Zoneblitz Hall of Fame experience

by | Aug 9, 2009 | Football Road Trips, Hall of Fame

CANTON – After months of anticipation and countless hours on the road, Zoneblitz.com finally arrived in Canton, Ohio for the centerpiece of this week-long road trip.

It coincided with the opening of a new Lamar Hunt Super Bowl exhibit and the celebration of the 50 year anniversary of the American Football League.

I loved the new Lamar Hunt Super Bowl gallery, which included video clips from all the games, a Super Bowl trophy located behind glass that was a popular photo opportunity for the thousands of fans milling about the building and other keepsakes.

I also always remain impressed with the photo galleries located in the hallway between the entrance to the hall and the Hall of Fame gift shop.  Among the photos this year was a great shot of NFL Referee Garth DeFelice inadvertently punching St. Louis Ram Kenneth Darby–and as we walked by the picture, we realized that DeFelice himself was there taking it in.

Incidentally, a shout out to Trey Wingo, who was spotted smiling and granting photographs to fans in the gift shop. Athletes and television personalities are often panned when they act like big shots. So it’s only fair that they are acknowledged for doing right.

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Zoneblitz Visits “Hallowed” Ground

by | Aug 7, 2009 | Football Road Trips, Football Stadiums

Our road trip to Canton for Saturday’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction has thus far been mostly baseball focused–hence our posting updates primarily over on our baseball blog.

But yesterday, while cruising through Indiana, we took a brief stop in South Bend to visit the beautiful campus of the alma mater of a friend of Andy’s.

And, while we were there, we took a quick jaunt through Notre Dame to check out their football stadium too.

Last time we were in this part of the country, we visited THE Ohio State University to check out their stadium-and I have to admit, I was a lot more impressed by theirs.  Although Notre Dame’s stadium appeared to allow better close up access (although we chose not to park and walk around, as we were a bit behind schedule thanks to traffic in Chicago), it wasn’t nearly as impressive in size, and it really appeared to be just a basic bowl from the outside.

We were able to see just a little bit of the field through the open tunnel that the players make their famed walk through on game days, but the whole area, including Touchdown Jesus looking down from above, just wasn’t that impressive to me.  Granted, it’s probably a lot better atmosphere on game day, rather than a random Thursday afternoon during summer.

Other than that, South Bend seemed like a quaint little college town-we didn’t nearly explore it to it’s fullest, in part because we were looking for a place for lunch-and from the highway to downtown, all we found was McDonalds and Burger King (although, we finally found a little restaurant/bar right by campus called Mulligans that had some decent  stacked sandwiches with fries in the sandwich.

Today we’re off to Cleveland-it was our original intent to tour Cleveland Browns Stadium today, but when we called last week to make reservations (per the instructions on the Browns’ Web site), we found out that they are not doing tours any more “this season.”  Thanks for keeping that part of the site up to date, Browns-although, I guess that’s the way your organization has been run since you got back in the league.