The announced attendance at FedEx Field on Labor Day night was 86,587, which I figured had to be close to a complete sell-out. From my vantage point, every last seat seemed to be occupied – and I definitely had a birds-eye view from which to make that assessment. A bird with very good eyesight.

I had secured my ticket for the college football game between the Boise State Broncos and the Virginia Tech Hokies only a couple of weeks beforehand, so I didn’t expect premiere seating. And I was right. I did a quick count of the number or rows between me and the absolute top of the stadium. One.

Despite my location high above the field though, I must admit that I had a pretty good seat. Which came in handy during time-outs. Because that was the only time I would actually be able to sit down and see anything beside other people’s backs.
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Give me a sunny day, a good vantage point and a clear idea of the rules, and I could happily watch a Paint-Drying Competition. Toss in a compelling story line upon which to build a rooting interest and I’ll be the last one to leave the bleachers.

At last weekend’s Hampton Classic I had the first two in hand and was working hard on the others as I watched the Davenport Incorporated Amateur/Owner Jumper Classic, the first of the day’s two Grand Prix Ring events. Unfortunately, the tools of my event-watching trade (event documentation, intelligible P.A. system, informative scoreboard, knowledgeable fellow spectators) were in short supply, leaving me to my own devices to figure out how this whole horse-jumping scoring thing works.

At the risk of reducing equestrian experts into spasms of laughter, here’s what I came up with.
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The Hampton Classic was once described to me as “the Super Bowl of equestrian events”. Hmmm. Intriguing. Unable to control the Pavlovian effect that the words “Super Bowl” have on a sports fan, I felt immediately compelled to travel to the outer reaches of Long Island, New York to take in Hampton Classic XXXV. Hey, I was in the neighborhood.

Mind you, this was the Hamptons on Labor Day Weekend, so I knew it wouldn’t be a piece of cake to get there. And as a resident of Los Angeles, I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of fine traffic. But as I sat on Route 27 on a sun-splashed Saturday morning I was humbled.

This was clearly a new paradigm in traffic jams, rivaled only by the recent 9-day back-up in China. The next time you hear somebody say facetiously, “I could have walked there faster”, feel free to reference me as a hands-on authority on the matter. I had plenty of time to do the math.
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It happens just once a year, during the fortnight that ushers Summer out and Autumn into the Big Apple.

And so I arrived at the U.S. Open expecting to see a huge build-out. An ocean of tents and similar hospitality structures. Maybe I was in the wrong part of the sizable Billie Jean King National Tennis Center complex. Because what I saw was a permanent structure, complete with fountains and a food court that would make the Mall of America sit up and take notice. Very little of it was of the temporary construction variety that would be taken down and spirited away in the aftermath of the tournament. Which made me wonder…what else is this place used for? Other sporting events? Concerts? Amway sales conventions?

So I did a little asking around. It turns out…not much.

Unless of course you take into account that the entire magnificent complex, with its 22 courts inside the gates and 11 in the surrounding park is open to the public year-round, weather permitting. That is of course when it’s not busy hosting one of the two most visible tennis tournaments in the world.

That’s right – for less than $20 an hour, you can play where some of the greatest players in the world have competed. Sort of like teeing it up at Augusta National Golf Club – except for the year-round part. Or the inexpensive part. And oh yeah, there’s that “don’t you peasants even think about sullying our lawn” thing. OK, bad analogy.
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Don’t get my friend Feesh started on the U.S. Open.

He calls it the worst-run event in New York sports. Yet for each of the past 15 years, he’s been drawn inexorably back. Partly to get his fix of tennis, a sport that he competed in back when he still had cooperative shoulders. Mostly though, “I come to the early rounds for the same reason everybody else does – to see an upset. To be there when an unknown beats a star.”

Like a Janko Tipsarevic beating an Andy Roddick for example – which had occurred on this same stage one night earlier. Watching it on television I had been rooting hard for the “Serbian Bono”, since I had taken a liking to him earlier this summer at the Farmers Insurance Classic. I can imagine how thrilled I would have been to have seen his upset win unfold right in front of me.

In general though, I was chomping at the bit to see everything. But I had been slow on the trigger in purchasing a ticket for the day session, and when I arrived in the late afternoon expecting to waltz in and bounce from court to court consuming tennis in mass quantities I was sorely disappointed. That line queuing up at the box office? That was for the next day’s tickets. Today was sold out.
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