Big Thoughts from Big Jim: The 25th anniversary of the Patriots oddest kickoff
I still remember it vividly.
Unpacking my ‘95 ford escort wagon in the dusty parking lot of Foxboro Stadium for the first rowdy tailgate of the new season, and wondering aloud- isn’t it kinda weird we’re doing this….in August?
August 31st, 1997 to be exact.
With the Patriots coming off their Super Bowl loss to the Green Bay Packers, the expectations for the team in ’97 were sky high, despite the ugly departure of Bill Parcells to the NY Jets that offseason.
They had a new, energetic coach in Pete Carroll who’d be the polar opposite in terms of personality and just what the team needed! (Spoiler: It wasn’t)
31 Aug 1997: Head coach Pete Carroll of the New England Patriots looks on during a game against the San Diego Chargers at Foxboro Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The Patriots won the game, 41-7.
They had used their first round draft pick on a speedy, yet undersized cornerback by way of Kansas St. named Chris Canty, who was sure to help their secondary en route to a championship! (He was a useless asshole who specialized in dancing after someone else made a tackle)
Quarterback Drew Bledsoe was going to make the proverbial leap and not only be in the NFL MVP conversation, he might just win it! (He was his usual mediocre Bledsoe self, and finished with exactly zero MVP votes)
Dammit, this was going to be the year the Patriots finally break through!
(They slogged through the season to finish 10-6, ultimately losing to Pittsburgh in the divisional round 7-6; a game that still makes me mad)
And it all started with the visiting San Diego Chargers on August 31st.
Fitting in retrospect, that such a stupid season would have such a stupid kickoff date.
Obviously, the Patriots weren’t alone in that as the rest of the NFL was also starting their season that Sunday, but I’m sorry, even all these years later I can’t get that August kickoff out of my mind because of how dumb it was.
It’s pretty simple.
Football is synonymous with Fall.
August is summer.
September is not.
Thus why football starts in September, preferably after Labor Day.
Ever the complainer (shocker, I know) setting up the tailgate that morning, cracking those first icy cold beers, it’s literally all I wanted to talk about with my friends.
“What the hell are were even doing here in August? This isn’t time for football!”
Correctly, they mostly ignored my calendar related whining, and were far more preoccupied with a far bigger story the morning of August 31st, 1997.
The news of Princess Diana’s fatal car accident in Paris, France.
Keeping in mind this is well before the time of smartphones, the details were scarce, and only coming from early morning news reports on the t.v. and radio, and that news was seemingly spreading through the tailgating like wildfire.
It was surprising.
It was tragic.
It was a big deal.
And yet!
All I still wanted to know was, was why the hell we’re here, getting ready to roast our asses off in that stadium all afternoon, at the end of August.
As it turned out, it actually wasn’t that oppressive an afternoon.
I recall it being humid as hell, but not unbearably hot.
Pro Football Reference says it was about 70 degrees with a gross 85% humidity, so thankfully, my brain hasn’t turned into mush as much as I believe it has.
But how about those that actually had to play in the NFL’s first and only August kickoff?
I reached out to then Patriots backup QB Scott Zolak, and linebacker Ted Johnson to see what, if anything, they could remember about that steamy and tragic Sunday.
Ted Johnson: “The only memory I have of that is watching the news of her death in the shitty hotel our team used to stay at in Milton the night before the game.Apologies I have no memory of any details other than that”
Zo: “Ted is picky about hotel. I loved the free chicken wings. It was all about her death, remember nothing about football. People were stunned, who is this Dodi Fayed clown who looks like an aging Mr Bean she is with? Think we watched round the clock coverage at my condo with 5 guys. It was like OJ & Michael Jackson”
BUT GUYS, WHAT ABOUT THE FACT YOU HAD TO PLAY A REAL GAME IN AUGUST? SURELY THIS WAS A BIG DEAL, RIGHT?
Ted Johnson: “I don’t remember it being a big deal with us.”
Zo: “Nope. We were lucky we knew what day it was.”
Welp, there you have it.
Much like it was to seemingly everyone else in the parking lot 25 years ago, the participants in the eventual 41-7 drubbing of the San Diego Chargers at Foxboro Stadium that day didn’t see an August 31st kickoff as much of a big deal as I did.
As much I still don’t like it, I eventually would come to understand the reasoning behind the odd August start to the ’97 season.
The Super Bowl used to be on the last Sunday in January, and working backwards from that date gives you when the regular season would need to kick off.
With that being said, both the 1996 and 1998 seasons started only a day later, on September 1st, so what ended up happening in 1997 was really nothing more than a calendar fluke that had opening kickoff fall on August 31st.
So there it is.
A fluke.
A calendar oddity that’s still stuck in my dumb brain all these years later.
The NFL still should have pushed it a week later and eliminated the Super Bowl bye week, which is the solution they ended up using in 1999.
Because as we all know, the NFL can’t kick off in the summertime
But it did happen.
August 31st, 1997.
