And it's been that way for years.
I have been totally and utterly absorbed by the NFL, its short five month season, the botched game winning field goals, the bad play calls, the under the hood reviews and most of all the utter drama it delivers week in week out, season in season out. It's like your favorite TV series and your favorite sport all rolled into one. It keeps you up all night.
The Cleveland Browns. The Dallas Cowboys. The New York Giants.
Famous places, famous cities, teams that have become so familiar to me and yet all so far away.
I live in Dublin. My nearest team is an ocean away from me. I'm so far removed yet so deeply engrossed, so familiarized, so fanatical.
It's quite the paradox.
I think Razorlight said it best when they said 'all my life, watching America'. Anybody living in Ireland will know exactly what I'm talking about. And not just NFL fans either. We consume so much US media and yet as I look at this map of the world in front me, we're absolutely miles away!
Which makes my next mission all the more daring.
I'm going to go and see each and every one of the 32 NFL teams play in their home stadium at least once before I die. But instead of taking my entire lifetime to do it, I'm going to do it over the next four years.
Let me say that again, That's 32 teams, all dotted across America, each and every stadium, each and every city in four years. And I live in Ireland.
So how am I going to do this? I'm going to take four trips a year, two games per trip, over four years which means 4 x 2 x 4 = 32 teams seen by 2022.
Now how I'm going to get from Kansas City, Missouri to Phoenix, Arizona or wherever it may be as the adventure goes on, well that's just going to be part of the fun.
How am I gonna fund this? In short I have absolutely no idea. It's going to be expensive but it's going to be well spaced out.
Although not as spaced out as the person attempting it.
It's a leap of faith but I think I'm going to be able to do it. Would be great to get to see all the cities let alone get to see NFL too everywhere I go. The whole idea just seems so right to me how could it possibly go wrong?
In 2014 I went to the World Cup in Brazil for three weeks. The year after that I went to Vegas to see the Mayweather Pacquiao fight. I'm not saying these were the best moments of my life because they weren't, but they were probably the most memorable. It's the sort of trips you'll remember forever, these things, and I haven't done anything like that since then.
Now's the time for a new project.
It would be a shame not to do a blog about the whole adventure which is why I'm starting this today to document the trip. In fact I'm going to go one step further and start a travel vlog too, one vlog from each trip, 16 videos in total.
I've never vlogged before but you have to start somewhere. I think the story is so interesting it would be a shame not to film it.
It's been a dream of mine to do this for quite a while so I might as well start and take it year by year. If it takes me longer than the four years then so be it. I've been thinking about it for four years and I'm no closer now than I was then so any trip would be an improvement.
My plan is to pick off the easier cities first, or in other words the ones that Aer Lingus fly directly to from Dublin. Which means this year I'll be going to Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. All things being equal I'll probably go to Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington DC. and Miami next year.
I can't wait to sample the atmosphere of each city, meet the fans and see their teams play. I'm sort of a free agent myself at the moment after falling out of love with the Dallas Cowboys over the years a team I liked but who ultimately broke my heart as one by one they pushed, shoved and unceremoniously dumped each and every one of my favorite stars out the door. Plus I've been told by a real life American that I "absolutely in no way whatsoever match the personality of a Dallas Cowboys fan."
Maybe I'll end up right back where I started when its all done. Or maybe I'll find myself a new team. This trip is definitely one way of making an informed decision on that front.
With none of the teams having any direct link back to Ireland I think the best way to chose one would be to visit each and everyone of them and decide for myself. Don't you?
So really, that's it. My first trip is going to be the opening game of the season in Philadelphia when the freshly crowned Super Bowl champion Eagles host the Atlanta Falcons on September 6th after that it'll be the train down to Baltimore to catch the Ravens host the Bills.
32 teams, four years, USA via Dublin.
