Jacksonville Jaguars Fan Forums

I came out of the womb with teal hair in '94

Not sure, I vaguely remember the news coming out and it being a big deal even though I was only 5 years old at the time.  

Was on the road with my first touring band, in the drive thru line at Taco Bell in Nashville, TN. Very exciting day!

I was working at home on my 35th birthday.

 

Best birthday present ever, edging out the Daisy BB gun I got 28 years earlier.

Quote:In just over a week it will be the 20th anniversary of Jacksonville being awarded an NFL franchise.

 

I know some of you were probably were not alive or too young to remember.

 

But for those of us here, it will be a day that will be hard to forget. Most people forget but just a few months prior, it looked like our hope of an NFL franchise was not going to happen as our bid fell apart. But the NFL delayed the announcement of the second franchise. Giving Jacksonville enough time to sell 10,000 club seats and secure the team.

 

I was in 8th grade and at basketball practice when the announcement was made but our coach had the TV on and we saw he moment when Deron Cherry gave Dan Hicken the thumbs up at the hotel in Chicago and confirmed what we had all hoped for. Paul Tagliabue confirmed it just a short time later. Jacksonville went nuts. After dinner, my family when to JCPenney to buy shirts. Any store that was selling Jaguars shirts had a line wrapped around the building. We waited in line an hour just for a chance to buy a shirt. They had a lottery and our names got pulled. There was a buzz in the city that day that I have never seen. I think only winning a Super Bowl could top it.

 

Some of that is captured in this video someone posted on Youtube including the Deron Cherry moment.

 

http://youtu.be/WPW5vYO8NAU

 

Dan Hicken can explain Derrick Harvey. Honest.

 

He promises to pay back Wayne Weaver all $26 million dollars, even if it takes the rest of his adult life.

I was in Illinois on business..driving across farmland with knocked down corn and gray skies.  I swear..it looked like there were no people anywhere...desolate.  I was listening to radio out of Chicago and they were talking about the next team.  I was sure it was going to be St Louis.  Anyhow...driving across land that you can see over for miles and miles and it started to leak.  Indications were that Jacksonville would be awarded the team.  I was flabbergasted as I drove by a cow.  I could not believe it...must be the media getting it wrong.  Then..it leaked out more and more.  Finally, the announcement from the commissioner.   I yelled, blew my horn as I drove and I am quite certain that no one heard me at all..other than some cows.

   That night I checked into a hotel out there somewhere...and it was cold...cold for me.  I went for the tv and discovered that they did not have ESPN.  Probably the only hotel I have ever stayed at that did not have ESPN.  So..I got into the car and went to the little downtown.  Kind of a brick rust belt look to it all.  Went into a bar and mumbled, "Holy S&&T, it's cold."  The guy next to me said, "What?"  I repeated myself loudly.  He said, "Just wait a couple of months."  Everyone laughed.  So..I watched sportscenter and was the only person there that cared.  The next day, I flew out of Quad Cities through St Louis.  The paper in St Louis had a photo of a deflated football, and their take was of gloom and doom.  I was pretty happy.  I wish I could have gone to my favorite bar in Jax, but it was interesting listening to it our of Chicago.

I was -2 years old.

20 years ago today the Jaguars were born.

 

Happy birthday.

I was at home watching the news, dealing with a fussy one year old. I screamed when we got the team and it scared my son who took forever to calm down afterward!


That fussy baby is now the next generation lifetime Jags fan!!

Wow, where did that twenty years go?  And reading this thread makes me realize I'm old.

 

I was working down in St. Augustine that day.  I had the radio on in my van and that's how I heard the announcement.  I had just moved to Jacksonville from Tampa that August, so I thought it would be great to follow a team right from the start.  On the way home that night, I stopped at the Avenues mall to buy some shirts.  It was crazy.

Pooping in diapers and still getting breastfeed

Passed out in a crackhouse.

 

I had ESPN on in the background while doing some work.    When the announcement was made,  I was very happy for those in Jacksonville that worked so in getting an NFL Franchise.   Getting an expansion team was the ideal way of securing a franchise.   After seeing in the mid 1980's that the Jacksonville Bulls were the best supported franchise in the USFL,   I was convinced that Jacksonville deserved an NFL Franchise,  if the league expanded.    

 

One thing in particular that I recall from the ESPN coverage that day was Deron Cherry being interviewed.  Cherry was a minority owner of the Jaguars.  I'm not sure if he still owns a piece of the team.   I remember watching Cherry play Safety with the Chiefs at a pretty high level.   

I was at my uncle's house, wearing my Dolphins t-shirt. My uncle told me Jacksonville had a team. I called him a liar and kept playing outside.

I was a mild football fan back then.  I was on the 49er bandwagon when the team was announced.  Wasn't really that excited until mid way through the inaugural season.  The stadium was sold out at full capacity every week. (70,000+ fans)

 

The highlight for this franchise is the 1999 season.  The team went 14-2 and were clear favorites for a superbowl win.  The pure hatred for the titans comes from them being the only team to beat us this year including the dagger they put on us in the AFC championship game.  God I miss that old AFC central divison.  Epic games against Pittsburgh.

Ft. Knox, Kentucky gunning the M1A1 Abrams. Elated we pulled off the ultimate upset

I was in Portland Oregon getting ready to go skiing on mt hood

John Oehser and Pete Prisco wrote a book called Jags to Riches about the 15-year process of bringing the NFL to Jacksonville, 2-year process of forming a team, and a quicker-than-expected rise from 4-12 to the AFC Championship Game. Unfortunately they did not write anything about the need to change our logo before our first game  because of a copyright issue, but I learned a lot about the formation and early years of the franchise. For example, who would have guessed we nearly got the Cardinals, Saints, and Colts before the city finally realized it needed an expansion team instead of an existing one? Or that Jacksonville had been trying to get a team since I was 2?

 

I never knew the NFL was talking about expansion that year. In fact I did not even know which division every team was in or that games are played on Sunday night. So to even try to guess where I was or what I was doing on November 30, 1993 at 4:15 p.m. would be really stupid. But one thing I do know is I became a Jaguars fan in August 1997, so the first four times we played against the Bengals, I rooted for Cincinnati.

I was just a 5th grader in California. A couple of years later my dad got stationed at Cecil so we moved, and then the rest is history.