During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta which was in between my junior year at college I went to work for my college wife’s father who was a VP of Eric Chandler Merchandising which ran what was essentially a temporary mall of stores in Centennial Park inside a large temporary building made from US Air Force temporary hangars. It was right next to the AT&T stadium where the bomb went off. Well after working there as general staff assisting the local stores getting setup, I was offered a substantial pay raise and job upgrade to working directly for Eastman Kodak. I was assigned to be a technology demonstrator for both high end one on one appointments with celebrity clients in the CNN Center as well as general tech demonstrator at their exhibit in the indoor mall. So I got to meet a ton of sports, tv, movie, and political celebrities one on one including people like Bill Clinton, King Faud, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Jordan, and a literal ton of celebrities.
The other benefit was I got a number of free tickets to various events direct from Kodak. If I wasn’t working, I got corporate seats to most events including the Opening Ceremonies, Tennis finals, baseball medal games, most track and field events and I got to see the team finals of the women’s gymnastics team. The only corporate seats I couldn’t score was the basketball finals, soccer finals and closing ceremonies but my college wife not knowing I had zero interest in soccer, had already purchased two tickets for me and her to the soccer finals anyways.
In addition to that, as a kid my parents owned a sporting goods store in the Tampa Bay Area and were longtime Bucs fans so we got tickets to Super Bowl 25 to watch the Bills lose the first of their four Super Bowl losses. As an FSU fan I went to the 1996 Sugar Bowl which was 1 vs 2 only to see Warrick Dunn’s grandmother food poison several of our players and we suffered a miserable loss. I also went to a College World Series game in Omaha. And I’ve been to playoff games for 1-AA supporting my law school Bill & Mary and for Div 2 to support the near local Valdosta State (which are highly enjoyable games to attend).