Hey Finheaven! Alright I swore I’d try to give a more in depth rundown of what the web weekend was like, and I guess the best place to start is the beginning right?
Alright I’ll begin with D-Day picking me up at the airport, the man, the myth, the legend, the pimp!!! He arrives in splendid fashion, top down on his porche. What seems like a 5 minute ride later (hey if you got a car like that why not put the pedal to the metal right?) we arrive at the hotel, which after quickly checking in we head to… the bar (hey this is me and dday we’re talking about right?) A few drinks later and talking with the locals about politics, dolphins and um well women, Matt arrives and we have a few more. It’s a great start to what would be a great weekend for Finheaven.
So we let dday guide the tour to another bar, hey we have a few hours to kill… and this place is a nice little bar close to the beach named Kahuna’s (forget my spelling now and forever please!) and we meet a few of dday’s friends who really know how to party it up!
Well it was time to head to…
Bokamper's 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
First we had every intention of getting there on time, but somehow we manage to get caught up in a Friday night accident, No we weren’t involved but it took us 40 mins to go about 5 miles. Gotta love that big city traffic right?
Okay the most memorable part of the night for me at least happened within the first five minutes upon arriving. I get to meet Andy Kent, so he looks happy, has his little plate of food, standing around talking to some other guys, and the first thing I do is shake his hand, and then when I start to shake someone else’s hand I happen to knock his plate out of his hand and man did I feel horrible! Well aside from the fumble the rest of the evening at Bokamper’s goes nicely, I’m thrilled to meet the Godfather (Curt Fennel) and the rest of the gang(s), we spent most of the night talking with those crazy guys from Phinzmania. Amazing what a difference a few months make… BTW Bitching Dave if freaking hilarious!!! Also if anything goes wrong (and it will according to Murphy) Dave gets the credit.
Well after a few brews, and much of the buffet, 10pm comes all too soon! Well dday and matt being party animals, off we go back to Kahuna’s. When we get there somehow they managed to cram a great reggae band into the front of the bar and even more impressive is the 150 plus people in and around the bar. It’s loud, busy, and the drinks keep flowing. 3am comes all too soon and we have an early day…
After a brief bus ride which I would say everyone might’ve been a tad hungover, we arrive at
Dolphin Stadium
Look I realize everyone at some point in their lives has seen a Stadium, mostly on TV, sometimes in person, but unless you’ve been to Dolphin Stadium in person, it is hard to describe the feeling of it. Let’s just say I was in awe for my first time, and I hope everyone gets the opportunity to visit it at least once. And you guys who got to see the team in its heyday in the 70’s and 80’s at the orange bowl, I envy you!
9:15 AM - Stadium Tour
Ok the stadium tour was awesome, the very first thing we got to do was take pictures with Jimmy C in the loading docks, and then we got to
walk right out onto the field. Well not completely more like around the field, as it had been freshly painted and we were told that last year (probably your fault Dave!) someone walked across the freshly painted field and messed it up, and that if it happened again we would be in danger of not having WW6. So staying off the field I got some great shots of the stadium and the ring of honor.
So as we went past the marlins dugout and into the visitor dugout I took some more pictures (hey we have baseball fans too right?) and then we arrived at the team locker room. Now it didn’t occur to me that the stadium locker room wouldn’t be a true view of the player’s lockers but we were told that they were only really here 10 days out of the year. So yeah it looked great, pristine, and very impressive, for visitors. Well just a quick tidbit that I found interesting is that Grape G2 is the drink of choice.
Moving on with the stadium tour we arrived at the press box, Jimmy C. talked with us a bit, we moved to the I guess I would call it a trophy room, someone will correct me I’m sure… but seeing the super bowl trophies, Marino’s locker, Shula’s desk, and all the great moments of our team all in one place, well I got camera happy again. All good things…
Well it was back to Bokamper’s for lunch, (hey it is a great place!) Killed a few hours before heading to…Training Facility
Alright when we got there, I met the big boy himself, Big Papa Pump! Man he has a great ride that pimps the website, (got a few pictures posted already) and Look I can tell you why he is one of the greatest fans you’ll meet. He is always smiling quick to laugh, quick to tell a joke and is just a really likable character. It was fun hanging out with him over the weekend. I hope he never retires…
The training facility, again the dolphins franchise has so many great moments and history, it was obvious that they cannot be contained in one room, one stadium, or even one training facility. Picture, objects, helmets, shoes etc are everywhere! The entrance to the facility contains some of the stuff you and I would kill to own!
So we got a nice little photo op with the cheerleaders, (yeah I got my picture taken, who wouldn’t?) After the picture and greeting at the entrance we got to see what the players see 355. In the position meeting hallway, the walls are covered with great dolphins moments, from gameday performances, to Don holding up his first super bowl trophy, its wall to wall with greatness. You could just spend hours, either remembering the moments for yourself or imagining what it was like for those who experienced it.
Further down the hall we got to see the “real” locker room, and I can tell you that some of those guys have way too many cleats, esp. Fasano! Now we didn’t’ get to go right up to the lockers like we did at dolphins stadium, and really we were asked to not take any close up pictures of the lockers, as they felt the players deserved a bit of privacy. So I got a really good shot of the game of dominos and donuts that were left on the table, oh and Fasano’s cleat collection.
We got to take a look at the weight room, it seems Bill has moved all the machines out (or so I’m told) so that our guys can work on the “core”. I’d say the lack of injuries this year is testament to this.
I think the highlight of this part of the tour would have to be going inside the “bubble.” It is huge in there! Everyone seemed to be very excited about being in there, and we were a football short of really having some fun lol. We hung around in there a bit, and we took our group pictures, if it turns out messed up… blame dave.
5:00 PM - Dinner in Player Lounge
Now for the good part, mmm dinner, we got to eat at the same place the players do, and as I was told we got to eat the same type of food that they do, I will tell you that if they get to eat the same thing we did, I don’t know how they stay in such great shape, oh wait, they work their butts off.
6:00 PM - Group moves to auditorium
After dinner we moved to the team meeting room. Now others can get into more detail about what happened, and who said what. I’ll try to offer an overall impression.
First Jeff Ireland, I don’t think that any of the speakers knew what to expect from us, but we were and are an enthusiastic bunch, maybe downright scary. Jeff answered some tough questions, (I don’t think anyone really offered up any fluff questions) but overall throughout his period with us, he was unwilling to throw any players under a bus, he gave us a nice insight into how the team sets up their draft board. (they use a horizontal board, not vertical) and that when asked what teams he might already be scouting he of course offered up Alabama, LSU, nothing too surprising, but yeah if we were drafting in the top 10, I’d easily put an Alabama CB at the top of my list.
Tony Sparano, well first of all of us jumped to our feet and it took us a few minutes to quiet down enough for him to address us. His first question was, “alright, so what are we doing here?” Sparano is intense! After 10 minutes we even had one guy tell him that He was scared of him. Lol. He explained that part of the reason our D-backs and WR’s are doing better is that they are spending extra time working on getting physical at the line, he said that they’ve been very competitive and kind of indicated that a fight or two might’ve broken out.
I managed to ask him about Wilford and what Sparano would do about him being buried on the depth chart and how could he motivate him. Well He told us that there was nothing wrong with Wilford’s “motivation” it’s just that there is a limited number of players who get dressed for the game and that the player who has the “most jobs” gets to see the field. So he said Wilford knows what he needs to do to get back on the field.
I’ll say that overall I think that Sparano came off in person as being the right guy, he comes off in the games as being the right guy, and everyone around he him believes, and buys into his vision of what this team should be.
The last speaker of the night was Keith Sims, and he explained how great the current staff is about reconnecting with the alumni of the past and that it was Cam who actually was very good about starting the process. Keith was very candid and mentioned that he was a dolphins guy first but the redskins still had a special place in his heart. Who could blame him? When JJ came aboard and sent Shula players packing, Keith was one of those guys who knew his time was up. He also talked about his weight loss, and at one point he asked big papa pump to join him at the podium and when he got down there and they stood side by side, yours truly asked which one was “mini me?” They both took that in stride lol. (Seriously they could be brothers, I kid you not.)
Well in between the speakers, there were raffles and trivia contests, and some of the webbies were given out. I’m sure somewhere I can find out the complete list of who won what, and those who did win are very proud of what they accomplished, but the last award of the night I think was very special to everyone.
As many of you know, we lost a valued member of the community with the passing of Thomas Joseph Eddie otherwise known as “T-Rock.” Eddie was an administrator over at phinfever.com and he did a lot for our online community. His wife and daughter were in attendance for this WW, and when it came down to the final award, “Best Overall Site” we learned that the award had been renamed in his honor. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room at this announcement, and then the winner was announced. This was the first year that the award was given to two sites, Finheaven.com and Phins.com. If I had to describe with one word how I felt upon hearing the news, Vindicated.
This staff has put in so much work to change the perception that everyone had of Finheaven and to get this reward we knew that community as a whole supported what we are doing, and I wanted to just reach out and hug every single one of them. Finheaven had never won this award before, and to finally bring it home, after all that we went through this year, it just felt unbelievable!!!
Gameday!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
So we arrived at the stadium and walked to
11:00 AM - Pregame Party in Nat Mooreʼs BBQ Bash
It was great fun! The pregame excitement, the food, the Cheerleaders, oh wow, you know I had to spend 10 bucks to get my calendar signed lol. More pictures with cheerleaders!!! Free food, and a few early morning margarita’s, (alright I realize that somewhere one of you must be thinking, damn Wildbill is a alcoholic!) There was also live band and near the end the cheerleaders gathered up and gave us a private show… (Fully “clothed” you perverts!)
11:50 PM - Group departs for Field Tour
So we go to go to the field to see our boys do the pregame warm-ups, the good news was, no one dropped any passes, even Will Allen made a few nice catches! Joey and Channing looked like they were having a blast, nothing but pre-game smiles!
12:30 PM - Moved to West Endzone Field Club Seating
Well at this point we all gathered inside to await the team exiting the locker room for the field, the anticipation was killing me!!! But you can bet we tried our best to get them amped up before they even hit the tunnel. I won’t go into detail about the game, most of us watched it in some form we know what happened, there was lots to cheer about from the visitor’s dugout, and many of us took advantage of the wet bar vendor that was made available just for us. At some point I lost my voice from yelling, my hands hurt from banging on the metal to make more noise for our D, and in the end we tried to help our team out as much as we possibly could noise wise. I think the entire stadium was really motivated to help the team on Sunday. I posted a video of us going in and cheering for our boys after the game ended, Wayne even walked by and told SteveO how much he liked his haircut (they are both bald lol) and parcels must be on the same diet as Keith Sims because we could hardly recognize him he was so skinny!
Well guys I hope I conveyed a little bit of the excitement that I felt the entire weekend, it was a complete blast! A fan’s dream come true of backstage access, ground level endzone seating and Finheaven coming away from the webbies with the coveted T-Rock award!
2008 PARTICIPATING SITES
Sheddawgs.com
Finatics
Season Ticket Holders
Phinatics
DolFan Radio
Phins.com
Dolphins Make Me Cry
Bahamian Web Site
Dave's Bitchin Look
Finheaven
Phinphantic
Dolfanatic
Phinzmania
Miami Dolphins Online
Phinfever
Bored With Losing
2Michelles
DolFan UK
Phins Central
Dol-Fan World Order
