I used to work the gates at Gillette, If you where patted down and you where carrying anything including OC you would be denied entry and your ticket would be revoked and whoever the ticket holder was would lose there season tickets. Leave it in the car for the road rage on the way home.
Dan Long
Boston
The last time I was there, the "pat down" consisted of me lifting my arms, and the 18 year old kid in a suit touched the thumb sides of his hands to me three times, just below the armpits, at the waist, and mid thigh, no other contact whatsoever. The only weapon he would've caught was if I was carrying a Whippet like
Clyde Barrow used to.
There's more to the stadium than the stands too, there's bars, vendors, and tens of thousands of people milling around.
Criminals don't make appointments.
We have a winner.
I've been to lots of Pats games in Foxboro as well as many other stadiums. I have never even come close to thinking I needed anything for protection. Every game I've gone to I wore my Patriots gear. Other that getting and giving crap Nothing has made me feel threatened. I don't understand being afraid to go anywhere without some sort of protection.
My best friend used to have a Burmese python, about 10 feet long. I remember him feeding it, rats and bunnies and such. Sometimes, you'd drop them in the cage, and they'd tremble in the corner, expecting what was coming. Other times they'd amble around aimlessly with no idea that they were about to die. But every single time, they were in danger, because they were in the presence of a predator.
Whether or not you recognize danger has nothing to do with whether or not you're in danger.
I'm not afraid to go anywhere without protection. I don't live my life by waking up, putting on a gun to go to the bank (dangerous there), take it off to go to a sports event (safe there), put it back on to go to a bad neighborhood (dangerous there)...
If I'm wearing pants (or shorts) and it's legal for me to be, then I'm armed. I don't drink, and I avoid bad situations, and simply by nature of my lifestyle, there's very few times in my life that I have to disarm. When I do, I don't sweat it, I go on with my life, it just means that I have one less tool to fix problems if they arise.
Maybe you are thinking of the old days when there were lots of fights at the games. I remember seeeing fights all during games. I haven't seen any fights for the last 10 years or so. They have put in a zero tolerence policy in all stadiums now and even arguing can get you banned from the stadium.
I'd rather trust my life to tools in my own hands than trust that the management will ban the guys who stomped me to death in a drunken rage, or who shattered the bones in my face, or anything else that happens everywhere else in the world.
Their rules don't prevent bad things from happening there, they only define how their staff are supposed to react when they do.