New Year, New Venues

Travel buddies (Gus & I did both games together)

This week I got to usher out the old year and enter in the new with visits to 2 new sports venues. The first was on New Years Eve at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, KY. I got a chance to walk around the facility when I was there (mostly due to the fact that no one knew where the lunch room was) and what a gorgeous facility they have there in Cardinals Country! Although the game wasn’t much (Kentucky blew out the much smaller Cards 78-63), the Yum! Center is a state of the art place to watch a basketball game. They have tons of things to look at (there’s a mini-museum as you enter the front door) and plenty of places to eat, shop and…well…plenty of restroom facilities. Don’t know what a concert will sound like there (they got Lady Gaga coming in the near future…), but I would highly recommend going to watch a hoops game there! If anything, it’s a great place to watch some of the premiere teams in the Big East play!

Courtside. But I forgot to take MY picture. Oh well…

My next stop on New Years Day was East Rutherford, NJ and the New Meadowlands Stadium. The home of Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014, this monolith of steel doesn’t look like much on the outside, but on the inside I found it to be more to my liking. With 4 giant video boards and thousands of grey seats, the Meadowlands looks kind of generic but you have to keep in mind…there are 2 teams that play here, so they HAD to go neutral. There are luxury seats directly behind the sidelines where fans who have the money can watch from behind the coaches and players and feel like a part of the action! And the media center here is HUGE with a nice lounge where they make meals and have plenty of room to stretch out.

Tuna Can Stadium

View from the press box

In the End Zone