How to Sit Comfortably Through a Long Game With a Stadium Seat

Four hours in a stadium seat is not the same as four hours in a chair. The bench is metal or hard plastic, the row is tight, the person in front of you leans back, and somewhere around the third quarter your lower back starts sending you a message you would rather not receive. I have done this a lot. Six to eight road games a season, mostly driving, with Renee beside me and a cooler in the back of the Tahoe, and I have made just about every mistake there is before I got the routine down.

What follows is not a shopping list. It is the order I do things in, and the reasons behind each one. Some of it costs nothing. Some of it is one item out of the hall closet. The one piece of gear that changed the day for us is the Everlasting Comfort stadium seat, and I will tell you straight where it earns its place and where it does not. Many pro stadiums do not allow a seat with a back, so before you buy anything, check the stadium's own website. That is step one and I am not being cute about it.

Step 1: Check the stadium's seat and bag policy before you leave the house

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that decides whether the rest of the article applies to you at all. Stadium rules differ from building to building and they change from season to season. Some allow a seat with a back as long as it has no arms and no legs that reach the floor. Some allow a cushion only. Some will not let a stadium seat in at all. I do not keep a list in my head anymore because I would get it wrong, and if I got it wrong you would be carrying a seat back to the truck.

So I go to the stadium's site, find the A to Z guide or the prohibited items page, and read it out loud in the kitchen while Renee packs. Two things I am looking for. First, whether a seat with a backrest is permitted, and whether it has to be armless. Second, the bag size. The clear tote we carry is 12 by 6 by 12 inches, and that is the size many pro stadiums publish, but many is not all. If the page says something different, we follow the page.

One more thing on that page worth reading: the rule on power banks. Ours goes with us to the gate, and I do not assume it is welcome anywhere until I have looked.

Step 2: Decide what stays in the truck

Half of sitting comfortably through a long game is settled in the parking lot, before you walk in. The cooler never goes past the parking lot. Neither does the pillow. Both stay locked in the Tahoe, and that is not a hardship, it is the point. The cooler is packed the night before with frozen water bottles and ice packs, sandwiches, fruit, water and soft drinks, and it does its job during the tailgate and the walk back. It is a 50 can size, 30 liters, and it fits behind the second row without me having to think about it. It sweats a little on a warm day and it slumps when it is half empty, but it has been on about 20 road trips and it is still the thing I reach for.

The clear tote is what crosses the parking lot with us, and it is the only bag, shared. Renee carries it. Inside is the power bank, two phones, a wallet, keys, a small pack of tissues and a rain poncho. Everybody can see what is in it, which is the trade you make for getting through the gate without an argument. It wipes clean with a damp cloth. It also gets stiff on a cold day and looks a little cloudy after a couple of years, and I can live with both.

The seats ride on the second row on the way in, and they only come out of the truck if the website said yes. When it is a no, they stay put and we sit on the bench like everybody else. I have done that plenty of times and the game is still the game.

Step 3: Set the seat up right, and set it up before the section fills in

A stadium seat with a back does nothing for you if you flop it down and lean into it wrong. The Everlasting seat folds flat and weighs 2.2 pounds, about 17 inches wide, with memory foam in the cushion and an adjustable backrest. The first thing I do is open it and set it on the bench with the strap tucked underneath so it does not hang in the aisle. Then I sit down and set the backrest angle while the row is still empty and I can move around without bothering anybody.

The angle matters more than people think. Too upright and you are holding yourself up for four hours. Leaned too far back and you are in the lap of the person behind you, which is a good way to make an enemy in the third quarter. I find the spot where my shoulders rest on the back without me pushing against it, and then I leave it alone. The backrest does not have to be adjusted again during the game.

Set it up early, too. Once the row fills in, you are working in about eighteen inches of space with somebody's knees behind you and a drink in your hand, and wrestling a folded seat into place at that point is a young man's job. I get in when the gates open, get it set, and then go find a hot dog.

Step 4: Build the day around your back, not around the box score

Nobody sits still for four hours, and you should not try. What works for me is standing up at the end of each quarter whether I need to or not. Stretch, walk to the concourse, come back. It takes three minutes and it resets everything. Sitting on a hard bench for a long stretch is ordinary tiredness at the end of a long day, and standing up now and then is the simplest fix there is. If you have real back pain, that is a conversation for your doctor and not for a man in a parking lot.

A word on the storage pocket. The seat has one, and it is a fine place for a phone or a program during the game, but it stays empty at the gate. The guard wants to look inside, and I would rather he look at an empty pocket than fish around in it while the line backs up behind me. Everything small goes in the clear tote until we are in our row.

And hydrate like a grown up. The cooler in the truck is for before and after. During the game, water. I have watched men in their sixties have a much worse afternoon than they needed to because they treated the second half like a party.

Many pro stadiums do not allow a seat with a back. I check the website every single week, because the rule that got us in last October is not a promise about this October.

Step 5: Have an honest fallback for the stadiums that say no

We own two flat foam cushions and we have kept them. They lived in the closet for about two seasons before the seats with backs came along, and they are still there for the buildings that will not allow a backrest. Never both on the same day. Either the Everlasting Comfort seats go, or the flat cushions go, and the website decides which. A flat cushion is not much, but it beats bare metal on a cold afternoon, and it slides into a tote without a second thought.

The other fallback is your own body. Get up, walk the concourse, take the long way back. If the second half is going to be three hours, plan on being on your feet for fifteen minutes of it. That is not a compromise, that is just how a long day works when you are 61.

What Else Helps

Two smaller things earned their spot. The first is the power bank. Fifteen months ago my phone died in the parking lot about forty minutes before kickoff with both digital tickets on it. Renee's phone still had enough battery, she got the tickets moved over, and we got in a little late and missed nothing but the anthem. I bought the power bank the week after. It is 20,000 mAh, has a built in cable and three ports and a digital display, and I top off each phone once on a game day, sometimes twice. It is heavier than it looks and it takes most of an evening to recharge, so I do that the night before. Check the airline's rules and the stadium's rules before you fly with one.

The second is the pillow, and it is Renee's more than mine. It is 26 inches long with a bendable rod and a washable cover, and she twists it around her neck or tucks it against the window on the drive. It stays in the truck at the stadium, along with the cooler. It is bulky to pack and it does not compress, and it is warm against the neck in a hot car, so it is a fair weather friend in August. But on a nine hour drive it earns the space it takes.

That is the whole kit. One clear bag, one power bank, two seats, a flat cushion in reserve, a cooler that never leaves the truck, and a pillow that belongs to my wife. None of it was given to us. We bought all of it, and the Everlasting Comfort seats were Renee's idea after a long afternoon on a metal bench.

Where the Everlasting Comfort seats fall short, since you asked and since I would want to know. They take up width on a tight bench, so if the row is packed you are the person everybody has to squeeze past. They are one more thing to carry from the truck, and the strap helps but does not make it disappear. And they are not welcome everywhere, which is the biggest caveat of all. For the seven games where the website allowed them and the two of our grandson's high school games on bleachers, they were the difference between a good afternoon and a long one. For the others, they sat in the truck and I was glad I had checked.