For more than 20 years, the Carolinas have had a National Football League franchise to call their own.
But before the afternoon of October 26, 1993, the only field on the corner of Mint and Morehead streets in uptown Charlotte was an overgrown one. There were no Panthers players to cheer for, no black and blue jerseys to wear with pride.
There was no such thing as the Carolina Panthers.
Before that fateful day in the history of the region, all that existed was a vision, a dream hatched by a man with means as he drove down Interstate 85 on a spring day in 1987.