Thursday, April 16, 2009

The 2009 NFL Schedule Released

The 2009 NFL Schedule was released on Tuesday and I couldn't be more excited about the prospects of this year's installment of the Quest for 31. As many of you know, the challenge for this year is to attack and conquer the remaining five stadiums I have yet to see an NFL football game in, which I'm calling "The Final Five". So as I scanned through the 2009 NFL schedule I paid close attention to the availablility of home games in Denver, New Orleans, Baltimore, Washington, and New York to see how best to fit in visits to these staiums along with some favorite venues I'd like to revisit in 09. I also tend to look for those combo weekends allowing the more motivated questor to see multiple games in a single NFL weekend. I like to look for the Sunday/Monday combination weekends, where home games are located geograhically near each other, allowing you to hit each one but still have time enough time in each city to really enjoy gameday tailgating and night life provided therein.

For this year, I wanted to specifically target a combo weekend in Washington and Baltimore (both being Final Five Cities) and a Minnesota/Green Bay combination trip (becasue they're kick -ass tailgating towns). As it turns out there are several combo weekends scattered throughout the 2009 season that would make sense for the vested, single season Questor including a week fifteen Baltimore/Washington combo. I like the Houston/Dallas combo too. Dallas has that great new stadium and Houston has the best barbecue in the league bar-none. This combo actually appears on the NFL Schedule twice in 2009 on weeks three and eleven. I'm also a big fan of the Bay Area Combo. Historic Candlestick Park won't be around forever and a short jaunt across the Bay Bridge takes you into Raider territory. Weeks ten and fourteen afford a couple of opportuinities to make the bay area shift and see games in each west coast venue. Rounding out the 2009 NFl Schedule, there's a Pittsburgh/Cleveland combo weekend week one, Jacksonville/Miami week two , and Green Bay/Chicago week sixteen that are all worth checking out. I really enjoy this time of the year. If you're looking to plan out your NFL season, you might check out some of the tools I've created on my website that help me structure my multi-stadium tour for the year. I've posted a great week to week 2009 NFL Schedule that broken down by each week and by NFL team. I've also included an excellent city to city mileage chart that shows the distance and time to each NFL city from any other NFL city (I use that one a lot), and feel free to write to me about your own Quest for 31.