Your sports bucket list

2 tickets—-prime placement
You get to go to 1 event

Super Bowl
World Series game
Masters
World Cup
NBA Finals
Kentucky Derby
Wimbledon
Stanley Cup game
Daytona 500
Indy 500
Final 4 title game
Your pick of cfb bowl game

 

So much of this depends on other factors. I've been fortunate - I was at G3 and G4 of the 2016 World Series to see my Cubs in Wrigley, and even though they were losses, it's the best sports experience of my life, thankfully, for the way it turned out, but even more for the train ride back after G4 (long story, but it's my best sports memory). I don't have much care for seeing a Super Bowl in person. Anything at a neutral site seems a bit antiseptic to me, like even a FF in person for UNC. And so much depends on the teams playing. I'm not a Knicks fan (though I may be close to becoming one after the years my daughter has spent in NYC; I find myself really liking Thibs and the way this team plays hard), so I think of this list, seeing the Knicks in the Garden of a close NBA Finals game seems like it might be the most intense experience for me. The Garden crowd just jumps off the TV screen to me. I'd choose that.

Edit: I have a friend who works for the Phillies, and if they had made the WS last year, I would've gone to G3. That playoff crowd seems amazing and fun, and I wish I could've experienced it.

 

I’ve been to a Stanley Cup final and got on the ice for that. Hands down a Top 5 moment from my journo career.

I was really disappointed in 2014 I was priced out of attending a World Series game. Above anything else, that’s what I want to do.

 

We had season tickets for Showtime's back to back.

It's probably between Game 7 of the World Series of the Super Bowl.

Probably the Super Bowl because of the totality of it.

 

I love women in big, fancy hats....so Daytona 500

 

Not that this is possible anymore between the B1G’s expansion and the scrambling of bowl game tie-ins, but Iowa playing in the Rose Bowl would be the top of my list.

And as I’ve mentioned before, it was all set to happen in the early 2000s when Brad Banks led Iowa to a Big Ten title and I had a high school buddy of mine living in Pasadena who bought tickets.

Then the CFB powers that be decided the Hawkeyes would play Pac-10 champion USC in the Orange Bowl that year. Still pisses me off.

 

I’ve been to the Daytona 500 and it was definitely all that.

Would love to go to a World Series game between any two teams.

 

Super Bowl and World Series.

Also WrestleMania, which always occurs around elderly family members’ birthdays. The WWE is talking about moving it to early May, so maybe then.

 

Of those which I haven’t gotten to yet, Wimbeldon. I would love to do a soccer week in England including Old Trafford.

 

Was lucky enough to win the ticket lottery through the Phillies to snag two standing room for game four of the 2022 World Series, then got there and saw the second no hitter in World Series history. The odds have to be astronomical.

 

Mizzou to play for a natl title in football or hoops. I’ll go to my grave without either.

 

I'm not going to recap my retirement post, just say that I have been blessed to have attended dozens of epic sporting events as a reporter or a fan -- World Series', Rose Bowls, Stanley Cup Final, etc.
Now, 10 years retired, I think the best event I could wish to see -- if I live long enough -- is the Ducks winning the Stanley Cup on home ice with my daughter sitting next to me at Honda Center.