"One more thing the British just couldn't get right…"


Don't Get Between Jay And His Giants Tickets

by Jay Klein

I had set my cell phone alarm for 4:50AM. The beer and pretzels were right near my laptop (where I had already practiced logging on to the ticketmaster website the night before). I was ready for anything…or so I thought. As tickets went on sale at 10am in Britain, I was set to log on at 5AM from my hotel room, coincidentally in Miami, the NY Giants opponent for the first ever regular season NFL game outside of the States.

The moment had come. Ticketmaster and nfllondon.com had been preparing for this ticket sale for months, so I thought it would go smoothly. As I logged in with my assigned password, the first roadblock was clearly printed on the website: due to "technical difficulties," the online sale would begin an hour late. Luckily, it was 5AM and time was probably my least concern.

The technical issues were fixed and the online sale began. After sitting in a queue for about another hour they had finally offered me tickets. My friend and I had the brilliant idea of buying 6 tickets. We could keep two of them and make a nice profit on the other four. Maybe this could take care of our ticket costs, a few pints, maybe even our cover at the Ministry of Sound…

I typed in my email address and my credit card information and only one column remained - shipping. If anyone could fill out the shipping information, it was me. When I was younger I dreamed about being a UPS man some day. It's not a coincidence that my favorite color was brown. My brother's wife's brother even works for Fed Ex. Ok, you get the point…But something was wrong. One question remained. Ship to: UK or Ireland. Hmm, fish and chips or Guiness? The Pound or the Euro? Then, it hit me. Maybe I should ship the tickets to the USA, as I don't live in the UK nor Ireland. But of course, that wasn't an option. I scrambled back and forth. Oh, Bloody Hell! Did I have any friends over in London? Could I mail it to my company's office in London and then try to track it down? I couldn’t figure out a solution. As time ticked away, I saw my tickets go from the lower tier 20 yard line, then to the corner of the end zone, then slowly move into the upper tier. Would I even get a seat in the stadium?

Finally, at about 7:45am, almost three hours after signing on the website to get tickets, the website offered a will-call option. Of course! Will-Call what a brilliant idea. Only if they British had though of that about three hours earlier!!

Then I realized that the British probably had thought about this weeks earlier, but probably just didn't care. Maybe they wanted revenge on Americans trying to buy tickets for a game in their homeland. Maybe they had put up with us long enough (refer to 93% of American History). Maybe Giants v. Dolphins is a chance for the British to stick it to the proverbial man (US Man that is) and what better way to start than to screw them out of tickets. You think it’s a coincidence that the two teams they picked to play in this game are probably the two most pathetic teams in the league. The NFL has been built on strength and power. Yet, they choose a team with a dolphin as their mascot and another team with Eli Manning as their quarterback. I'm not trying to create any issues that aren't there, but do you really think a team like the Patriots from Boston (refer to Tea Party) or technically from NEW england, would ever be chosen to play in this game?

At the end of the day, I got my tickets and I'm certainly gonna enjoy a game played at one of the most famous stadiums on Earth, Wembley. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna be drinking any of that English tea while I'm over there…