My PBS Experience

[Forever Spinning Vinyl]

(01-19-2022, 05:18 PM)basballguy Wrote: This wasn't my first sporting event, silly, it was my first Bengals game at PBS.  What I am talking about is not a timing issue.  :)  Yes i'm sure I could go to the bathroom just fine with 8 minutes left in the 4th quarter.  


I did say my sample size in terms of venues (maybe a dozen?) was limited but in that limited sample size there was never a swarm at the bathrooms.  

However replying to this now makes me sound like a hater which is not what i'm going for.  I will now make it a point to go to more PBS games for the sake of changing this opinion.  

For the record, I got no sense of hating from your post, all I saw you post was feedback. You gave people your experience in a new arena and contrasted that with what you know of professional sporting events and your experiences in those other settings. You gave us the good and bad. The younger Blackburn involved with connecting with the fans would probably love to hear info like that from fans coming from other areas.

I saw several Bengals games in Seattle but the only home game that I went to was the Neil O'Donnell fake spike TD victory in 1998 and there's not a lot that's special about Riverfront stadium other than the Reds kicking a whole lot of ass there in the early days. I'd love to check out a game at PBS but I have a feeling that it is going to be more difficult getting tickets to a game in the very near future.

[WVUHomer]

(01-19-2022, 06:13 PM)Roland Wrote: Last Saturday was pretty surreal from a long time ticket holder's perspective.  Aside from the record crowd, we haven't had that strong a *home* crowd in PBS since the early Lewis/Palmer days.  

When PBS first opened the majority of the seats were sold as season tickets to Bengals fans.  In the years since the Bengals fanbase has eroded and PBS has become a popular destination for opponent fans.  Good seats always available.  In the later playoff games fans had lost so much faith that we had substantial opposing fan presence which only made losing those games that much more miserable.

So yeah, it seemed like there were a lot of fans there on Saturday who had never been to a game because they probably hadn't been.  Welcome to The Jungle.

The bathrooms have always been inadequate for a crowd that drinks beer the entire first half and then converges on the bathrooms at halftime.

Historically the little pro shops besides the main pro shop have rarely been busy.  Those people are used to standing around for most of the day without much to do.  Not surprised that they didn't handle the crowds well.  PBS concessions have also always been a mess.  They use a lot of volunteers who often seem to be figuring things out from scratch every weekend.

There have been few times in PBS history when an entire sellout crowd has stayed until the end of the game (or later).  Many Bengals fans are inveterate third quarter leavers.  I never understood that.  Add a lot of newbies with no clue where they are going, anti-terrorist barricades, street beggars, and buskers happy to block egress and you get a mess.  It's all part of the fun.

Just be glad that they've relaxed security.  The last few seasons it was like dealing with the TSA to get into the stadium.

Y'all come back now, ya hear!

Honestly, this statement alone cannot be underrated as it is completely fact. Back in my high school days, I volunteered for it every chance I could and even from my high school we had organized chaos every week. 

[grampahol]

My favorite PBS experience was Kim's Cartoon Capers with Fred the Friendly Python. That was on Chanel 16 in Dayton in the very early days of Public Broadcasting .. Amazing what a 5 or 6 year old brain can manage to remember, eh?