FAVORITE VENUES
Here are Patrick Yarber’s top-10 stadiums. He said these are his favorites because of the traditions, the fan bases, the fight song and the experience:
1. Vanderbilt (it’s home)
2. Michigan
3. Notre Dame
4. Michigan State
5. Tennessee
6. USC
7. UCLA
8. Penn State
9. Alabama
10. Florida
FAVORITE PLAYERS
Here are some of the best players Yarber has watched (in no particular order):
Georgia running back Herschel Walker: “Something special about Herschel Walker. He was just a phenom. Maybe my all-time favorite college player.”
Auburn running back Bo Jackson
Tennessee defensive end Reggie White
Virginia Tech defensive end Bruce Smith
Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning
Ole Miss quarterback Eli Manning
Tennessee receiver Willie Gault
Vanderbilt quarterback Jay Cutler
Patrick Yarber is racing against the betrayal of his own body.
Yarber, 53, is legally blind but trying to visit every FBS stadium. He will be at the Georgia Dome on Saturday for the Panthers’ game against Western Kentucky.
The visit will mark stadium No. 124.
Next week will be Idaho, No. 125. That will complete the quest … until next year when at least three more schools are added, including Georgia Southern.
“I just love college football,” he said. “I love the different places. I love the architecture of each and every place.”
Yarber doesn’t watch so much as he interprets as his vision steadily worsens. Yarber has two eye diseases, retinitis pigmentosa, which he was diagnosed with 33 years ago, and macular degeneration, which he was diagnosed within the past 10 years. The vision in each eye ranges between 20/200 and 20/300. What a person with good vision can see clearly from 300 feet away, Yarber can’t see until it’s 20 feet away.
So, when he watches a game, he doesn’t see what most people see.
The retinitis pigmentosa stole his peripheral vision, so he doesn’t see things out of the corners of his eyes. That holding call that most people can spot yards away from the ball is an inky darkness for Yarber.
Objects straight ahead are seen is if they are in a gun barrel, like the famous opening sequences in James Bond films.
The macular degeneration puts holes in his central vision. So what he can see is incomplete.
To try to complete the picture, he watches every play through binoculars, no matter how close he is to the action, while listening to a Radio Shack-brand transistor radio that fits in his pocket. The announcers help fill in what isn’t obvious.
Yarber, who grew up with vision problems, didn’t play organized sports while growing up. He couldn’t risk getting hit in the head.
His family moved to Nashville, Tenn., from Detroit when Yarber when was 16. He attended his first game at Dudley Field in 1979. Georgia, wearing red britches, defeated Vanderbilt 31-10. He fell in love with the Commodores, which you would think is punishment enough for any sports fan.
Yarber began attending most home and away games.
Around seven years ago, he began to inventory the number of places he had visited. He realized that he had watched games at between 60-70 stadiums.
“I decided if I was that close, why not make an effort to see them all?” he said. “That’s when it really became a goal to see a game at every place.”
As his vision has deteriorated in the past three years, he has increased his effort. He visited 11 stadiums last year, and will hit seven this year.
He has no idea how much money he has spent on his journey and didn’t want to guess. He is retired and on disability from his job as a bill collector for Buffaloe & Associates law firm in Nashville.
He travels frugally. He loves Southwest Airlines and frequents the less-expensive hotel chains. He is taking a Greyhound to Atlanta for this weekend’s game. He’s a connoisseur of stadium hot dogs. Vandy’s, of course, are his favorite.
It’s not difficult for him to get tickets and he has paid for all of them, save one. He maps out his trips in the spring, and sends letters to the home teams June 1 that explains his vision situation and where he would like to sit. He includes his credit-card information. He has been turned down once, for an NFL game at the debut of Lucas Oil Stadium. There were no tickets left. His favorite stadium is Vanderbilt’s because “it’s home.” His least favorites are Oahu Stadium and Fresno State’s.
“The geography isn’t suitable for someone with my situation,” he said. “That’s not bad, two out of 123 up to this point.”
He estimates he has close to 2,000 ticket stubs and 1,200 programs from the games he has attended. Most are put in plastic and stored in boxes in the second bedroom of his home. He has framed a few. He’s not just a college football fan. He has tickets framed from the 2006 World Series, the 2007 Super Bowl, a Stanley Cup final (he is a passionate hockey fan), and All-Star games for the NHL and Major League Baseball.
Perhaps the most prized are the tickets from Vanderbilt’s bowl games in 1982 and 2008.
“If I framed every ticket stub I could wallpaper my entire condo,” he said.
Yarber does get frustrated that his vision is slowly disappearing, but he considers himself lucky. A big man at 6-foot-6, 290 pounds, his male ego doesn’t like having to rely on a friendly elbow to help him up or down stairs.
“Or when I’m struggling to see and people around me can see the guy make a first down,” he said.
Of all the games he has attended and all the plays he has seen, he can think of only one moment in which he wishes he had 20/20 vision.
Yarber was in Nashville at a Tennessee State game in 2005, but he was listening to Vanderbilt play at Tennessee.
He heard Jay Cutler hit Earl Bennett with a rocket of a throw to lift the Commodores to a 28-24 victory, their first win over the Volunteers in 23 years.
“It was a big play in Vandy’s history,” he said.
But that is his one regret.
He credits a Vitamin A pill that he has taken every day for the past 20 years for slowing the blinding process. There are no surgical procedures that can help his particular type of macular degeneration.
He just waits. Every morning that he wakes and is able to see the ceiling is another gift, he said.
“I don’t sit around and focus on going blind,” he said. “I just keep going along. I don’t think about it. I just have to be careful and hope for the best.”
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