Fri.-Sat., August 12-13, 2022
Finally, the American football season is upon us.
On Friday evening I was off to Oak Park H.S. to join the Sabolic Clan to watch the Eagles host the El Camino Real H.S. Royals in their annual scrimmage.
It was their final tune-ups before playing their opening games in a week. Next Friday Oak Park will travel to Ventura to play the Buena Bulldogs while El Camino Real is also on the road to Pacific Palisades take on the Palisades Dolphins.
It was a BEAUTIFUL day for
American football!
OPHS in the gray jerseys to the left,
ELCO in blue on Offense
The scrimmage coming to an end
They played four 20 minute running time quarters with the starters playing the First Half and the backups getting a chance to impress their coaches all throughout the Second Half.
The goal in scrimmages is to find out what you both do well and, more importantly, where you still have work to do before your first pre-season game.
From this perspective, it was a good, competitive scrimmage for both teams.
As always, spending a night watching football with the Sabolic Clan was lots of fun.
Saturday was Game Day in
Europe for our Barcelona Dragons
After a league wide Bye week,
all 12 ELF clubs were back in action
Two games on Saturday and four more on Sunday. There were now only four more games left in the ELF's 2022 regular season.
The ELF's 2020 Championship Game
will be played in Klagenfurt, Austria
If you happen to be in Austria on
September 25th, here is the info
you need to see the game
While channel surfing Saturday
morning, I found the Barcelona Dragons
game on live TV on the NXT-HD channel,
DIRECTV's channel 623
I was indeed entertained!
Barcelona (7-2) beat the
Cologne Centurions (2-7) handily
The Dragons therefore maintain their lead in the ELF's Southern Conference, but by how much over the second place Rhein Fire?
The Rhein Fire (5-4) beat the
Istanbul Rams (1-8) in a shootout
The Dragons lead the Fire by two games with only three games left in their regular seasons.
The Barcelona (7-2) loss to Istanbul (1-8) a few weeks ago still sticks in all of the Dragons fan's collective craws.
Soon after the Barcelona game was over, I got a call from Jacob who happens to be the Los Angeles Rams #1 fan. He wanted to know if I wanted to join him and Michael for a trip to Inglewood to see the Rams play the Los Angeles Chargers at SoFi Stadium which was the first pre-season game for both clubs.
The tickets on StubHub were a relatively cheap at $31 each, that was down from their face value of $230 apiece because neither team was suiting up most of their key players. This would be a strictly backups only affair.
At the age of ten, that didn't matter to Jacob and for all three of us, it was our first chance to finally see SoFi up close and personal.
We needed sustenance of course
so this historic spot in Culver City
got our patronage
It was a mistake as the food was overpriced if you ask me.
While our waitress was awesome, the pastrami sandwiches were only average at best, nowhere close to the quality of the pastrami sandwiches at either The Hat, Canter's or Philippe's.
On to SoFi . . .
After parking in the Morningside H.S. parking lot, just a brisk walk from SoFi, we entered the pre-game festivities.
Tailgating Dead Ahead!
Lots of decked out Rams fans
As you probably know, both the Rams and Chargers call SoFi their home field. Tonight it was a Chargers' home game.
Lots of decked out Chargers fans too
Entering Chargers Territory
Angry Ram fans?
Cool hat
Michael and Jacob by Lake SoFi
Soon Jacob, soon
Mary would have loved
this butterfly
The Chargers Drum Line
was in mid-season form
Jacob was racing into the stadium
with glee and excitement
Michael and Jacob by
one of SoFi's many fountains
We entered on Level Four,
WAY above the game field
It IS a beautiful stadium
Another adventure for all of us
SoFi is part stadium and,
seemingly, part UFO
The Fabulous Forum
The former home of the NBA Lakers and NHL Kings, is still in use for concerts and other events just outside of SoFi Stadium.
STRONG look at SoFi
Our view from section 544, a.k.a.,
the nose bleed seats
I spent at least half of the game watching the game on the big screen as opposed to watching the miniature players so far below us.
The Sun setting into the Pacific Ocean
Jacob hamming it up on a
SoFi recording device
The original plan that Michael and I concocted was to tour the stadium and watch just the first half of the game before heading home since both teams' starters were not suiting up tonight.
Jacob would have none of it!
He reminded us quite forcefully that as Rams fans we simply MUST stay until the end of the game.
So we did.
It was actually an interesting
Second Half
Our family bonding on a Boys Night Out knows no bounds.
We all really liked the stadium but our seats were so extremely far away from the action and at a vertigo inducing pitch.
Now we just need to start saving large amounts of cash if we ever want to see a regular season Rams game at SoFi.
This is actually SO Laurie
We both love high school football Fridays and college football Saturdays but NFL Sundays, other than Rams games, are 100% Laurie's passion.
Reading Is FUNdamental!
Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montabano
character NEVER disappoints
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