The #MetLifeTakeover was a huge success this year and I just want to thank all of you for making it amazing. We weren’t able to get as many tickets this year because the Jets thought they were gonna be good this year (lol), but we sold out before the season even started and gave out our section number to the hundreds and hundreds of people who emailed us requesting tickets too late. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had 2500 Dolphins fans sitting together because our sections were packed. With the great tailgate and the Dolphins dominating on the field it was just an amazing day.

Speaking of the tailgate, we had a huge crowd all day and a video I took from the top of our U-Haul went viral, being reposted by tons of national media outlets, and even a local TV station reached out about using it, although I have no idea if they actually did. Speaking of TV, the film crew from HBO’s Hard Knocks came out to the tailgate, interviewed Michelle and I as well as some other fans and did a short segment during episode two of the show. If you didn’t watch the episode you can watch the short segment here.

We had some cool guests at the tailgate this year. Dolphins legends Joe Rose and Nat Moore never miss a tailgate but we also had a couple of social media stars, with Kickball Dad returning to the Takeover to film some videos, and elementary teacher extraordinaire Mary Martinez celebrated her 30th birthday with us. We had two Miami Dolphins Fans of the Year in attendance, Dolphreaky and the newest Fan of the Year Chris Barker. Solo D performed as he always does and my cousin came out because her husband is a huge Dolphins fan and that was really cool for me.

On the charity front, we raised over $6000 just from raffle and merch sales and that doesn’t include the money we made from ticket sales. We are unfortunately dealing with some possible unexpected expenses because of an unfortunately incident that we won’t get into, but we should be able to donate over $10,000 to charity this year. We will be announcing donations as they happen on Twitter but hopefully at the end of the year I can do a run down of the good that money is doing. By the way, all donations to us are tax deductible so if anyone is interested in donating please reach out.

Shout out to DJ Drell, our new regular Slattery’s DJ for killing it at his first #MetLifeTakeover and Solo D for his yearly performance. Solo came to the second or third one of these we ever did and hasn’t missed one since. He’s become such a huge part of our tailgate experience. Thanks as always to our tailgate partners Urban Tailgate. Those guys take everything off our plate and handle all the food, drinks, games and simple stuff like getting there hours before the gates open to make sure we get our regular spot. And lastly, huge thanks to all our volunteers who we couldn’t do any of this without. From our bus captains, to the people selling merch and raffle tickets, to just random people who grab a bin from the bus and bring it over to the tailgate for us, we appreciate you guys a ton.

Anyway, I did a terrible job of documenting the event, but I did technically take some photos, so I got a gallery of stuff for you guys to look through. Don’t worry though, we will have one hell of a recap video for you guys coming a lot sooner than last year’s video. I can’t wait for you to see it.

The DolfansNYC tailgate and takeover was the most successful thing we have ever done as a club. We bought 200 tickets, rolled up to the stadium in two packed busses and were pretty much the only fans left at the end of the game. It was amazing. There had to have been more than 300 fans at the tailgate and we sold out of EVERY Dolfans NYC t-shirt and raised a bunch of money for charity. We plan on donating $1500 to the Miami Dolphins Foundation when Michelle and I head down to Miami for the Titans game in two weeks. Really great experience.

If you somehow missed the news we had a few special guests at the tailgate… Dolphins owner Stephen Ross showed up with minority owner Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, CEO Mike Dee, Phins great Nat Moore, MiamiDolphins.com Andy Kent and a ton of cheerleaders. It was so cool of them to do that and a pretty good PR move. Some Jets fan hit Mr. Ross with a cheeseburger knocking his glasses off. Luckily they fell right at my feet and as soon as Ross got his glasses back on he just ignored the whole thing and kept posing for pictures and signing autographs. One of our members asked him why he came down and he said “I could have stayed in my box all game but I had to check out the tailgate. This is the biggest Dolphins fan club in the United States!” Very cool.

After the tailgate we filled the stands. We may have been in the endzone in the nosebleeds but I assure you our presence was felt. Mike Dee tweeted after the game “Great to head home w/a win. Complete team effort w/ an assist from DolfansNYC, who kept the Fins chants going all game long!” Reggie Bush didn’t mention us by name but he Tweeted “Loved the Dolphins fans showing up today! We heard you guys loud and clear and so did the rest of the stadium! Thanks for your support.” Not to brag or anything (okay maybe a little) I was leading the chants from the endzone. By the end of the game all the Jets fans were gone and the Dolphins fans left seemed to flood into our sections and we chanted “LET’S GO DOLPHINS” so loudly you could hear it on TV. It was one of the best experiences of my life. What a great day.

I want to thank everybody who came out, and especially want to thank my partner Michelle who did all the dirty work on this one. I am pretty good at doing the promoting and doing the screaming but Michelle is the best party planner you could imagine and put all 199 tickets we bought on her credit card. We have worked on this for months, but she busted her ass all week on the details while I was off hanging out with my girlfriend in California. So thanks Michelle, thanks to Sailor Jerry rum for sponsoring the tailgate, thanks to Third & Long for hosting a breakfast before we got on the buses, thanks to everyone who joined us at the game and thanks to the Miami Dolphins organization for not just recognizing us but supporting us.

All the pictures I took at the tailgate are below. If you want to save one just double click it or you can just go directly to our Flickr page to see and save all the pictures there.

Go Dolphins!

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