When My Dad Was Young, He Had to Work At The Stadium To Watch The Game

Growing up in New Jersey, I became a New York Giants fan (football, not baseball) because of my dad. He started rooting for them in late 1950s. Back then, the only way he could follow the team was by reading newspaper articles and listening to the radio on game day; however, he couldn’t watch the Giants on television.

While games were televised with the start of the 1959 season, my dad said you had to drive about 50 miles outside of New York City to watch them on television because the games were always blacked out in the New York market. In fact, he remembers that the Giants played the Green Bay Packers in the 1962 NFL Championship Game at Yankee Stadium, hotels in South Jersey advertised that they would carry the game. Because dad was raised in a hardworking family, he was taught that if you wanted something, then you had to work for it. That’s exactly what he did.

Dad got a job selling concessions at Yankee Stadium during the 1960 season, just so he could watch the Giants play.

More than 50 years later—times obviously have changed thanks to the introduction of the cable television, satellite and of course the Internet. There’s almost no way you can ever miss a game. And if you can’t watch it live, you can always record it. My dad still lives in New Jersey and I live in North Carolina with my wife and kids. He and I talk on the phone every time the Giants play; however, recently I broke the tradition. The reason—I watched the game on my smartphone. I told my father what I did the following day and he reminded me of those times when he couldn’t watch the game at home in Jersey City, NJ (right across the Hudson River from Manhattan).

“Now you can walk down the street and watch a game on your phone. Times have changed,” he said

Times certainly have changed, but the merging of broadband and wireless technologies enable sports fans, like me, to never miss a game, a score or even breaking news. Let’s be honest, watching a football game on my smartphone wasn’t really necessary; however, consider how much we can accomplish with our mobile devices. Whether you have a smartphone, tablet or laptop, you are always connected to everyone and everything. My colleague Jim Hulsey recently posted a blog article where he described how people are so attached to their smartphones that they are expecting and demanding mobile broadband service to be available wherever they are. Well Jim, I’ve become one of them. I rely on my smartphone for more than just making phone calls. It has become an integral part of my life because I NEED to be connected to everyone and everything. By the way, the Giants won the game (I don’t think I’d be writing this if they had lost).

How has the expansion of wireless broadband access allowed you to stay connected?