's really the proper word, because any description at all of a tryst between Ms. Daniels and that orange-hued whale carcass sends my imagination careening in the opposite direction from arousal.

And remember, Stormy had been enjoined against providing the truly salacious details -- particularly a description of Trump's genitalia, which she had previously described in public discourse as being comparable to a small mushroom. 

While that was never entered into the court record, we have been graced with the knowledge that two nicknames for Trump have been forever codified into record -- that some of Trump's inner circle called him "Donald von Shitzenpantz" as a reference to his widely-rumored incontinence, and "Orange Turd," which appeared in one of Stormy's tweets.

Remember when candidates didn't have to be felons to lose elections? Mike Dukakis rode in a tank wearing an ill-fitting helmet and looked like a fool. Howard Dean shrieked weirdly in joy after winning a primary and was immediately shamed from his race. And yet the Orange Turd has cheated on all of his wives, supported white supremacists, taken reproductive rights and health care away from women through his Supreme Court appointments, and is still ready to sell out the country to the ultra-rich, and he's still a viable candidate to oust an incumbent?

Maybe Robert Kennedy Jr. isn't the only one with brain worm problems. Nearly half of the electorate must be off its rocker to still be supporting this worthless bastard.

* Brain worm! Say it over and over, with feeling. That's the lamest excuse I've ever heard. For anything.

* Odds and Ends: Here are a few quick thoughts to polish off this missive.

Old friend Megan Morant of the WWE's television productions (Megan O'Brien Connolly when she worked for the Patriots' media productions; "Morant" is her stage name) is not only a fellow former Northwestern Wildcat in good standing, but she is also a life-long Chicago White Sox fan, and she got to throw out the first ball at a Sox game recently. Must have been a great thrill! ... Happy birthday wishes of the last week go to my current boss, Peter Gay of North TV, and the Boston Globe's Christopher Price, who's a beat writer covering the Patriots and a terrific guy. ... My old newspaper lost a couple of cherished alumni recently. Veteran news editor Larry Kessler passed unexpectedly after having sought treatment for chest pain and breathing difficulties. He was 71. And former reporter Don MacManus, who was on staff when I joined the newspaper in 1977, was killed in a tragic bicycling accident. He left the paper to become a lawyer and was Seekonk's town counsel for many years. He was 76. Both are missed. ... Former Bishop Feehan hoop standout Lauren Manis is back playing pro ball in Mexico with the Halcones team based in Xalapa. It's her second time with the team. There's no better argument for WNBA expansion than Lauren, who was drafted by the Las Vegas Aces out of Holy Cross, was cut, re-signed for another training camp and then had a tryout with Seattle. But there just aren't enough roster spots available, so she continues to play as a pro all over the world. I really hope she gets another shot at the W. ... Maybe it's time for Bob Kraft to stop simply giving tours of his stadium to a girls' team from Foxboro that's won four state titles, and maybe invest some of his $11 billion (according to Forbes magazine) in bringing a WNBA franchise to Boston as a real and lasting tribute to young female athletes that don't have enough opportunities to continue their careers. 

Next podcast, coming soon. And there will be a few good ones coming down the pike. Stay tuned.

Mark Farinella spent 42 years covering the New England Patriots for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., and the next time he laughs at a joke told by Bill Belichick, it will be the first time. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.

A tribute to Jack Edwards: The Owner's Box, Ep. 18

Bruins' TV voice Jack Edwards has announced his retirement after 19 years. 

There has been a torrent of famous announcer retirements in recent days, with Celtics' TV voice Mike Gorman signing off with the Celtics' final regular-season game, Yankees' long-time announcer John Sterling calling it a career today, and then another famous name announcing his departure just a few hours ago, Bruins' TV voice Jack Edwards.

Of those three gentlemen, Jack Edwards is the only one I know personally. And it truly saddens me that he is giving up what he called his "dream job" after 19 years of calling Bruins games.

As a means of tribute, I am re-posting links to a podcast I did with Jack on March 30, 2020 -- just at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when all levels of sport were thrown into chaos by the disruption of the widespread illness. It was a far-ranging session, in which we spoke about his background in hockey, his passion for broadcasting, and what changes in televising the games the pandemic might cause. And he even gave me a few tips on how to be a play-by-play announcer, which at the time, my efforts were in their infancy.

I first met Jack when he came to WJAR-TV in Providence (Channel 10) as a weekend sports anchor many, many years ago. Our paths didn't cross that often over the years as he was a hockey broadcaster and I was a football writer, covering the Patriots for 42 years for The Sun Chronicle. But in my job, I met his wife, Lisa, who among her many jobs was a producer for the NFL Network and was frequently stationed in Foxboro when the Patriots were in their heyday.

It was through my friendship with Lisa that Jack and I became reacquainted. They even invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner at their home in Connecticut a few years back, when a quirk in the schedule meant that I didn't have a game to announce on that holiday for the first time since trading in my notepad for a microphone. I happily joined Jack, Lisa, their three children, and Jack's mother -- a brilliant and delightful woman who could light up a room well into her 90s. She passed recently, regrettably.

An anyone that watches the B's on TV knows, Jack has struggled with his voice recently. His enunciation has slowed and he sometimes has trouble getting words out. He recently told the Boston Globe that he's had a phalanx of medical tests and none of them have revealed any definitive cause for his struggles. He has soldiered through and continued to call games, but hockey is an incredibly fast-paced game and Jack always did an energetic, radio-style call, offering a fully-fleshed-out description of the action rather than just letting the pictures tell the story. 

It must be killing Jack to know he can't do the broadcast as he has done throughout his career. He's a youthful 67 (three years younger than I am), and I'm sure that when we did this podcast back in 2020, he anticipated many more years behind the microphone.

We've been fortunate in this region to have many great radio and TV announcers. I entered the radio audience with Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin on the Red Sox, Johnny Most on the Celtics, Bob Wilson on the Bruins and Gil Santos on the Patriots. I was fortunate enough to meet Santos in his second stint with the Patriots and develop a friendship with him, unknowingly picking his brain for pointers for a broadcasting career I didn't even know I would have at the time.

A lot of solid announcers have emerged in the Boston market over the years, and I would do them a disservice if I mentioned some and not others. The truly good ones stick around for years, and that's what happened to Jack Edwards. His preparation and delivery were exemplary. Some might quibble with some of his occasional soliloquys and a generous touch of homerism, but let's face it -- if you are the announcer for the Boston Bruins, your audience really wants you to love the Boston Bruins. It doesn't want a play-by-play guy to sit in the booth like some bland, nondescript soul that just trucked in from Albuquerque.

Jack Edwards gave genuine enthusiasm to his audience, as well as a deep love for the sport he called. I wish the best in the upcoming playoff series against the Maple Leafs, his last, and I wish him nothing but the best in his retirement.

Please enjoy this repeat presentation of Episode 18. 

The Owner's Box, Ep. 53.

It's been more than three months since I last posted an episode of the Original Gangsta of Fearless podcasts, our audio-only "The Owner's Box," so it was about time that I caught you up with some breaking news ... most notably that the eyepatch I've been wearing to help deal with a slight injury to my left eye is about to become a thing of the past.

I also take a look back at the recently-concluded basketball season and welcome old friend Lisa Downs to the podcast to talk for about 10 minutes about her team's fourth state championship since 2018. And there's even more -- and we managed to get it in in less than an hour.

That's "The Owner's Box" -- part of your nutritious breakfast. Why not sign up for it at any of the major podcasting platforms? It's free and it will be delivered to your smartphone the very second it's posted.

The Owner's Box ... After Dark, Ep. 55.

Glasses and a stylish leather patch.

Just two days and a new episode, you ask?

Well, there's a reason. From the accompanying photo, you can see a significant change in my appearance. It's because I suffered a minor injury to my left eye, and as stated elsewhere on this blog, it has forced me to the announcing sidelines for the time being. 

I was scheduled to do three games on North TV over the next few days, but the current distortion in my left eye's field of vision makes it impossible to follow the action in a fast-moving game such as lacrosse. 

But I hope to be back behind the microphone in two weeks for a baseball game -- I think I can call baseball out of one eye, but we'll find out -- and I'm pretty sure that I'll have the full use of my eye come the fall and winter sports seasons of 2024-25.

The new After Dark episode provides a full explanation of my situation. Again, the prognosis is good -- I just didn't want anyone I know to be shocked if they run into me (or, if I accidentally bump into them from a lack of depth perception) over the next few weeks.

Please watch the episode -- and while you're at it, go back and watch Episode 54 again. You'll never know that I conducted those two on-camera interviews like I was watching "Dancing with the Stars" in my left eye all along.

The Owner's Box ... After Dark, Ep. 54

 

Lisa Downs, left, joined me on the resumption of my video podcast. What a surprise!

It took me almost 2½ full years to do it, and maybe if I had been a little more curious about what was actually stored inside my computer, I could have shaved a considerable amount of time off that, but we've finally finished my first video podcast (knows with pride as "The Owner's Box ... After Dark") since it unwittingly winked off the interwebs in September 2021.

This is Episode 54, and it's almost 73 minutes long (don't worry, future ones will be shorter). The first third of it features me making excuses for the lengthy disappearance of the format, while the second and third segments are devoted almost completely to high school basketball -- first a review of the seasons of the King Philip boys and girls and the Mansfield boys and girls, including some nifty highlight video, then a long and loving look at the Division 3 state championship girls' basketball team from Foxboro High.

Joining me as guests in the episode are my broadcast partner on North TV and Mansfield Cable Access, Alex Salachi, and a frequent and welcome guest on all my podcasts, Foxboro coach Lisa Downs. 

Clink on the link below to view the podcast, and I promise, there will be more to come!

It was a very good year, with more to come.

Foxboro High's Izzy Chamberlin, left, chats with an old man with a microphone.

When I got home from Lowell on Saturday night, I checked my smartphone even before getting out of the car to see if my friends at Foxboro Cable Access had posted my post-game interview with members of the Foxboro High School girls' basketball team, which had just won the Division 3 state title a couple of hours earlier.

They did, posting that as well as a highlight reel -- and the first highlight made me smile.

It was of Foxboro senior Isabelle "Izzy" Chamberlin grabbing a rebound off a teammate's miss and putting the ball into the basket for the Warriors' first points of the game. And why, you may ask, was that so important? 

It was because the official scorer working the game for the MIAA missed Izzy's putback, and instead credited the basket to her teammate, Cam Collins. The scorer may have been the only person in the 7,800-seat Tsongas Center to have seen it that way, but the "official" record of the game will not credit Izzy for that basket. 

Fortunately, a phalanx of reporters saw the basket as it unfolded, and the "official" account will be widely ignored in most accounts of Foxboro's 66-43 victory over Norwell.

The reason why it meant so much to me, however, is because as someone that watched almost every Foxboro game for the past two seasons and did the play-by-play call for most of the Warriors' playoff games, I did not want to see Chamberlin get cheated out of any accomplishment. Izzy is the classic under-heralded (but not unappreciated) member of a successful team that doesn't often get the big ink or the long video interviews, but without her hard work, the team would not be anywhere as near as successful. Even though her name was misspelled in the official program ("Chamberlain" instead of Chamberlin), Izzy is one of those players that deserves her due any way and any time she can get it.

As is usually the case in situations like this, I was more concerned about it than Izzy was. I told her in our post-game interview of how her basket was unfortunately missed by the scorer, and her response was entirely predictable. 

"It's all right," she said. "It was my last game, so ... it's all right."

She knew what she had done. She knew what her teammates had done, too. It was one part of the whole package that has led Foxboro to two straight championship seasons and four since 2018.

Chamberlin and fellow seniors Collins, Erin Foley and Mackenzie Burton have been part of the program for almost a quarter of their young lives. They grew up watching head coach Lisa Downs lead other teams to state championships, and as Chamberlin said, there was an ethereal quality to knowing it was over.

"It's really surreal," she said. "All along, growing up, we've been watching Coach Downs coach and then we (seniors) came in and we watched them in state championship games, and ever since we got here it's been surreal because I've always wanted to do this."

Downs played at FHS as Lisa Garland in the 1980s, then coached at Foxboro with Paul Mahoney and Dan Damish before leaving to raise three boys. She returned to the program in 2006 with Sarah Behn as head coach, and had two separate stints on the staff before Behn left to take the UMass-Lowell job. 

Downs was the logical replacement upon Behn's departure, having been an all-star player at FHS, a defensive whiz at Southeastern Massachusetts University, a former Foxboro assistant and also the chief executive of Foxboro Youth Basketball for a while. She's had the post since 2012 and has made the most of it, winning the state Division 2 titles in 2018, 2020 and 2023 -- and then running roughshod over Division 3, where Foxboro was placed this year because of an enrollment-based realignment.

In her 13 seasons, not only has Downs, now 55, won 230 games (most of any Foxboro girls' coach), but she's also the longest-tenured coach in the program's post-Title IX history. She has built a dynasty with multiple groups of players and her as the only thread connecting them all -- something that can't be claimed by the "other" dynasty in town, the football one that relied upon one player to keep it all together over 20 years.

Collins holds the trophy.

Tradition means a lot to Downs, and to her athletes by association. It's why Collins, a senior guard that has been the most reliable and consistent player in the area (maybe even the state) over the past two seasons, completely dominated the second half when what started as a Foxboro rout grew a little too close for comfort by halftime when the Clippers outscored the Warriors 20-14 in the second quarter.

Collins scored 19 of her game-high 25 points in the second half to put the Norwell counter-attack in the history books. Even from the highest reaches of the Tsongas Center, from where we were broadcasting, we could see the steely-eyed resolve on her face as she called for the ball time after time down the stretch.

It wasn't necessarily a conscious thing, Collins said.

"I guess I was just doing it," she said, "My teammates are always there supporting me, so I guess when I had momentum in the second half, they just gave me the ball and I was able to perform."

Downs is no fool. When she saw that look in her star guard's eyes, she let Collins do her thing.

"I know when she wants the ball, and she wanted the ball tonight," Downs said. "Whether she was going to be scoring or she was going to be looking for someone, she wanted to make sure that the ball was going to be touching her hands. When she wants it, I let her have it because she's a senior, and she's not going to do anything crazy out there."

Erin Foley is another hard-working senior whose contributions don't always show up on the scoreboard but are invaluable -- including, for instance, the eight assists she he had in last year's Division 2 title game against Dracut. 

This year, Foley ran into some early foul trouble, but after a few brief moments on the sidelines, she returned to play with no noticeable lessening of her defensive intensity.

Confidence is not a problem for the young Ms. Foley, who will continue her outstanding soccer career next year at Stonehill College.

"I knew we were going to win, so I just wanted to have fun out there," she said. "We never lose. We're not doing to go down. Even if we let up a few points here and there in that little run, it doesn't matter because no team is going to beat us now."

If you think that's cocky, well, former Patriots' coach Bill Parcells had a good explanation for that.

"Confidence is demonstrated ability," the Tuna would say frequently. Foley has demonstrated her ability innumerable times over her four-year career.

Kenzie Burton knows the value of teammates.

Maybe some of the best comments, however, came from Burton. She's a senior that battled long and hard to get on the court despite a multitude of knee problems, and she was able to score only eight career points over that time. But while relegated to a support role, the support and encouragement she lent to all of the players proved to be an invaluable resource for them -- and also a source of great joy for her.

"Of course, I would have loved to contribute," she said. "But honestly, watching them play ... I'm so lucky to be able to do that. Cam, Erin and Izzy, I played with them since kindergarten, and they're the best team I've ever seen. I'm going to miss it so much, but I'm going to be able to tell everyone how awesome it was to be a part of this team ... I feel I'm the luckiest person in the world to have a front-row seat to that."

I was also pretty lucky to have a front-row seat (or back row, depending upon the broadcast location) for this year's basketball, too.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to broadcast a Bishop Feehan girls' game this year, but I definitely want to tip my cap to Coach Amy Dolores and her Shamrocks for bringing home their second state title since 2016. Maddy Steel, Julia Webster, Charlotte Adams-Lopez and their teammates proved a lot to me in their 48-40 victory over Wachusett for the Division 1 crown. 

Wachusett played both Foxboro and Feehan in the Comcast Tournament up in Woburn at the end of February, and I charted the Feehan-Wachusett semifinal. Feehan had no answers at all for Wachusett's bigs or its talented, Annapolis-bound point guard, Mary Gibbons, and the Shamrocks lost 76-45. But Dolores hit the films and her team executed the corrections on Friday night, and the result was a state championship.

I also saw some good basketball played by the King Philip boys and girls, and another outstanding season by the Mansfield boys. And I have a lot of hope going forward for a very young Mansfield girls' team that reached the Division 2 Sweet 16 this year. A pretty solid freshman class joined the varsity and grew steadily as competitors over the course of the season, and I'm eager to see what the future will hold for my hometown Hornets.

Lots of high fives in the huddle.

But, of course, it all comes back to Foxboro for me. Whether it was the first wave of championship teams headed by athletes such as Dianne Cavanaugh, Sandy White and Ellen Corliss, to the late '80s terrific troika of Sarah Behn, Holly Grinnell and Jody Reilly, to the 1995 D3 title team that won in double overtime over Lee (and I have not yet forgotten Jamie Kelley's miracle three-pointer to earn the second OT), the blue-and-gold thread has had a consistent run of success for much of my adult life.

Even as I am clearly in the late autumn of my years, I am still wildly entertained and enthralled by Foxboro girls' basketball. And if you think the Warriors are going to fold up their tents and go away with the graduation of this year's seniors, think again. 

Collins' 1,296 career points may depart for Rider University, but Kailey Sullivan will be back to add to her three-year total of 1,288. Towering center Addie Ruter, who scored 17 points against Norwell, will also return. So will Ava Hill, Adrianna Porazzo, Alaysia Drummonds, Brynn Allen, Camila Burton, Reese Hassman, Keagan Maguire and Kylie Sampson -- all battle-tested, and all feeding off the strength and confidence that comes from being part of a dynasty. The cupboard will not be bare. 

This was, as Frank Sinatra might sing, a very good year. I don't think I've seen the last of those.

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: All photographs in this post were screen grabs from the Foxboro Cable Access post-game interview post on YouTube.)

I really love this time of year.

Trevor Foley lived up to the hype.

For the first time in this basketball tournament season, I have run into a scheduling conundrum.

I've been calling the games for the boys' and girls' basketball teams from King Philip Regional High School and Mansfield High School, as well as the girls' basketball team from Foxboro High (for Foxboro Cable Access). In the first round, both KP and Mansfield played same-site doubleheaders, so both North TV (for KP) and Mansfield Cable Access took the "two birds with one stone" approach, and Alex Salachi and I were able to lend our announcing skills to all four of those games.

The KP boys and girls won their preliminary-round games (the KP boys in a last-second thriller over Braintree), as did the Mansfield teams later in the week, and we were off to a rousing start.

KP went on the road after their prelims, so those two home games ended our North TV season. And the Mansfield girls had to travel 100 miles to the west to Northampton High for their Round of 16 game, which I did attend but we did not televise. They lost by four points, but that team is very young and will be a force next season.

To this point, there had been no conflicts with my work for Mansfield or Foxboro because the MIAA had done a very good job of keeping the Division 2 boys' games and the Division 3 girls' games on different nights. But unfortunately, that has come to a screeching halt in the quarterfinal rounds.

This Friday night, the top-seeded Foxboro girls will play host to No. 9 Pentucket at 6 p.m. 

Meanwhile, the No. 5 Mansfield boys will travel to No. 4 Somerset Berkley Regional, opening tap scheduled for 6:30.

Because my longest-standing commitment is to Mansfield Cable Access since I became a cable TV announcer in 2018, I will be heading to Somerset to announce that game. But I will be crossing my fingers and toes not only for the Hornets to win, but also for the Foxboro girls to continue their tournament quest to the semifinal round as well. And then, if past practice can serve as a guide, maybe the fact that the teams are in different divisions will prompt the MIAA to schedule their games on different nights next week.

If there ever was a time when I wish I could clone myself, and do both games at the same time, this is it.

I really enjoy watching both teams. 

Cam Collins has led the attack.

Foxboro, of course, has been on a mission during their scorched-earth path through the Division 3 field. They scored 75 points on a 4-20 Bellingham team that really had no business being in the tournament, then put up 95 on a Wilmington team that was supposed to be a lot better. And no, the starters weren't in all the time. A full contingent of substitutes played a lot in the second quarter of both games, and then drove home from midway in the third quarter to the finish.

It's clear to me that Cam Collins, Erin Foley, Kailey Sullivan, Izzy Chamberlin, Addie Ruter and the rest of the Warriors are totally focused upon one goal. They wanted to defend their Division 2 title of last year, but were dropped down to Division 3 because of their enrollment, and now they want to make a statement about that decision.

Meanwhile in my hometown, things were going swimmingly for the Hornets through their first week, but then they learned that starting senior guard Davon Sanders -- who had been having a monster season, averaging 19 points a game and having several performances in the high-20s -- would be out last night against Burlington with an illness. 

Stepping up to the plate were senior forward Trevor Foley with a career-high 31 points and 15 rebounds, and junior guard Nate Creedon, whose 18 points were just one off his career high (and that was set in the first game of this season). The rest of the Hornets showed great resolve and determination to play outstanding defense and limit one of the best players in the state, Burlington's Cedric Rodriguez, to 13 points.

I have a feeling both teams will keep advancing. And if they do, I know I could do both title games if they get to the finals, because there are no scheduling conflicts there. But I need to remember, you can take only one step at a time in tournament season.

That's why I love it so.

Buildings rise and fall, but memories endure.

Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, home to the Super Bowl. I haven't been there.

We have a new set of Super Bowl qualifiers, the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, and the entire world is buzzing over the infusion of new excitement into the NFL's championship game. 

No, it's not over Patrick Mahomes' premature ascension to the level of GOAT by scatterbrained pundits that don't remember a guy that just retired with seven rings on his hands, or the brash rookie quarterback that revived a storied West Coast franchise's fortunes. It's whether Taylor Swift can return in time to the Western Hemisphere from a concert commitment in Japan to see her boyfriend, Chiefs' tight end Travis Kelce, play in the big game in Las Vegas.

Well, that, among other things.

The advent of another Super Bowl usually sets me to thinking. I covered nine of them over my 42-year career as an NFL beat writer -- part of a career that got me to all of the NFL's host cities, or at least the ones the NFL called home by the time I retired. 

Travel was fun. My Facebook page presents me every day with memories of past posts, and for the last few weeks, I've been seeing old snapshots I took during my 10-day relocations to the host cities. I'm a little too old these days to want to set up shop like that in unfamiliar surroundings, even if it was on my company's dole and not coming out of my own pocket, but it was a great experience -- and something, when I joined the staff of The Sun Chronicle on Feb. 7, 1977, that I never envisioned I'd have the opportunity to do.

During my 42 years on the Patriots beat, as I said, I got to visit all of the league's stadiums. But it set me to wondering exactly how many of those there were ... after all, most of the teams relocated to new facilities (sometimes even new cities) during that time. Indeed, so did the Patriots. I never went to one of their games during their tenures at Nickerson Field, Fenway Park, Harvard Stadium or BC's Alumni Stadium, but I was front and center as a high school kid in a distant 300-level seat at Schaefer Stadium when it opened in 1971, as I was as a writer for opening night at Gillette Stadium in 2002. 

With that in mind, I thought I'd share with you the identities of all of those home venues and a few memories from each. We'll start with the AFC venues because there are a lot of stories to tell. Sit back and grab some snacks; this one is going to take a while.

BUFFALO BILLS

Highmark Stadium

The infamous ramp in Buffalo.

Originally opened as Rich Stadium in 1973, a lot of people don't know that it was built from updated blueprints from Schaefer Stadium. It's as if they looked at what they did in Foxboro, figured out what they did wrong, and tried to fix it two years later. Look at photos of it, and you will see the familiar three-level footprint of our own long-departed precursor to Gillette.

After I left the beat, the stadium was reconfigured to turn the press box level into luxury boxes. I recall it to have had a terrific view of the field, but hardly any heat. Only the hot chocolate served in the press box made it tolerable on a cold winter day. The stadium also mirrored Schaefer in that to access the locker rooms after a game, reporters had to exit into the crowds leaving the game and walk around to an end zone administration building to reach an entrance to the ramp leading from the field. Venture too far down that ramp and out to the field surface, and you risked having 32-ounce beers thrown at your head by members of the Bills Mafia.

I don't miss the place, but I will be sad when it's replaced a few years from now. And if there's one thing I miss about Buffalo, it's a little place called Duff's in the town of Amherst, where they serve the best Buffalo wings in all of creation. Forget the Anchor Bar -- that's a tourist trap. Duff's is where Real Men go for their wings.

MIAMI DOLPHINS

Orange Bowl, Hard Rock Stadium

Pre-renovation Land Shark Stadium.

Most of the games I have attended in Miami were at the stadium with many names -- originally Joe Robbie Stadium, built in the little hamlet of Miami Gardens and named for the legendary owner of the team, which went on to be known by a variety of corporate-sellout names, including Pro Player Stadium (athletic attire), Land Shark Stadium (beer), SunLife Stadium (insurance) and now Hard Rock Stadium (decadence). And I'm sure I left out a few.

But the funniest thing that happened to me in Miami was at at the old Orange Bowl during the 1985 season, in which the Patriots later advanced to Super Bowl 20. On the night when they won the AFC Championship Game there, reporters had to stay a long time to write their stories. And when we were finished, we found to our horror that the stadium staff had gotten everyone out of the old building and locked the gates as they left, not realizing there were about 15 writers and the Patriots' media relations director of the time, Jim Greenidge, still at work.

We covered the entire circumference of the stadium several times looking for a way out. None could be found. It got to the point that Pete Farley, then the sports editor of the Brockton Enterprise (and father of Glen Farley, who would cover the team for three decades afterward), shouted to some individuals hanging out outside the stadium for assistance. They just laughed; the Orange Bowl was not in a very nice neighborhood, and those out at that late hour would not be predisposed to help.

These were the days before cellular phones, so that further complicated our situation., But eventually, Greenidge found a working pay phone and called a Dolphins' executive, and eventually people came to set us free.

The baseball diamond at Joe Robbie.

Joe Robbie Stadium, as Hard Rock was originally known, was an upgrade at the time of its opening. But it changed over time. First it became a baseball stadium as well, often leaving a cutout infield in the middle of the football field. Then, it also caved in to those that wanted more luxury-box space, so the football press box was squeezed into what had been the baseball press box before the Marlins moved out.

It was, by far, the worst view of the field in all of football. But if you had the misfortune of being assigned to the auxiliary booth a few levels lower, that was even worse. Fortunately, I never was.

I haven't been to the place since it underwent a considerable renovation, including faux roofing over the stands to protect South Floridians from the scorching sun. I'm told it's still a terrible place to watch a game.

NEW YORK JETS

NEW YORK GIANTS

Shea Stadium, Giants Stadium, MetLife Stadium

These two franchises have shared the same venues for several decades, but at least I date back to when the Jets played at Shea, home of the Mets, but very well adaptable to football.

Two stadiums in the Meadowlands.

My first road game was a Patriots-Jets game in 1981, the first game in which punter Ken Hartley made his NFL debut. Ken was a King Philip graduate that attended Catawba College in North Carolina, and it was only natural that the local paper would assign me to take a 200-mile ride to Flushing Meadows to cover his game.

I don't remember much about the actual game. What I remember is that it was much easier to park at Shea than it weas in Foxboro, and that I typed my story on a portable typewriter and handed the copy paper and a $5 bill to someone from a company called "Amfax," so he could electronically send a copy of what I wrote to my newspaper over an amazing, newfangled thing called a fax machine. 

Giants Stadium was quite an edifice. Although it was in the middle of a New Jersey swamp, it represented everything New York -- big, majestic, a commanding presence rising out of nowhere. And yet again, the media got the short end of the stick when, during a 1990s renovation, the press box was relocated to the top of the building, and it made the players look like ants below. The commerical jets landing at Newark Airport were closer.

Scoreboard rays prevent overpopulation.

Ditto with MetLife. It is huge. A little on the soulless side, although they do have a way to change the ambient colors of the place from blue to green depending upon whose home game it is on that particular day.

The press box at MetLife is on the far left side of the field at the middle level of the stadium, but that means we're positioned right next to one of the four huge Jumbotron scoreboards at the corners of the stadium. You actually feel the images change on those boards, you're so close. If you're wondering why I've never had children, that may be the reason.

I drove to the Meadowlands more and more toward the end of my tenure of the beat, and one of the joys of the four-hour trip was, upon nearing the East Rutherford turnoff on New Jersey Route 17, passing by the "Bada Bing" -- the actual strip club (called "Satin Dolls") that was used for location shooting for "The Sopranos." Got to admit, I often looked to my right and saw (in my mind's eye, if not actually) Tony, Christopher, Paulie Walnuts, Silvio Dante and the rest of the crew planning their nefarious schemes.

PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Three Rivers Stadium, Acrisure Stadium

Three Rivers Stadium in the fall of 1976.

I had attended a few baseball games at Three Rivers when I visited a friend during my college years, but I was also there for a memorable game involving the Patriots and Steelers.

It was during Bill Parcells' coaching tenure, and fans tended to walk around the circular bowl and pause at openings in the concourse that served as overlooks to the field. Often, they would crowd too much into the small space -- and on this particular afternoon, the guardrail gave way and several fans plunged to the field below -- only about 10-12 feet, so fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. 

Once the game was over, I strolled over to the place where the debris had fallen, and I picked up a small chunk of concrete and pocketed it as a souvenir. I still have it, and it is displayed in my house next to some of the rubble from the demolition of Foxboro Stadium.

The Heinz Field press box.

I will always remember its successor as Heinz Field and not the current name. I always thought the bright yellow seats were more reminiscent of mustard and not Heinz's signature product, ketchup, but the yellow was chosen as one of the Steelers' primary colors.

As the newer stadiums go, it was no better and no worse than most. Parking was a pain in the ass. The press box seating rows were very steeply configured to squeeze a lot of reporters into a relatively small space. But I will give them due props for having nearby restrooms that were impeccably clean and had at least 12 available stalls for our convenience. You don't know how important that is when your digestive tract occasionally rebels against press box food.

But I will say one thing for Heinz Field (or whatever it's called now). It is perfectly located at the confluence of three major rivers, it serves the need of its fan base, and it has been embraced by the fans -- especially now that the Pirates have their own nearby ballpark and the teams don't have to share a cookie-cutter monstrosity. And it was fun to see the Patriots stick their AFC Championship Game wins in the faces of those haughty Pittsburgh fans.

CINCINNATI BENGALS

Riverfront Stadium, Paul Brown Stadium

Riverfront Stadium, another 1960s cookie-cutter.

What I remember most about Riverfront Stadium is not the stadium itself, but the fact that it was built almost touching the Ohio River. To go from the parking garage to the press box entrance, you'd walk outside onto a promenade that had a spectacular view of the river and all that entailed.

I also recall on my first visit to that city that Glen Farley and I walked out of the hotel after checking in, and found to our surprise that we were in the midst of the annual Oktoberfest staged in downtown Cincinnati -- a smorgasbord of food and beer and fun times that was ours for the taking. And we did.

Later, after resting up, we and other reporters ventured to a little hole-in-the-wall barbecue place called the "Barn Rib Pit." It was snuggled into a small space with a back-alley entrance, and you'd hardly know it was there. But once inside, you'd see the walls plastered with photos of great sports figures of Cincinnati's past, and like them, we'd soon be chowing down on some of the best barbecue ribs I've ever had.

Sadly, I learned later that the Barn Rib Pit met the wrecker's ball a few years after that visit, during a wave of urban renewal. It was not rebuilt or reopened elsewhere.

Years passed, and I didn't return to Cincy until after Paul Brown Stadium was opened. It was new and fresh, but kind of soulless, and it looked lopsided because the endzone scoreboard was designed to look as if it was styled by the designers that came up with tailfins for cars in the 1950s.

It was the 2001 season opener, and I watched future Patriot Corey Dillon run the Patriots into the ground for a disappointing defeat. The next day, I departed from Cincinnati for Chicago's O'Hare Airport, from where I went on to Boston. I drove directly from Logan to a friend's house in North Falmouth where I would take a few days off.

Upon waking up the next morning to the roar of fighter jets taking off from Otis Air Force Base and immediately going to afterburners, I turned on the television and saw the image of the World Trade Center towers billowing smoke from where commercial jets had crashed into them.

Paul Brown Stadium at night.

I got to Paul Brown Stadium one more time, and although it was years later, the impact of Sept. 11, 2001, was still felt during that trip. I was given a parking pass to a garage under the stadium, and dutifully parked my rental there. But unbeknownst to me, those passes were invalid and stadium security towed my car from that space to an outdoor lot near the adjacent Great American Ballpark, home of the Reds. Of course, they didn't tell me.

After hours of wandering the lot, looking for my rental along with Worcester Telegram writer Rich Garven, and trying to call authorities only to have bad cellular service foil me at every turn, I was ready to accept a ride from a couple of photographers from the Providence Journal when, on our last pass through the expansive lot, I spied the blue Corolla in the distance, next to the baseball stadium. 

It's a good thing, too, because I didn't have a spare $17,000 to pay the Hertz Corp. for a lost car.

CLEVELAND BROWNS

Municipal Stadium, Cleveland Browns Stadium

The "Mistake by the Lake."

You may recall that there was a fairly momentous game in the 1994 AFC playoffs between Bill Parcells' upstart Patriots and the Cleveland Browns, coached by Parcells' former defensive coordinator with the Giants, some guy named Bill Belichick.

What you will learn only here was how awful a game it was for me to attend.

Back in those days, when I was in my early 40s, I used to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome. If you are offended by such information, I advise you to skip ahead a few paragraphs.

The playoff game was on Jan. 1, 1995. The temperature was in the high-teens and low-20s, and there was little in the way of climate control inside the old football press box at Municipal Stadium -- although writers that had been assigned to the auxiliary press box (also the baseball press box for the Indians) basked in warmth the whole game.

I had eaten a breakfast at my hotel before the game, and it didn't agree with me. About a half-hour before gametime, I was facing a fecal emergency. I had to go and I had no choice.

Inside this antiquated press box, there was just one bathroom -- exclusively for males (that was the state of American sportswriting of the day). And inside it was only one sit-down stall. Still wearing a full winter coat, I managed to squeeze into the tiny stall, dropped my naked ass upon the freezing-cold seat, and let loose with one of the worst imaginable cases of diarrhea possible. It was, in a word, hellacious. 

About 15 minutes later, I emerged from the stall and opened the door to the press box -- where I was instantly greeted with exclamations of angst and various insults for having unleashed such an unmerciful stink upon my fellow writers. I can't say I blamed them, although given the state of media digestive tracts in the 1990s, it's not like I was the only one to have ever dropped a weapon of mass destruction inside a press box crapper.

The Patriots lost that game, and the other thing I recall is that post-game interviews had to be conducted in the hallway outside the tiny visiting team locker room. The toilets and showers had overflowed inside the lockers and spilled out into the open-air concourse beyond, and I recall interviewing Parcells while a river of shit and soapy water turned into ice around my feet.

Ah, Cleveland.

Yes, you can see Lake Erie from inside.

When the new stadium opened to accommodate the expansion team known as the Browns, it was a godsend. Beautiful and modern, it was a shining addition to the lakefront landscape. Parking, however, was on a jetty that extended well into Lake Erie, built to accommodate loading docks for cargo ships.

On this particular day, which started out just a little cold and moderately breezy, the late Dick Cerasuolo of the Worcester Telegram and I parked in one of the spaces that was as far as it could be from the entrance of Cleveland Browns Stadium. Once we got to the press entrance, we somehow got a little confused with the new surroundings, and ended up walking through several luxury boxes until we realized we were on the wrong side of the stadium. The press box was on the opposite side.

The weather grew increasingly bad during the game, leading me to remember the immortal words of former Red Sox pitcher Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd ("That's what you get when you build a stadium next to the ocean.") Cerasuolo and I braved the walk to my car through squalls and lake spray, only to find that it was high tide, and that the rental was halfway wheels-deep in Lake Erie when we got there.

Yes, we walked through the water and managed to get into the car without flooding it, and we drove out of there without floating to Canada first.

The stadium was renamed FirstEnergy Stadium when naming rights were sold, but a big scandal has prompted the city to revoke naming rights and it will return to its original name this year.

Ah, Cleveland.

TENNESSEE TITANS

Nissan Stadium

Nissan Stadium, soon to go.

It puzzles me that cities are so quick to replace their stadiums these days. Nissan Stadium (or Adelphia Stadium as I knew it) was perfectly fine for a city of Nashville's size. It's very similar to Gillette in size and mission, it has great sightlines and good parking, and when I was there, they had telephones at every press box seat location for our free use -- again, before the days when the Internet became the most important tool for the media.

As I am not into country music, I can't say I took much advantage of all Nashville has to offer in that area. The one thing that stands out in my memory was that the Marriott hotel in which I stayed was positioned so that my room's window afforded me a direct view of the playing field within Vanderbilt University's football stadium. 

My last trip there was a quick in-and-out ... late arrival on a Saturday, full game day and early departure on Monday morning. My dinner on Friday night was an Outback Steakhouse that was just about to close for the night. Pretty pathetic, huh?

BALTIMORE RAVENS

Memorial Stadium, M&T Bank Stadium

Memorial Stadium for an Orioles' game.

Regrettably, I never got to see the Colts play in Baltimore. But I did get to see their stadium -- Memorial Stadium, which I had visited for a four-game series against the Red Sox in 1978, in the first year of the Ravens' existence after their move from Cleveland.

By that time, Memorial Stadium was on its last legs. It had been built in a residential area many years earlier, and our parking was across the street in a Catholic high school's parking lot. I remember that the hallways leading from the media check-in to the press box elevator were old and grimy, with bathroom-style linoleum tiles that were practically worn through to the cement below. And although the Colts had played there for decades before, the Ravens' football press box was in end-zone space once used by the Orioles' media.

After the game, which was made memorable by rookie Tedy Bruschi's failure to catch a pass on a fake punt, I and five other writers prepared to cram into my rented Ford Crown Victoria for a ride back to our hotel. Once everyone put their computer bags in the large trunk of the car, I found to my horror that the trunk latch would not hold the lid shut. But crisis is the mother of invention; I took a telephone extension cord from my bag and tied the trunk shut. 

It wasn't long thereafter that Memorial Stadium was razed. In its place now stands apartment buildings for seniors.

Also on that trip, I broke new ground in another area. The day before the game, I met a young woman in person at a brew pub in the Inner Harbor area of downtown. She and I met in an America Online chat room, and wouldn't you know it, we started from that meeting a relationship of long-distance dating that lasted for three years.

Johnny U at M&T.

M&T Bank Stadium wasn't particularly memorable. I do remember being particularly impressed by the statue of Johnny Unitas in front of the main entrance, even though he never played a single snap of football inside it. I also chuckled at the full purple treatment of the seating bowl, although it was appropriate given the Ravens' team colors. Otherwise, it was what I had come to expect from the new wave of stadiums -- all roughly the same, with enough specific distinction to please the locals. 

And it's close enough to the stadium that started the retro-look revolution in pro sports, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, making a once-dreary warehouse neighborhood into a hub of sports excitement -- except when it's time for another Super Bowl with the Ravens absent.

The Patriots almost lost a game there in 2007 that would have spoiled the perfect 16-0 regular season, but as we all know, that brush with history was meaningless in the end thanks to the Giants. And the relationship with Miss Baltimore ended badly. So much for Baltimore.

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

RCA Dome, Lucas Oil Stadium

The RCA Dome and its stupid banners.

When the Colts moved out to Indy, it was like they had moved to another world -- a vast wasteland interrupted by a tiny little downtown, with an inflatable-roofed stadium dropped into the middle of it.

That was the RCA Dome, a glorified arena that pretended to be a stadium, where they hung divisional championship banners like participation trophies from the Teflon panels that constituted the roof.

I recall the Dome as always being colder than it should have been. The original press box was fully exposed to the stands and well within reach of those in the cheap seats to turn around and say hello -- or potentially steal our laptop computers, which thankfully, they never did. Hoosiers are far too polite.

This was another place where the owners decided they needed more luxury boxes, so not long before the stadium was razed to make way for Lucas Oil Stadium, they moved our press box as close to the ceiling as possible without us being able to touch the Teflon roof. They also installed speakers in the seating configuration of the press box that carried the sounds of the stadium noise (much of it prerecorded and fake) and public-address announcements directly into the ears of those sitting in the front row. 

Try concentrating on your work with that cacophony in your eardrums for the whole game.

Lucas Oil Stadium.

For everything that was bad about the RCA Dome, however, Indianapolis redeemed itself with Lucas Oil Stadium. That building is simply spectacular. It has the charm of the old Butler University field house in its design (see "Hoosiers" for reference), with a retractable roof that can open in only 11 minutes as well as a wall of windows that can open to ventilate the place and present a charming view of Indianapolis' changing skyline. 

It's comfortable, easy to navigate, and was a spectacular site for Super Bowl 46 -- which, while another regrettable loss by the Patriots to the Giants, was one I enjoyed the most because of the nearness of my well-appointed hotel to the convention center (and media HQ) and the stadium. And it also helped that Indianapolis had a stretch of unseasonably warm winter weather that week, enhancing the walkable nature of the city's small downtown.

A truly impressive stadium in Indy.

Of all of the newer stadium's I've visited, Lucas Oil has to be my favorite. It's just gorgeous. It mixes the retro elements with functionality, great sightlines and all the modern amenities. It may be the one thing that redeemed my opinion of Indianapolis for all time -- but there might be just one other thing.

Indiabapolis has one of the all-time best steakhouses in the world, St. Elmo's, which is nationally renowned for the quality of its cuts of beef and freshly-shipped seafood -- and, most of all, the incredible shrimp cocktails with a horseradish sauce that is guaranteed to clear your sinuses for a month.

And if you can't get in because of the high demand, take a short stroll down the street to Harry & Izzy's. It's under the same ownership and has most of the same menu items, including the shrimp cocktail. You can't go wrong.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS

Everbank Field

Everbank Field. It's still a big dump.

I only saw the Jaguars play once in what was originally the Gator Bowl, rebuilt and expanded to accommodate the NFL. It was a playoff game, one in which Scott Zolak started at quarterback because of a finger injury suffered by Drew Bledsoe, and he lost. It had been 25 degrees there the night before the game, and I remember feeling cheated because Florida is supposed to be warm in January.

But I was there for Super Bowl 39, in which the Patriots defeated the Philadelphia Eagles to firmly entrench the team's reputation as a dynasty.

Despite the best efforts of the forks in the city where my father met my mother in the waning days of World War II, what was then called ALLTEL Stadium was a dump. I was sitting next to an aisle in the press box, in the second of three rows, with Tom King of the Nashua Telegraph and Jen Toland of the Worcester Telegram sitting nearby, and as the game unfolded, I smelled something foul from below.

Needless to say, the men's room behind me was having plumbing issues, and water tainted with human waste was cascading down the steps next to my feet.

It was not long after that the Patriots were in a goal-line situation, and I blurted out to my friends nearby, "Everybody cover Vrabel." Obviously, the Eagles did not have any spies nearby; Mike Vrabel, one of the Patriots' linebackers, set up as an extra tight end and caught a touchdown pass, giving the Patriots full control of the game.

Bruschi at Media Day.

This stadium was also notable in that it marked one of the last times that "Media Day," on the Monday of the week before the Super Bowl, was actually conducted in open air. The NFL later opted to have the huge gatherings of media inside domed stadiums, or other nearby enclosed facilities.

Super Bowl 39 also is memorable because there was a media scandal during the early stages of the hype week. One of the two reporters send by the Worcester Telegram was found to have plagiarized several stories during the season, including those by national writers as well as local scribes. He was immediately recalled to Worcester, and high school sportswriter Rich Garven was hurriedly dispatched to Jacksonville to join Jen Toland.

It was a dizzying situation for both writers, who never anticipated such a disruption in their duties. It was thus the task of the other reporters of the so-called "Suburban Alliance" -- reporters not operating in the shadows of the Boston or Providence writers -- to make this transition easier for them.

On top of all that, Jacksonville was a weird place to have a Super Bowl. City officials were proud to show off their redevelopment of the shoreline of the St. Johns River (no apostrophe), but that was good for a couple of hours of diversion and not much else. Besides, most of the New England media was housed in the Jacksonville Marriott, several miles south of the convention center, so our best bet for affordable and uncrowded entertainment was to head east on Fla. Route 202 toward Jacksonville Beach.

We found a place called the "Seven Bridges Brew Pub," which is still in operation. They had good food, freshly-brewed beer and live music. Toland coined a name for the band playing there that week -- the "Earthwind Moreland Band," she called it, because the lead singer resembled the little-known Patriots' backup cornerback of the time. That establishment became a favorite during our work week in Jacksonville, and more and more people were crammed into my rented Corolla as the week passed, all looking to blow off some steam away from the official NFL facilities.

Finally, with the game in the books, a group of reporters piled into their rented cars on the day before departure and drove all the way to the coast and the famous Route A1A, where not far from the TPC Sawgrass golf course, we found a little restaurant whose name I cannot remember. It was, however, the first time in my life that I had ever eaten alligator. I had spent much of my childhood making annual trips to central Florida to visit my grandparents, but I had never before eaten alligator.

Yup. It tasted like chicken.

HOUSTON TEXANS

NRG Stadium

Super Bowl 38 at then-Reliant Stadium.

I have plenty of memories from Houston, given that I saw one Pats-Texans game and two Super Bowls in what was originally called Reliant Stadium. To chronicle all of them would use up all of this blog's bandwidth. So let's try to boil them down to the nuts and bolts as best I can.

The stadium itself is very impressive. It's huge, with a great view of the field from a palatial press box. And what amazes me the most is that it absolutely dwarfs the Astrodome, once regarded as one of the Modern Wonders of the World but now a deteriorating relic that nobody in the whole state of Texas seems to know what to do with.

Houston itself was a colossal disappointment in many ways. It's too spread out, has far too much traffic driving in and out of the city at almost all times of day, and, well, it's Texas. If there a state in the Union that has its head up its own ass as far as it can possibly go, it's Texas.

Me and Rich Garven, before we had
to start re-writing everything.

The last time I was there, I was privileged to see the best Super Bowl ever played. Of course, that was Super Bowl 51, the Patriots against Atlanta, rallying from a 28-3 deficit to win in overtime and all that. And it was the last Super Bowl I ever covered. At the time, I had a feeling my days on the road would be numbered because of the expense, and I remember telling a reporter seated next to me that if this was the last one I would ever see in person, I went out with the best.

Of course, that was after the Patriots started scoring touchdowns in the second half to make the comeback seem possible. And it was also after I cursed them out for forcing me to scrap everything I had written in the first half and starting from scratch in anticipation of an entirely new outcome.

Houston does have "good" barbecue, I'll give it that. During my first trip there, I frequented a place called "Goode Co. Barbeque," where you stood in a big tent outside the main building and went through a buffet line, and the servers would just heap piles and piles of BBQ on your plate before you couldn't carry any more. It was sumptuous. I'm told it was very popular with the baseball writers.

That called to mind my first trip to Houston, for Super Bowl 38. I arranged for a courtesy car from the NFL, a brand new Cadillac CTS, and I and four other writers took the 40-mile journey north to a town called Tomball, Texas, where the father of Patriots' linebacker Ted Johnson (Ted Sr.) ran a barbecue shack. We went in, introduced ourselves as New England writers, and were treated to an incredible feast while Ted's dad regaled us with stories of his son as a boy. And when he tried to comp us for the meal, every single one of us refused and paid good, hard U.S. currency for it, with a generous tip. Contrary to popular belief, reporters aren't always looking for handouts. 

I went back there 13 years later, looking to renew acquaintances with Ted Sr. on my last day in Texas -- only to find that his restaurant was closed on Mondays. Damn.

Minute Maid Park, NFL style.

The SB 51 visit also contained a unique "Media Day" for us reporters. The NFL had gotten out of the practice of having their first media gathering in the host stadium in the daytime, so for prime-time exposure, the league rented out the Astros' Minute Maid Park and let us stroll the entire playing surface going from player to player -- and all of live on the NFL Network.

In a way, we were fortunate any of that happened at all. Prior to Super Bowl Week, the Houston area was inundated with severe flooding from torrential rains. There were still portions of the city underwater when the NFL came calling. Not that the NFL cared at all, of course -- the show must go on, and it did.

Ironic it was that one of my more lasting memories of that trip was the swimming pool at the Marriott Hotel, built in the shape of the state of Texas. I don't remember seeing any razor wire around the pool's edge, however.

I know, that was long before the current foolishness in the Lone Star State. I just hope things straighten themselves out in a more Christian manner as the weeks and months ahead unfold. I don't want to look back at these photos wistfully at some point in the future, and then glance at the 49-star flag waving outside my house.

DENVER BRONCOS

Mile High Stadium, Empower Field at Mile High

The original Mile High, and its successor.

If I have a favorite city among my travels, it is definitely Denver.

I love the mountains. I love the clear air (if you drive about 40 miles north, past Boulder, and get into the rarified air). I love the food. And I was always a fan of fresh Coors before you could get it anywhere and at any time. 

Above all else, I loved the original Mile High Stadium. Nowhere else did I learn the real power of the NFL, from having more than 70,000 orange-clad fans screaming in unison at a big play in the end zone. I learned that when, near the end of a game, as I was walking on the field around the enclosed end of the old horseshoe to get to the locker-room entrance, Denver's Rulon James sacked Tony Eason in the end zone. I had industrial deafness for days afterward. ABC's Monday Night Football used to include a clip of that hit during the intro, but the sound would have blown out the speakers on your TV.

A lot of people don't know that Mile High was built to be a multi-purpose stadium to house the Class AAA Denver Bears as well as football. To that end, one side of the stadium was built so that it could be floated on small reservoirs of water and then moved into a baseball configuration. The press box was on that side, and since there was next to no concrete to weigh down the stands, they shook as if experiencing an 8.5 earthquake when fans would start jumping up and down on them. It certainly made me think the end was near in my first visit to the place.

Fans flock to whatever this place is called.

The successor, again a multi-named facility that has managed to keep the "Mile High" tag on it as an afterthought, is certainly more modern. But Denver no longer has the loudest venue in the NFL because it's much larger and more spread out than its predecessor, and noise is not compressed into as small a space.

Still, Denver has had its great moments for me. I was also on the field for the famous intentional safety snap by Lonie Paxton that gave the Patriots possession one last time and gave Tom Brady the chance to throw the winning TD pass to David Givens. I was there for Ben Watson's 100-yard run to make a touchdown-saving tackle even though all hope was already gone in a playoff loss. And yes, I did see Peyton Manning and Wes Welker conspire to send the Patriots home from an AFC title game without another Super Bowl trip in hand.

I recall when Raymond Berry took the Patriots out to Colorado Springs to practice in cold weather and higher altitude before a playoff game. I made it to the Air Force Academy from Stapleton Airport just as practice was over and the only player left in the locker room was running back Craig James, but he was nice enough to heed my pleas for a few minutes of his time so I wouldn't go back to my hotel empty-handed and with no story to write.

Turns out the early departure was unnecessary. The weather was unseasonably warm on game day, sunny in the high-50s. The Patriots lost.

I was introduced to a true Western delicacy at a restaurant called The Fort in Morrison, Colo. -- Rocky Mountain Oysters, otherwise known as broiled buffalo testicles. Don't knock them if you haven't tried them. In a more traditional sense, I learned that buffalo steak, while more expensive, is much more healthy for you than beef.

And my first Indiana Jones hat? Bought it at a store in Denver, as well as two custom-made pairs of Nokona boots. 

I even toured the Coors brewery in Golden. Sneezed the whole time because of all the grain dust in the air, but it was worth it.

I don't miss Denver's new airport, which I think is somewhere in Nebraska -- and if you look at the runways from above, they look like the configuration of a swastika.

I won't hold that against my favorite city, however.

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS

Arrowhead Stadium

I'm not going to go all Gaga (oops, wrong singer) over Arrowhead. It's in the middle of nowhere, the parking is utter chaos, the place was showing its age when I was out there last, and I almost died on that trip.

I'm not exaggerating. I may have been about two seconds away from being a sizzling chunk of flesh on the tarmac at Chicago's O'Hare Airport during my trip home.

I don't get the point about Arrowhead.

It was Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014. The Patriots had been embarrassed by the Chiefs, losing 41-14 on Monday Night Football, and I still had to get up early in the morning the next day to catch my flight to Chicago and make the connection to Logan. And because of the late game, two members of the Patriots Football Weekly staff were on the same plane, staying behind when the team charter left so they could remotely meet their deadlines for that week's publication.

The flight to Chicago was uneventful until we were headed for the runway at O'Hare. Suddenly, only a few seconds from wheels-down, the plane lurched up and began a tight circle around the control tower. A quick look out the windows on the starboard side of the aircraft provided me with a view of the right wing pointed directly perpendicular to the ground below. 

I glanced back at the two staffers from PFW. They looked back at me. I'm sure the same thought crossed our minds, and it probably started with the words, "Jesus Christ ... !!!"

Apparently, another airplane found its way onto the same runway where we were supposed to land. These guys flying the plane were pros and they knew how to react, but for those of us that get mad when people creep up on us when we're trying to parallel park, it was waaaaaay too close for comfort.

We took a victory lap around the Chicago suburbs, landed without further challenge, and we were all off to Boston soon enough. 

Hey, Kansas City has its positives. The barbecue is good, but the sauces are too sugary for me. Arrowhead has been upgraded and renovated since my trip, because it sorely needed it. And maybe the plans of the Royals to build their own baseball park downtown will benefit the Chiefs, because they will be able to fix their parking situation once Kaufmann Stadium is flattened.

Maybe they'll even build their own new stadium. They can call it their Mahomes Away From Home.

OAKLAND RAIDERS

Oakland-Alameida County Coliseum

OK, I know they don't play in Oakland anymore. If you want to see where they play now, go back to the top of this missive and you'll see a photo of the current venue. Take your time returning; we'll still be here when you get back.

The first time I saw the Raiders play, they were based at the Los Angeles Coliseum and they lost to the Patriots in the 1985 AFC Divisional Game. We'll be back to talk about Los Angeles when we get to the NFC portion of this retrospective.

Blow this up to see "It was a fumble."

Of course, you know that the relocated Raiders lost to the Patriots in the famous Snow Bowl game in the 2001 playoffs, the last game ever played in Foxboro Stadium. Here, we regard that game as the springboard to a dynasty. In Oakland, memories of the Tuck Rule still send the few remaining Raiders fans into convulsions.

My first visit was on Oct. 17, 2002, just nine months after Brady's fumble in the snow was wiped off the books by an obscure, yet accurately applied rule. If a photo speaks a thousand words, this one falls short by 996. But those four words represent the mantra of Raider Nation that has persisted to this day.

I made it back to the Coliseum one more time, many years later, and the place was already falling into terrible disrepair. And the sight of middle-aged men with protruding bellies, dressed in full Goth regalia with plastic spikes protruding from their leather, walking into the entrances with full cases of beer slung over their shoulders, was surely a shock. The Wild West days of the old Foxboro Stadium were kid's play compared to just an average Sunday in Oakland.

Somehow, I don't believe the current crop of Raiders fans treat Allegiant Stadium the same way.

SAN DIEGO CHARGERS

Qualcomm Stadium

Again, this team no longer exists. It has moved back to Los Angeles (where it was founded in 1960 and then moved away the next year), and the stadium has since been demolished and replaced with a smaller venue that serves as home for a college team.

I made a few trips to San Diego over the years, but I will speak specifically about one memorable trip -- the AFC Divisional Game on Jan. 14, 2007.

Qualcomm: Gone but not forgotten.

I was so happy to be going to San Diego in January. San Diego is known for having as close to perfect weather as is possible in the Lower 48; I learned that back in the 1980s, when I vacationed in the city twice and learned the joys that a trip to Black's Beach (and a well-scrubbed hot tub) could bring.

But maybe God decided to make me pay for my youthful excesses. I landed at San Diego International in the late hours of a Thursday night (so planned so I could get two full days of beach time), only to find the thermometer in my rental car reading 22 degrees Fahrenheit -- and it wasn't fooling.

The city and environs had been in the grip of an ungodly cold snap for a few days before my arrival -- severe enough that then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was petitioning the Federal government for disaster funds because all of the oranges were freezing on the trees. And it didn't get any better. Temperatures hovered in the 30s on Friday and Saturday, limiting my beach trips to quick stops for photo opportunities. 

The mercury made it to the low 50s on the day of the game, but you must remember that I did not pack for winter weather. I had polo shirts and bathing suits, not North Face winter gear. And when I arrived at Qualcomm Stadium, I was in for another shock -- there were no windows in the press box. And why should there be? It was San Diego, built in a desert, where the temperature never drops below 70. 

The whole game, chilly breezes whipped through the open-air press box. I had purchased a windbreaker at the team's pro shop, but I still had to sit on my hands for most of the game so they would be warm enough for me to type. 

The Patriots won that game, Troy Brown making a huge play to save the day, and the unbeaten season was preserved for two more weeks -- until Super Bowl 42, of course. But it was probably the worst job of typing I have ever done in my life because my two typing fingers (and the others around them) were frozen to the bone.

Junior Seau: Still missed.

There was one more trip later on that contained a particularly poignant moment. Junior Seau, who played for the Patriots at the end of his career, had retired to his native San Diego and seemed content to run his popular restaurant inside a huge shopping mall. On the day the Patriots arrived for an early-season game, team owner Robert Kraft and a large media contingent arrived at the restaurant, Kraft presenting a big check to help Seau's fundraising efforts to benefit Southern Californians who were displaced by a relentless series of wildfires.

It was a touching moment, Kraft presenting the check and speaking lovingly of Seau's contributions as a Patriot as both stood on a balcony overlooking the spacious interior of the dining room. Seau was genuinely touched by the gesture and implored the Chargers' fans in the restaurant to look kindly upon foes that had opened their hearts to them.

Not long after that, Seau was gone. He took his own life, unable to cope with the effects that years of brutal physical contact had upon his brain tissue.

COMING SOON: A look at my visits to NFC venues, plus a bonus one.

(Blogger's Note: Almost all of the photos used in this post were taken by me. The exceptions are the top shot of Allegiant Stadium (unknown), the aerial shot of Riverfront Stadium (Cincinnati Inquirer), the aerial shot of Cleveland Municipal Stadium (unknown), the wide shot of Everbank Field (Florida Times-Union), old Mile High Stadium (Denver Post), Arrowhead Stadium (unknown) and Junior Seau (The Sun Chronicle).