Memories of Houston

Thanks for the update Mike !!!!!!!


You've covered 2 of the biggest pro sporting events in Carolina history; Panthers in the Super Bowl & the Canes in the Stanley Cup finals. I won't ask you which one because that's a no brainer (more folks care about football long term vs. brief spike of interest in the NHL). Was one easier to cover vs. the other? Were the players pretty accessible in both cases?

Seeing what took place in Houston, how far is Charlotte away from hosting an event like this ourselves (assuming we have a semi-realistic chance and we could get an iron clad guarantee the weather would be Sunny & 72 degrees on game day ?). You got to see how the Houston committe had everything setup (for the press, VIPs, fans, etc.). Based on what I saw and heard, mass transit would be a must, more WESTIN sized hotels would have to be built within the I-277 loop, the Convention Center would have to be expanded again (I heard the George Brown Convention Center in H-Town dwarfed our own facility by a wide margin).

I think we need more upscale restaurants/clubs to open up, which would be potential VIP party sites (I'm sure they will get here in another 5-10 years). I mean, Leigh Steinburg wants to have his party at the best hotel/country club in town!!!!!!!! Would we have enough for the other VIP's to do the same?

 

hey mike

anything to spill on my boys out there? you know who i'm talking about. PM me if you do.

he he

 

SDS...I oved the Stanley Cup Finals...the Canes trip was the 2nd Finals I had covered, so I knew what to expect. SB is easy and hard to cover from the media standpoint. It is easy because the league mandates interview times...from media Day (zoo) to the team hotels (2 days with all players for both teams). It is there for the asking, so you go get it. It was hard to cover because there was such a lack of knowledge between the league rules and the folks enforcing them. For instance, Tuesday's media day. NFL says park in this lot. OK. We park. We have to get our camera from our truck. Not allowed to walk around to it. Have to go back, get car, drive, get gear from one area, leave secured perimeter, re-enter security (look through bags, anal probe, etc..) , then get access. hindsight being 20-20, we shoulda had our gear with us overnight, BUT WE SIMPLY DID NOT KNOW! That lack of info cost us roughly 45 minutes and we missed the first 5-10 mins of media day. In the end, no big deal, we got what we needed, but the frustration factor was over the top.

NOTE--I don't mean to come off as a whiny brat. I had a seat for the game, credentials, etc. So it was all good, but there are other factors that I will share at the next TBR get together that made life tough for all media, but News 14 in particular.

As for Charlotte hosting an SB...hmmmm....after being in Houston, seeing all that I saw...I don't know if Charlotte WANTS a SB. I know they want the revenue it generates....$4 a beer multiplied by 150,000 partygoers a night (and they ain't just drinking one), hotels, rental cars, restaurants, etc....MAJOR cash cow. The Convention Center was friggin huge. NFL Experience inside of it spanned approx. 10 football fields. And that was the lower floor. This thing had 5 floors (I beleive, I only went to the media level on 4th floor).

Hotels need to go up quick, convention space must be available...so may things that would need to happen...and in the end, after the game is gone, how does the city fill those hotels again? Conventions may come and go...but the SB is a huge party on a world scale....an awful lot of things to do before Charlotte gets a sniff.

 

Well....I would love to say I had dirt, but we did not stay in the same hotel as the boys, and other than media avails, I did not see them that much. Sorry.

 

Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that I missed stuff on other floors of the NFL Experience!? Or was it not open to the public? (The other floors, I mean.) We only stayed on the first level where everything was. I didn't know that there were other floors! Damn!

Of course, Solarte didn't bother to mention that on Sat. night three people got shot, one died, and somebody got stabbed at the Main Street Event in Houston.

I have never walked so much in my life in two days! We went to the Galleria Mall Friday and did some celeb watching. We talked to Meshawn. He and his family were there shopping. He wants to play for us. I guess it's the factor that we play TB two times a year and he wants to stick it to them. He told us that we had a chance to win the SB, but as we all know, we didn't. We saw lots of rappers (P. Diddy, Eminem, to name a few) there at the Galleria and we saw some other pro athletes there as well as "movie stars".

We saw a good many NFL players at the NFL Experience--I stood next to LeRoy Butler at the big card show at the NFLE; we saw Lynn Swan, Junior Seau, and some others walking around. We got Dennis Green's autograph on one of our NFL Exp. tix after a coach's clinic there. I must say, IT WAS LIKE A FRICKIN' ZOO at the NFLE! It was SO crowded in there and the lines were LOOOONG to do the punt, pass, and kick; the 40 yd. dash; the fielding a punt; the extra point kick; just about everything.

We were in the ESPN crowd Friday afternoon when Jaws, Suzy Kolber, and Steve Young were doing Sportscenter on the "grassy knoll" across from the Hilton (Media hotel) and the Geo. Brown Conv. Center. They were getting ready to do NFL Live after Sportscenter and Golic and Hoge were sitting at the NFL Live desk clowning around trying to make Jaws and Steve Young laugh while they were on the air doing SC. It was funny!

The SB itself was fun, except we were in the nosebleeds and I was sitting underneath the a/c vent where I promptly froze and had my contacts constantly dry out from the air blowing on me. I never saw the Janet Jackson "exposure" because we were so high and we were sitting off to the side and behind her stage. Our seats were located in the Panthers endzone, above the Panthers tunnel, right above the Panthers helmet in the corner. There were a whole lot of Patriots fans sitting all around us. I thought that we would have more Panthers fans in sections, but the NFL seemed to mix both teams' fans together, so one team's fans wouldn't dominate a whole section.

We had a blast and if you ever have the opportunity to go to a SB, I would HIGHLY reccommend that go! It is the opportunity of a lifetime and an experience that you will never forget!

 

Sackem....There was only 1 floor of NFL Experience. I was referring to the size of the George Brown Center. Sorry for the confusion.

I failed to mention the mayhem at Main Street because I didn't know about it. For the most part, my week in Houston was spent in the TV Compound parking lot.

 

Oh, okay.

I didn't find out about the stabbing and shootings until the next morning when we woke up and went down to breakfast at the hotel. It made me glad we didn't stay down there that night to party.