My Life of Things

Unbeknownst* to me, my wife signed us up for Tampa Bay Buccaneers season tickets along with two other couples we hung out with. At that time, they were just a few years off of their 2002 Super Bowl so there was a waiting list which took another couple of years to cycle to us. Serendipitously, she got the call just before our wedding in 2007 so this turned into a surprise wedding gift. I was ecstatic to say the least.

Almost two decades (and another Super Bowl) later, we still have those tickets. Though the seats have changed a number of times and both of those couples have since stopped renewing theirs (and one couple isn’t even a couple), we still enjoy our Sundays, and the occasional Monday, watching the Bucs try to pull out the win in blazing Florida heat – which to be fair only lasts until, oh roughly mid-December.

From that first season, I started saving the annual pass card and lanyard. Why exactly? I don’t know but it definitely got unwieldy. After the season ended, I would dutifully add them to the corner of a corkboard. And it wasn’t just the season passes. We also received the occasional VIP perks of exclusive draft parties and club seat upgrades. Additionally, I spent time as the art director of a local magazine and was able to wrangle a press pass to season camp a couple of years to get some photos for a pre-season story. And then two times, I was even in stadium during the season to get photos from the sideline (donning that official NFL sideline vest was a highlight, sadly they asked for that back when I left.)

Thankfully, they switched to digital passes a few years ago so there haven’t been any recent additions to pile. Even so, I finally got tired of constantly picking them off the ground as they inevitably failed to hold their position due to the sheer volume. Besides, a lot of those pre-digital passes years were painful (oh hi, Greg Schiano), so do I really need to preserve that era?

No.

*We all love pretentious British-y words, yes?