Location, Location, Elimination

Contrary to my last article, I don't want to go to an NFL fixture purely for the match-up.  I want to spend a few days in the city and make the experience a memorable holiday.  In the past, I have visited fantastic cities when attending football matches - Lisbon, Porto, Dortmund, Braga...all beautiful places and the experience of being in these locations is sometimes more memorable than the actual match.  I don't want to go to an NFL match and want to go home straight after the game - for a start, it's a bloody long way to go for a quick visit!  What's  more, any mention of a holiday and my other half will be making sure she's on the flight.  So, once again I'm going to put the elimination into her capable hands and asking her which of the 8 remaining NFL locations she would least like to visit for a holiday.

If it was up to me and I had all 32 teams to pick from then it'd spell the end for Green Bay.  Green Bay is comfortably the smallest NFL location with a population of just over 100,000.  The main tourist attraction in Green Bay is the national Railroad Museum and the average temperature is sub zero for the second half of the NFL season.  So, if looking at train tracks and freezing your arse off is your kind of thing then I'd recommend Green Bay for a visit.  However, this isn't up to me...

This immediately means good news for the Jets as her first response is that she wants to go New York.  The other 7 entrants receive a lot of attention and plenty of research.  An hour or so later, I'm informed that it's going to come down to 3 teams:  Buffalo, Carolina and Detroit.

Buffalo; as it just looks very dull.  She likened it to a trip to Gillingham, which is extremely harsh on Buffalo. But I took her point that there didn't appear to be much to do there.

Charlotte, North Carolina wasn't getting rave reviews on travel websites.  The most exciting things to do there appear to be eating chicken or eating BBQ chicken at a drive through.  I like chicken, but I would like more to do on a holiday.

Downtown Detroit - Beautiful

Then we come to Detroit, to quote a Lonely Planet review - "Tell any American you’re planning to visit Detroit, then watch their eyebrows shoot up quizzically. ‘Why?’ they’ll ask, and warn you about the off-the-chart homicide rates, boarded-up buildings with trash swirling at their bases, and plummeting population (down from 1.8 million in 1950 to 886,000 today).  Detroit’s a crap-hole. You’ll get killed there"


This appears to spell the end for the Lions, but I complete the formalities and ask her who she is eliminating.

The answer?  The Carolina Panthers. 
"Surely you mean Detroit"
"Being shot in Detroit ain't good, but it sounds more exciting than Charlotte"

And there we have female logic in a nutshell, she'd rather run the risk of death if the alternative was eating chicken for a few days. I'll hold my hands up and accept full responsibility for this elimination.  My decision to place it in her hands and my fault if I end up with the Lions and have to spend a holiday in Detroit.

The future looks bright for
the Panthers

Which means I'm losing the Panthers, which is a bit of a wounder.  I can see big things in store for Carolina in the next few years. Cam Newton is the real deal and, ironically, I think they will see a similar upturn in fortunes as that seen by the Lions in recent times.

I'm down to just 7 teams now and there are just 6 more eliminations to go.  Next time, I'll be looking at an alternative method of picking a team - the nfl360 website - and I'll be explaining how the blog will continue after I've found my team...