Cassie Kolias

Maybe you’ve seen the movie “The Bucket List” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, or maybe you’ve seen MTV’s hit reality series “The Buried Life,” but either way you have probably heard of a bucket list. It’s a compilation of things that you want to do or accomplish before you die in the form of a list.

This is the second in a series of three. Here is a list of 10 things that football fans should do before they die.

10. Visit Lambeau Field- Home of the Green Bay Packers

Since the field opened, it has more than doubled its capacity, but that doesn’t mean much considering the season tickets have been sold out for 50 years, and it is said that more than 81,000 names remain on the waiting list.

9. Go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame

This is pretty much a given for die-hard football fans. Every football fan should make the trek to Canton, Ohio in order to soak up the history of the greatest football players of all time. The Hall of Fame is open everyday, and admission is $20.

8. Go to a Training Camp

Training camp is where the players and coaches use the time to practice and get acquainted with new players and new systems. Fans are able to go out and get a look at the players and see what the season might have in store for them.

7. More Specifically, Packers Training Camp

It has been a tradition that Packers players will ride on the bikes of their young fans to practice. The team encourages young fans with bikes to line up near the entrance 20 minutes before the scheduled practice. It’s not only adorable, but it looks pretty entertaining as well.

6. Go see the Pro Bowl

The Pro Bowl is the all-star game of the NFL. The difference between the NFL and other sports is that rather than having its all-star game at the midway point, the game comes at the end of the season.

5. Be a part of the Black Hole

This is one that I can say I have crossed off, and it was one of the craziest experiences of my life. But if you haven’t heard of it, the “Black Hole’ is at the Oakland Raiders coliseum, and it is sections 104, 105, 106 and 107. These people literally define die-hard, and you haven’t experienced anything until you’ve witnessed these fans at work.

4. Visit Permian High School Football in Texas

In Texas, and the south in general, football is like religion to the people who live there. Permian High School was immortalized in the best-selling book Friday Night Lights that came out in 1990, and was later turned into a movie and a television series loosely based on the book.

3. Go to the NFL Experience

The NFL Experience is a theme park that is temporarily run during the week of the Super Bowl. The Experience includes attractions such as throwing footballs for accuracy, making extra point attempts, calling the play-by-play of a famous event or game and dancing to celebrate a touchdown.

2. Visit Autzen Stadium in Oregon

The stadium at the University of Oregon and home of the Ducks routinely sees attendance at around 59,000 per game, despite the official capacity of 54,000. On Oct. 27, 2007 when the Ducks defeated the USC Trojans 24-17, a record 59,277 fans were recorded at 127.2 decibels.

1. Go to a Super Bowl

Every football fan needs to experience the one game of the year where the two best teams come together and battle for the championship. It would probably even top the list of your life experiences. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Cassie Kolias can be reached at [email protected]