Was at an NFL football game...

Yeah, you can run into some big jerks in photography. Goes with the territory, especially if you are competing with them.

People can be rude, and lately they nearly all are, but OTOH you'd probably get a similar response at a truckstop if you lent out the window on your Ford Ultra to "have a chat" with a driver filling up his Peterbilt.

Jaykitty - Very true indeed, Tokina also has some gold banded lenses as well. But the two lenses you point out are very easily identifiable - and while very they are very good at what they do, it is pretty rare to see on on the sidelines. The 800 is way to long both optically and phsyically to be usefull. The Tokina 300 looks a lot like it's Nikon counterpart except that the hood is only half as deep. But like Rikwriter says, 95% of what you see on the sidelines at a pro event will be either Nikon or Canon 2.8 grass - at least at the college level.

maybe he'd dropped his nice canon lenses and was reduced to using his old backup gear.