I learned my lesson from my last few visits to Raymond James Stadium - no tickets can be found outside the stadium. I purchased my ticket to the Bears at Buccaneers game the week before from ticketmaster.com. That’s something I never preach nor do. However, the last time I went to a Buccaneers game I had to pay $200 to buy a fake ticket (see Dec. 23, 2002 article). I bought the last ticket to the game off ticketmaster. When I arrived at the stadium there were dozens of Bears fans looking for tickets and the few scalpers who had tickets were charging 100s of dollars per ticket.

I was late to the game since there was a 6 car accident on the I-75 heading south. I ran from the parking lot to Will Call and ended up on the wrong side of the stadium to watch the first half. During half time the area around the pirate ship is a traffic nightmare. Everyone is crossing! I sat next to some Bears fans in my actual seat which made cheering for the Bears much more fun - especially as Matt Bryant missed the game tying field goal with 2:47 left in the 4th quarter.