I hung out with a variety of tailgaters and watched them eat, drink and have fun. I always said I wasn't put on the planet to be a spectator, but tonight I was.
At each of the parking lots, there was a combination of beer, wine, vodka, burgers, steaks and shrimp. The one quality abundant at each was optimism. Talk was always about next week -- will the Panthers play in New York against the Giants or at home against Philadelphia. Nobody in the parking lots, or on TV, is picking Arizona, at least nobody I heard.
That scare you?
It shouldn't. The Panthers don't share the sentiment. They didn't this week, anyway.
Arizona's buses pulled into the little parking lot behind Bank of America Stadium at 5:20 p.m. The Panthers busses arrived about 25 minutes later.
Seeing the buses pull in made the game seem real.
Not sure if the guy on Mint St. was real. He was giving away tickets. He really was. In what section were the tickets? That's tough to say. They were, he said, tickets to heaven.
I have one.
Scalping is legal, right?