Ignoring everything that happened after 1pm, yesterday was a tremendous success. We had over 1000 Dolphins fans sit together, threw one hell of a tailgate and raised a TON of money for charity. I just wanted to quickly thank everyone who came out especially our volunteers and everyone who helped us get stuff on and off the busses. The day went very smoothly right up until the moment the game started.

Huge shout out to Urban Tailgate for their help with the party. We had a few tiny hiccups (the Jets wouldn’t lets us park our busses by the tailgate!) but overall it was amazing. We had some complaints about the cost before the tailgate but I didn’t hear a single complaint afterwards. I have a feeling we are not gonna have any trouble selling tickets next year.  This tailgate was fairly last minute and I can’t wait until next year because we are gonna up the game on everything. Next year should be epic.

Thanks to DJ Tropic for playing music and Solo D and DWA for playing a few songs and keeping the crowd going long after the performance.

Thanks to Joe Rose and the team at Cup Of Joe for taping their show live at our tailgate.  Nat Moore and Tom Garfinkel were guests on the show and hung out a bunch. Thanks to Jason Jenkins who helped put that together and has been at pretty much every Takeover. He’s a huge supporter of what we do. Jim Jenson came by the tailgate too just to hang out. That was pretty amazing. Thanks Crash!

And finally thanks to our liquor sponsor Sailor Jerry. They have sponsored the last few tailgates and we really appreciate the love. I think they actually have a bar at Hard Rock Stadium.

I am sure I am missing some people but we will thank them all in the wrap up video. We will also have an update of all the money we were able to donate to charity thanks to this weekend, but I should mention that the Cam Wake signed helmet raffle raised nearly $1800 alone for the Miami Dolphins Foundation and we donate $500 to Kiko Alonso’s hurricane fundraiser after the raffle we did at the party at Slattery’s Saturday night.

I gotta be honest and tell you that after the tailgate last year I was completely burnt out and ready to never do this again, but this year I am just sunburnt and ready to start planning the 2018 Takeover!

Phins up, Jets still suck, check out all the pictures below!

This season has obviously been disappointing and Sunday was pretty much a disaster on the field but off the field we had a hell of a time. It’s hard to explain to someone who has never been to a #MetLifeTakeover but there is truly no better experience as a Miami Dolphins fan. Obviously I am a bit biased but when you get to tailgate with hundreds of fans and then all walk in and sit with 1000 Dolfans and make so much noise that you can hear us on TV even in a disaster of a game it’s the greatest feeling in the world.

In the fourth quarter we were getting killed and for some reason most of the Jets fans had already left the game. A lot of Dolphins fans had left too, but our section was still filled with a ton of die hards. The Dolphins scored and we sang the fight song as loud as we could. We then recovered and onside kick and were cheering like crazy. Then, the Dolphins being the Dolphins, we fumbled the ball and the few remaining Jets fans started laughing at us. I turned to our remaining crowd and started chanting “Let’s Go Dolphins” as loud as I could. The rest of crew joined me and all you could hear was “Let’s Go Dolphins” despite just turning over the ball on the fourth quarter of a blow out. It was one of my proudest moments as a Dolphins fan.

It’s easy to be a fan when you are winning. It takes something special to root for your team when you are terrible. Reshad Jones Tweeted “When you winning, everyone is your friend, it’s easy to be on the wagon, so a SPECIAL shout-out to the ride or die fans!!” and we showed everyone we are out here riding for our team!

Now, about the tailgate!

We had a blast! Our four busses made it to the tailgate by 9am so we had hours to party. DJ Tropic DJ’d the whole thing which really upped the game from the last few years. Solo D and his Miami Sports Music/ DWA crew perform. We had a catered tailgate and Pabst Blue Ribbon donated 600 beers! We had water from AqauHydrate and Sailor Jerry Rum & cider. We are so lucky to have such rad sponsors.

We raised nearly $3000 through donations and merch sales which when you add to the money we made at the #MetLifeTakeover Pre-Party was close to $5000 that we can donate charity for the weekend not including the money we made from ticket sales. Plus we had a ton of people bring toys to continue the toy drive we did from the night before. Really amazing. Thanks so much everyone!

We had some cool guests at the tailgate as well. Dolphins legend Nat Moore and CEO Tom Garfinkel showed up at the tailgate which is always awesome. They have been big supporters of what we do up here. We also had Andrew Abramson from the Palm Beach Post and Brent Grimes infamous wife Miko show up as well. Miko has come to all our tailgates and this is Andrew’s second one so I appreciate the support from them. We even had some Jets fans come by to talk some smack. But they are the guys responsible for flying banners over the Patriots practices to troll them so I guess they aren’t so terrible.

Anyway, it was a terrible game but another amazing experience. Let’s just hope next year’s Takeover isn’t on Thanksgiving so we can bring out even more Dolfans and get another win. Since the first big #MetLifeTakeover this is our only loss so I think we are doing pretty well overall. Phins up!

Now check out all the photos from the tailgate!

Last weekend we headed down for Miami for a convergence of two events. First we had the annual Web Weekend which is a conference of people who run Miami Dolphins web sites that has been hosted by the Dolphins for the last 12 years. Michelle and I became friends there so the birth of Dolfans NYC came out of that event. The second event is the Dolphins Fan Club Weekend which is a gathering of fan clubs from around the country
for a home game. Unfortunately since we are part of both weekends we can’t go to all the events but we had a great time anyway. Oh and the game was pretty good too…

Let’s see if I can give you guys a quick rundown of the event.

FRIDAY:

On Friday we went to the team training facility and got to listen to a bunch of people talk and we did a little Q&A with everyone. The highlight was of course Coach Campbell but we also got to talk to Matt Darr, Rishard Matthews and Mike Tannenbaum which was pretty awesome. Darr might have been the most interesting speaker actually because he talked a lot about what it’s like being an undrafted free agent with almost no hope of making the team, but it was all pretty great. Fortunately our resident journalist, Alex Kramers, wrote up the Campbell talk and he got a few moments to himself with Rishard Matthews!

SATURDAY:

Web Weekend on Saturday always starts with a community service event with the Dolphins “Special Teams”. This particular Saturday we helped Feeding South Florida pack up expired but still good food to give to families in need. And by “we” I mean everyone else because I slept 90 minutes the night before and was dead to the world. Luckily we made a $250 donation Feeding SF so I feel a bit less guilty.

Saturday afternoon was our chance to tour the practice faculties, check out the Nick Saban Memorial Bubble, and eat in the team cafeteria. After that we had the Miami Dolphins Webbie Awards that are given out by the team and voted on by other Miami Dolphins sites. For the third or fourth year in a row we won the Eddie Jones award for community service which is what we strive for. So I want to thank everyone who has helped us raise money for charity ever year. Speaking of which we donated $5000 to the Miami Dolphins Foundation which was a great thing to be able to do. Thanks again! (Oh we also won the Webbie for best use of social networking which I got to keep cause I run all that stuff! Woo!)

Between Webbies we got to talk to some more people including CEO Tom Garfinkel (who is always incredibly interesting to talk to) and Dolphins legend Tony Nathan who has a movie in theaters now about his life! I cannot wait to see Woodlawn now that I know it’s about him. Tony was wearing an Alabama hat so we had to give him a Dolphins NYC hat and he actually wore it to the Dolphins game the next day when has an honorary captain! Amazing! The webbies ended with a media roundtable where we got to ask  of Dolphins journalists a bunch of questions. The roundtable featured Adam Beasley, Andrew Abramson, Andy Cohen, Alain Poupart and Dolphins great Kim Bokamper. Afterwards we gave Kim a Dolfans NYC shirt which makes up for the time that he let me take home a menu from his restaurant… speaking of…

After the webbies we went over to Bokamper’s to meet up with the Fan Club Weekend crew. We had about 25 people in Miami for the game so it was good to see Crazy Uncle Billy and the crew. We just missed Solo D’s performance but I think he is gonna play both the #MetLifeTakeover AND the Takeover preparty so I wasn’t too upset about it.

SUNDAY:

What can I even say about Sunday? It was the best first half I have ever seen in my life. There was even an insane storm during part of it but I just stayed in my seat and got wet. What a blast that was. The second half wasn’t quite as exciting but it was still a great time and honestly I thought I was going to pass out if I had to sing our fight song again!

So yeah, amazing weekend and it was awesome to see everyone and be in Miami. Big extra thanks to Scott Stone and Sergio Xiques for throwing the Web Weekend and Fan Club Weekend for us.

Oh and see you guys tonight at Slattery’s for Thursday night football!!!

Last weekend I headed down to DC with a van full of Dolfans NYC members to support our brothers to the south. NOVA Dolfans and The Valley Finatics were doing their best #MetLifeTakeover impression in Washington called the DC Shutdown. After the NOVA Dolfans came to our takeover a few years ago they were really inspired and spent nearly two years planning this thing. Dolfans NYC did all we could to help them with this thing but they really killed it last weekend and I am glad we had a bunch of our crew there to support them.

Saturday night there was a party at the Mellow Mushroom in Herndon, VA. It’s the NOVA Dolfans home base and although a hippie pizza place is an odd choice for a sports bar, it was a blast. Solo D did his thing and our buddies Paul Picken and Stephen Daniels hosted the event all night. Even OJ McDuffie showed up! It was great.

The next day there was a huge tailgate but Dolfans were EVERYWHERE. DC only gets a Dolphins game every 8 years and it’s an easy drive from NYC all the way down to North Carolina. Ever Phins fan on the east coast seemed to be there and we actually ended up tailgating with a totally different crew because they let us use their grill (the NOVA guys had a catering company). Of course we still made our appearances and partied with those guys for a while.

The game itself left a lot to be desired but in the end we got a win and Dolfans totally took over the game. The DC Shutdown crew was in one end and then all the Dolfans that bought tickets on their own seemed to be on the visitors sideline lower level. The combination of these to huge packs of Phins fans with the hundreds of other Dolfans there created a lot of noise and you could hear us clearly on TV. The whole thing was a blast.

I thought I was going to take a ton of photos during the party and the tailgate but I ended up doing none of that. I did get a big group portrait at the Mellow Mushroom and a nice shot of my friend Kathleen doing a selfie with OJ McDuffie so I figured I would post those two shots but that’s really all I got.

Anyway, see you guys on Sunday at 4pm at Slattery’s Midtown Pub! I can’t wait to get back to our bar! Phins up!

Okay Dolfans, you might have noticed that we didn’t update this site much during the off season but that doesn’t mean we aren’t working on a bunch of stuff in the mean time. There are enough Dolphins blogs out there that you don’t need our take on what’s going on, but as we get closer to week one I think it’s time for an update. We have a bunch of stuff going on this season so let’s go week by week.

• September 3rd – Preseason Game 4 against Tampa Bay:
  • Our bar Slattery’s Midtown Pub IS showing the game. It’s the only nationally televised game and Dolfans NYC will be in the building, BUT there are events booked upstairs so it’s going to be more of a low key thing. Will be a fun time hanging out but not a real Dolfans NYC event. Game 4 of the preseason is always awful anyway.
• September 13th – Week 1 against Washington:
  • Dolfans NYC is supporting our Dolfan brothers to the south NOVA Dolfans who are throwing the “DC Shutdown” a similar event to our #MetLifeTakeover. They are doing a party the night before as well with our buddy Solo D performing. You can get tickets and find out more info here.
  • Because of our support for the DC Shutdown event we are not going to be throwing a huge party at Slattery’s like we normally do on week one. That’s not to say Slattery’s won’t be packed but we won’t be doing any raffles or anything like that. And don’t worry DJ Tropic will still be DJing.
• September 20th – Week 2 against Jacksonville:
  • THIS is the big Slattery’s kick off party! We are going to be doing a bunch of raffles all game and will have brand new Dolfans NYC merch for sale and maybe a few surprises. You should be at Slattery’s every week, but Week 2 is going to be a big one!
• October 4th – Week 4 against the Jets in London:
  • This game starts at 9:30am! Slattery’s will be open at 8am and we will be doing breakfast. We will have bagels and coffee and I am sure some drink specials like Bloody Mary’s. Should be a really fun event.
• October 25th – Week 7 against Houston:
  • This is the second annual Fan Club Weekend in Miami. A huge crew of Dolfans NYC members are traveling to Miami for the game to meet up with fan clubs across the country (and world)! You can still get tickets to sit with us if you guys want to go. Just email dolfansnyc@gmail.com with the subject “Fan Club Weekend” for details!
• November 29th – 2015 #MetLifeTakeover
  • This is the big one! Our infamous #MetLifeTakeover! Last year we had 1200 Dolfans sitting together and I would love to see us beat that this year. We are doing a big catered tailgate with entertainment and food and it should be an amazing time. We are really blowing it up this year! Plus there will be a party at Slattery’s the night before. So get ready for a hell of a weekend!
  • SIGN UP FOR THE TAKEOVER HERE!!