My favorite NFL team, the New York Giants, has a travel company called Big Blue Travel. They take care of flights, lodging and ticket for road games — and throw in some perks like a cocktail party with open bar with Giants Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor. Not bad, but you can do better.
With a little help from a friend I call the Internet, you can arrange your own road trips for roughly half the price, minus the drink-up with LT. That's assuming the Giants' opponent sucks and tickets are easy to come by. And that's where my December trip to New Orleans comes in.
When the Saints popped up on the Giants' road schedule — a Sunday night game on Dec. 14 — I quickly scooped up game tickets from Ticketmaster, thinking that it could be a late-season contest with playoff implications for both teams.
But after the Saints' Sunday night debacle at home against the Colts, I am reminded of former head coach Jim Mora: "Playoffs? Are you kidding me? Playoffs?" (Listen to a 90K audio clip of Mora.) So game tickets for the cavernous Superdome will likely be had for a song. Mix in the fact that New Orleans — NASCAR Nation's equivalent of South Beach — is the cheapest vacation city not situated in South Carolina, and we're talking a guaranteed-to-rock three-night weekend of football and debauchery for as little as $400. (Figure around $225 for the flight, $150 for Fri-Sat-Sun nights at a decent French Quarter hotel split with a roommate, $25 for a crappy game ticket.)
Six of us have everything booked, and if any of you Giants fans want to join us, feel free. I'm not a travel agent, but a friend of mine is. He's coming on the trip and can hook you up with a good deal. Just contact me and I'll forward him your information to get back to you.
Today's Sports Links:
• Dan Pompei's Top 100 NFL Players — Posted the day before the start of the season, the list, which rates players on present-day value, has Brett Favre at No. 1. My instinct is to argue vehemently — if only because the guy is 33 — but Favre is still durable, talented, intelligent and post-season tested. So maybe in a one-year fantasy draft among NFL franchises, he really would go No. 1 overall.
• Joe Concha's The List — The newest addition to "MSNBC With the Sporting News" (whatever the hell that combo is) delivers a weekly list of five things every fan must know. God knows why MSNBC produces his column in a scrolling frame, and it would have been nice if they hinted what the hell the topic was, but Joe's good guy so read up on why he thinks Jeter is overrated — apparently a .318 lifetime hitter with four championships and a World Series MVP isn't very good. Then again, Joe once wrote that living in Hoboken, N.J., was better than living in Manhattan.
• Gammons: Yanks the Team to Beat — The ESPN baseball analyst writes that "Jeter is an October fulcrum unlike anyone else." Ah, but what does Gammons know about baseball?
• Just Win Already — Sports Illustrated's Phil Taylor is so sick of self-pitying Cubs and Red Sox fans that he wants one of the teams to win just so they'd shut up.
Baseball Is More Competitive Than Ever — Slate's Allen Barra on the illusion of the lack of competitive balance in Major League Baseball. Like I care, as long as the Yankees win over and over and over again.
You might want to look into that flight again. I just flew to Ft Lauderdale for $77 two weekends ago. I got everything pretty cheap, besides the Dolphin tickets.
Posted by Livia at September 30, 2003 9:06 AM