If you are a certain age and from Jacksonville, you know exactly where you were when you heard the news.
I was at Sundae’s, a little diner at Sewanee my sophomore year in college, eating a very late lunch. On the TV, then NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue stepped to the microphone and announced the NFL had chosen Jacksonville as the home of its new franchise.
Jacksonville Fucking Florida.
I literally jumped out of my chair pumping my fists, much to the confusion of the 10-12 others in the restaurant, all surely wondering if I was having some kind of episode.
Because I was - growing up in Jacksonville those days was to grow up living in — and literally breathing — the city’s Imposter Syndrome. We were never as cool as Miami, never as nice as Tampa, or have something like Disney World in Orlando. We were the state’s unloved stepchild, home to bad crime, shitty roads, and that paper mill smell that seeped into every corner of town (and God help you if you got downwind one of the days of the paper milll/Maxwell House fumes combined). It was a tough and gritty place, home to tough and gritty people. Nice things didn’t often happen in or to Jacksonville.
All the smart people said Baltimore or St. Louis would get this team. Hell, most of us thought they would too. Nevertheless, my family, like so many others, continued to dutifully participate in all the efforts to help bring an NFL team to the First Coast, showing up for rallies, and “buying” tickets in advance to show we would support our team.
But we all kinda thought in our hearts that Lucy would once again hide the preverbal football. Then Tagliabue started talking...the 32nd team was ours.
My school pictures growing up spoke to my loyalty as a Bears fan, but overnight my loyalty changed: our town had a team. Football couldn’t come fast enough to Duval.
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My Dad and I went to the first preseason game in Florida, a game in Miami that was also the team’s first ever win of any kind. For Miami it was an absolutely meaningless preseason game, but for the few thousand Jags fans who made the journey to see the team play for the first time in the state, when Scott Sisson kicked the walk off game winner, it might as well have been our Super Bowl.
And just two weeks later, after two years of waiting, we got our first game in our city’s new stadium.
I remember like it was yesterday. My father and I had tickets to the Thursday evening game against the Rams. After years of games in the Gator Bowl, with its dark corridors, horrible bathrooms, and uncomfortable metal bench seats, the new Jacksonville station was football Shangri La – big, bright, clean, loud, and new.
That night the city partied in that stadium. The Jaguars didn’t win the game, but 70,000 people sang and danced to the music, at one point with the entire stadium doing “YMCA.” It was amazing. My town had a football team. I was a fan for life.
For the next five years of my life, my life each fall revolved around what happened in that stadium. And those early years were amazing.
Mike Hollis with the walk off game winner on Christmas Eve in 1995…
The magical run in 96 capped off with the Morten Andersen miss & the wild playoff run culminating with 40k fans in the stadium at 2am…
The blocked FG for a TD to win the first ever Monday night game at home…
Fred Taylor taking this first snap to the house after replacing an injured James Stewart, and our first ever home playoff game - and first ever home playoff win in 1998...
Beating the living shit out of Steve Young and Jerry Rice in 1999 – then beating the living shit out of Dan Marino in the playoffs…
And a big part of what made that window of life so special was my partner in this fandom was my Dad.
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Like many, my father and I had gotten a little sideways when I was a teenager. I didn’t agree with all of his life choices, and while he supported me, he kind of rolled his eyes at my career choices. But the Jaguars became our common ground, home Sunday games had a rhythm – he’d pick me up wherever I was living, and we’d drive up to the game. Some weeks we’d grill a burger or two in the parking lot, but most weeks, we just got a hot dog and a beer in the stadium.
Besides cheering on the home team, we talked about all the things that Dads and their sons talk about. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but for 3 hours on Sunday, sitting in section 220, row DD of the stadium, it was more than good enough.
And after that epic Dolphins playoff game, we looked ahead to Jacksonville's first ever home AFC Championship. Earlier in the week, he had told me if they won, we’d go to the Super Bowl. Just needed one more win.
That AFC Championship game day started like so many, him picking me up at my little townhouse. We drove up early for that game to grill some food. It was a cold morning, and I didn’t feel great about the game — we had to get past Tennessee, the only team they had lost to all year.
I think a lot of us felt it in our gut this game might be a hill too high to climb. Even with a halftime lead, history had told us that good things don’t happen to Jacksonville. The second half was a nightmare, and as the clock ticked towards zero, like most of us still in the facility, I was despondent.
Consoling me, he leaned over and said “they’ll be back – and we’ll be back too.”
That was the last time my Dad and I went to a Jaguars game.
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Everyone who has lost a parent understands that a little part of you dies with them. This idea that the grief gets easier with time is bullshit. My father essentially missed all of my adult life, and while I am blessed to have an amazing mother and stepfather, there is a part of me that has always felt cheated by his early departure. I certainly never got great closure.
As time passes, you do get used to them being gone, and you find places where the lost parent feels close. For some it is a restaurant, or an old family home. But for me, it became that stadium.
As a result, every time I go to a game, I get a little emotional, even if just for a moment. The fcaility at 1 Stadium place isn’t just a place my favorite team calls home, it quite literally served as the catalyst for my adult relationship with my father. And after he passed, it remained a place where I could feel a bit of his presence, or at least smile for a second about the time we spent there together.
After he passed, there were some rough decades there.
The Blaine Gabbert era.
The Blake Bortles years.
Urban Meyer. Gus Bradley. Mike Mularkey.
Going to games in those days, when I stopped to think about it, I could hear him in my head bitching about play calls, complaining about the endless boneheaded plays on the field, yelling at the refs, and generally losing his mind watching the tragic comedy that was the Jaguars for most of the last 25 years. There wasn’t a lot of hope in those days, though in 2021, hope came back to town in the package of a long-haired kid from Georgia, and the very next year, magic started to happen. Dad would have been a fan of Trevor.
The 2022 season was similar to that 1996 season - the first year my Dad & I never missed a game together. Just like that young 96 team, it took the Jags some time to figure out how to win – but once they did, they went on a roll. From four games back in the division a month earlier, they went into a cold Sunday night in January with one mission: win the game and punch a ticket to the playoffs.
The opponent that Sunday night: Tennessee - the team I hated for ruining my last game with Dad.
The symbolism of the moment was too much, I couldn’t go. I didn’t want to watch them lose to Tennessee again - almost 23 years to the day after that terrible game - and regardless of the outcome, I knew my emotions would get the best of me. 70,000 people didn’t need to see me, a grown man, cry.
The Jacksonville Mayor at the time, Lenny Curry, knew I’d been having this inner struggle, and texted me late the night before the game with a link to a ticket and said “Steve, your Dad would want you to go.” Me and a buddy made our way east, to watch the Jags struggle, and it looked like once again, the Titans would kill the dream. Damn Dad, not again.
But grief shows up in strange places, and when Josh Allen took that recovered fumble back for a touchdown to win the game, a lot of it poured out. Finally, a moment of vengeance for that final game.
Dad was there. I could feel it.
Hell, he probably caused the fumble. He hated the Titans too.
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Facing an incredibly busy week, I didn’t decide to go to the Buffalo game until the last minute, and it didn’t dawn on me until the clock ticked down to zero that with the loss, this was the last time I would stand in that stadium with a full crowd.
Sure, they will play there next year, but it won’t be the same, with half the facility torn down, and only 40,000 fans in the bowl, as the old concrete lady comes down to prepare the ground for the next generation stadium.
In those decades since my Dad and I walked out of that place together for the last time, the place has changed. Our old seats are now where the iconic pools live, and in our parking lot now rises Jacksonville’s first Four Seasons hotel.
Like the stadium, my own life is very different. Twenty-year-old me is now not much younger than my own father when we walked though Gate 1 on that first night in 1995. I’ve lived a remarkable life in his absence, yet that building has remained a living embodiment of my relationship with my father. It’s the place where I'm always 21 with him.
But as the demolition continues, that final tie will be severed for good. The old building, like my relationship with my Dad, will only live on in pictures and memories. Time marches on.
Don’t get me wrong, I am excited for the new place. I believe the new stadium will mark not only the continued ascendency of the Jaguars, but of the city itself. Jacksonville is finally poised to step into the shoes of that Bold New City of the South, and hopefully the Jags have finally killed off the demons of the last 20 years. I can’t wait to see – and be a part of the future of both.
But after last Sunday, a little part of that experience will never be the same. For that reason, I took one last look before walking out, and gave her one last nod before pointing the car towards home.
Thanks Dad.