Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Okay, okay.  I know.  The National Football League game that was held on Sunday, December 7th, 2008, at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, was not technically a neutral site game.  It was a home game for the Buffalo Bills, and a rather important one, if they still entertained any playoff hopes.

The truth is, it was unlike any Bills’ home game ever.  Sure, there were more Bills’ fans than Miami Dolphins fans, but the “visitors” were well represented.  And, as it was the first-ever NFL regular season game in Toronto (in all of the Dominion of Canada, from sea-to-shining-sea, for that matter), there was a sizable contingent of fans in attendence who cheer for other NFL teams.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, for one.  So much so, that the good folk at the Rogers Centre who stock the souvenir booths, made sure to bring a healthy supply of Steelers’ paraphernalia, in addition to the Bills and Fish.

But mostly, this NFL game was about being seen.  I don’t consider myself a football snob, though I love the game (NFL and CFL), and played some of it earlier in my life.  But I do know when I’m surrounded by folk who are there more for the experience at being at the big league NFL, as much as they’re in attendence for a football game.  And that describes a great deal of the people at the Rogers Centre on this Sunday.  The football was secondary to the experience of commenting on the size of the crowd, texting their friends across the way, trying to start the wave, and drinking copious amounts of bad beer.

But that’s all fine.  After all, pro sports is entertainment.  Some of us hold it near-and-dear to our hearts, but for the vast majority, it’s another way to spend a frosty Sunday, even better so when there’s a novelty factor involved.

The game itself was a dog (16-3 Dolphins), and a lot of people started streaming for the exits at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

Which was a shame, but you pay your money and you take your chances.  The Bills aren’t exactly setting the football world on-fire this season, but one hoped that this heated rivalry would produce sparks.  It didn’t.

What it did produce was an appreciation by myself for when the National Hockey League used to play a couple of neutral site games during the early-to-mid 1990′s.  The league played an 84 game schedule, and ended up taking to the ice in exotic locals such as Cleveland, Halifax, Sacramento, and Hamilton.

It was at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, that I attended two of these neutral site games.  The second one (11-18-93) featured Ron Hextall and the New York Islanders defeating the Montreal Canadiens 5-1, with the majority of the crowd festooned in Habs’ gear.  It was a lively crowd, though the game was lukewarm.

It was the first neutral site NHL game at Copps that remains fresh in my mind.  That cold November night, Ron Hextall and the Quebec Nordiques took on the Toronto Maple Leafs…and there was no doubt whatsoever what team was the crowd favourite.

Thanks to a sell-out crowd, and apparently most of those folk deciding to pick up their tickets at the will call, there was a huge throng that jammed the front doors, and most of us did not get into the venue until after the first period was finished.  It was frustrating standing out in the cold, knowing a game was going on which you had a valid ticket for, but there was no way to do anything about it.

By the time the puck dropped for the second period, Copps was packed.  To this day, it remains the noisiest sports crowd I have ever been a part of.  It tops even the game at the Montreal Forum, the one where Guy Lafleur first played on Forum ice against the Canadiens.  He suited up for the New York Rangers, scored two goals and added an assist, and brought the roof down with each goal, particularly the second one.  It was so loud I could not make out at all what the guy in the next seat was trying to shout at me.

That was February of 1989.  A few years later in Hamilton, November 17th, 1992, the crowd topped that.  Since it was a neutral site game, it appeared most of the corporate fat cats didn’t bother to make the trip down the road to The Hammer.  The real hockey fan filled the building that night with a true appreciation for the game in a way no typical Maple Leafs’ crowd could hope to match.

The Nordiques won the game 3-1, but that’s not what has stayed with me.  I’m probably the furthest thing from a Maple Leafs’ fan, but that evening I developed a real appreciation for these fans, who didn’t need a scoreboard to implore them to cheer, didn’t resort to the wave, didn’t need to rely on overplayed cheesy commercial rock music to fill the spaces between action.  They stood and cheered and yelled and laughed and argued and cheered and drank and cheered until the final star was announced.

They were just happy to be at a Toronto Maple Leafs game.

This wasn’t a European soccer crowd either, which itself can be very impressive.  There was no organized singing or chanting.  There was just real hockey fans watching a pretty good game.  It’s a shame it can’t be that way at every game.

It was after this game that I stopped picking on the real Maple Leafs’ fan, and came to the realization that real fans of whatever sport are very much the same.  They share a undiluted passion for their sport, and their particular team.  You can dress up the arena, the field, the ballpark.  You can, as everyone’s so fond of saying these days, put lipstick on a pig, but the real fan doesn’t care.

Just give them a shot at half-decent tickets, and let the actual game be the centre-of-attraction, and, trust me, word-of-mouth will spread and people will want to be there.

The trouble is, with the high cost of tickets, and the scarcity of said ducats (depending on the market), the real fan is either consigned to the upper deck, or have to be content to watch from their living room.  Which saps the arena of the very lifeblood of what makes sports special in the first place; the shared experience between a group of strangers, who have come together for three hours with a united purpose.  Which is a rare and precious thing these days.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s