I’m excited to share a very special treat today with you all today. I get a lot of emails asking about how I got my start blogging about the Patriots, when I started rooting for the team, etc. While there are plenty of moments that I look back on that played a part in me starting this site, there’s one particular memory that I can not only tell you about, but show you.
I was the ultimate NFL Films junkie when I was a kid. I loved the epic nature of their work and would never miss a week of Inside the NFL. This inspired me to teach myself how to edit videos on my parent’s VHS camcorder. My first project? A highlight film of my freshman football team set to Eye of the Tiger and Bust a Move. I dragged our rack stereo system across the living room, hooked everything into our regular VCR, used the “dub” button and play/record/pause and cut by cut made my own cheap ass version of an NFL Films highlight video.
Here it is as an appetizer. You might catch a little of me, #34 playing some middle linebacker, but I was far from one of the stars, and probably knew my destiny laid on the sidelines or perhaps in the press box.
This video got me into our high school’s cable communications class that was run out of the cable access studio. I learned to shoot and edit, and eventually carved out a niche for myself as being a great handheld cameraman with my sideline work at our high school’s football games.
There was a local resident named Timmy King who did a show through the cable access studio and in the fall of 1992 he had gotten full press access to a New England Patriots game. Foxboro was just a couple towns over from where I had grown up. We all caught Patriots fever in 1985 when they made their run to the Super Bowl. Squish the Fish. Berry the Bears. But since then the Patriots had descended into the worst of the worst in the NFL.
Well Timmy needed a bang-up handheld cameraman and they asked me to do it. By this point (Week 10) the Patriots were 0-9 and welcoming the 6-2 New Orleans Saints. The Pats had gone 6-10 the year before, and were en route to a 2-14 season that would net them the first overall pick in the draft, aka Drew Bledsoe.
So this was pretty much the very last low point of the Patriots franchise before it all really started to turn around.
I vividly remember the day. Though it was only early November it was freezing. This was long before the days of tiny digital cameras. No, I had to lug around a huge camera with an equally huge 3/4″ deck over my shoulder. Myself, Timmy and our producer Al Oliver spent the morning stopping by various tailgates, grabbing free food, walking the field as the players and cheerleaders warmed up and enjoying Timmy’s brand of cable access humor.
During the game we were on the field, up in the press box and then we went to the locker room after the 31-14 beatdown. It was an amazing day and while I had been to plenty of Patriots games before that, it was a moment where I fell in love with the entire fan atmosphere in a new way.
The show aired on our town cable access channel a couple weeks later and then it mostly faded from my memory for over 20 years. Recently, I was on the town cable access channel’s site and noticed they had DVDs available of their old shows. Well, I jumped at the chance to pick up a copy of A Closer Look: The New England Patriots so that I could share it with you all now.
It’s a half hour long. It’s tedious in spots. But it also captures the true spirit of Patriots fans. This team was terrible, but the optimism and joy of the fans was undeterred as you’ll see in the various tailgate interviews. This was the Patriots long before Robert Kraft or Bill Belichick or Tom Brady. This was a team with no Super Bowl aspirations, and yet everything we still love about going to a Patriots game is still right there in all it’s 1990’s-laden glory.
How bad was the actual game? So bad that they didn’t even show any footage of it until the final credits.
But we got to interview the Patriettes, and Fred Smerlas, and a collection of other bit players at the old Foxboro Stadium, along with a number of passionate (and drunk) Patriots fans, my favorite people in the world.
It’s a wonderful time capsule of a time gone by with our beloved franchise, and essentially captures a moment in my life that would later become a huge part of who I am.
Sit back and enjoy! I hope you find it as entertaining as I did! You might even see someone you know!