GLENDALE, Ariz. — Go back 34 years to 1988, a lifelong Arizona Cardinals fan is getting ready to watch a professional football team play in Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe.
Now, over 300 consecutive home games later, Kelly Young will be seated in the North endzone of State Farm Stadium for Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season as the Cardinals host the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.
That's right, Young is the definition of a lifelong fan, and when Sunday comes around, he will have attended 337th consecutive Cardinals home games.
"I'm excited to get there, I'm ready to go now! Looking back, I had gone to buy season tickets at that time in 1988 at Dillard's at Paradise Valley, the tickets were 18 dollars apiece then," Young said.
After moving away from a small town in Kansas, Young was excited to experience pro-level sports and he hasn't missed a single home game for the Redbirds in nearly three and a half decades.
"This is my 337th consecutive game. The interaction of the old stadium was where you had to sit on a bench, which you were shoulder to shoulder with everybody and the heat always played a factor too. It's definitely nice to be at State Farm Stadium where there are more conveniences. Plus, we're still in the North endzone and we like to pester the opposing team because they work out there, and then when the refs walk by we try to bribe them and some of them think it's pretty funny."
Young says he's not crazy about how many opposing team fans show up to home games, especially one team in particular.
"I don't enjoy Seattle at all, their fans are just so obnoxious and there's a lot of them and we haven't done very well vs Seattle and they get the best of me and walk away with the win a lot of times."
He says, after more than 330 home games, preseason and all, his favorite memory still dates back to 1998.
"Jake Plummer was the QB and we had to win our last 3 games to make playoffs and we did with a last-second field goal so we clinched the playoffs and then my friends and I rushed the field and watched them tear down goalposts."
Sports
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