We did it: I’m going to London

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I guess I’ll start with the lede: Virgin Atlantic chose me to be their Red Hot Reporter for the 2014 International Series in London. I’ll be flying across the pond next week to cover the fan activities, team practices and the Raiders/Dolphins game in Wembley Stadium.

For the last few years, I’ve tried to attend a game in at least one new NFL stadium every season. I was actually just thinking about the fact that I wasn’t sure if/when I’d hit a new one in 2014. Now I have Wembley on the calendar to by my ninth different NFL venue.

I owe a huge thank you to my many friends (and even some strangers) who showed their support on Twitter over the last week.

Virgin Atlantic said in the contest rules that they would pick the winner based 33 percent on creativity of the entry, 33 percent passion for football and 33 percent ability to create engaging social media content.

After I put together my submission video, I felt good about having all three. But I also mobilized a small army of people to send them tweets on my behalf. I spent all week monitoring the hashtag, and my friends never stopped. Seriously. Never stopped.

Last night I made a Storify with all of the tweets that people sent Virgin Atlantic telling them to pick me. I owe you all postcards from London.

I’ve often been wary of entering contests like this. The odds of winning can be small, and I know it’s annoying to bug your Facebook friends for votes. I would not have entered this one if they were simply picking the person with the most votes. But with the mix of criteria, I figured I didn’t have to keep bugging everyone again and again.

So I posted about it on Facebook once, and on Twitter a handful of times, hoping that with some promotion my content and resume would speak for itself.

And then we collectively owned the hashtag, and my support spoke for itself too.

So thanks again, and I’ll do my best to send back some fun videos from London.