It's the most wonderful time of the year....FOOTBALL SEASON!!
Yesterday kicked off the best time of the year for me: college football season! Mark and I had 4 of the most sought-after tickets in Hampton Roads: season tickets to the Inaugural Season of ODU football. (his mom got them the day the went on sale, over a year and a half ago, as a birthday present for him) We were going to take DJ and Cowboy with us, but they couldn't go, so we invited John and Vicki. (Vicki's an APO alum from ODU and lives several blocks from campus) We 'tailgated' at Vicki's, then walked over to the game. Tailgate menu: burgers, sesame-ginger marinated chicken breasts, lemon-herb marinated shrimp, potato salad, macaroni salad, jello shooters (strawberry daquiri and dreamsicle flavored), and sodas/drinks.
ODU won - so that's a bonus! Defense was incredible - it was 'beamer ball' but not at Tech. Chowan, although outmatched, didn't roll over and play dead. The electricity was just crackling throughout the crowd. I can honestly say that I really haven't seen a crowd that excited to see a game since the Peach Bowl in Atlanta in 1986 (when Tech wasn't an annual participant in bowl games). Our seats aren't the best - 'home' side at the end zone, but we have a great view of the jumbotron to see the action at the other end of the field. And OMG, the kicker for ODU has got a hella foot on him! He made a 49 yd FG, and one of his PAT's went OVER the netting into the student section. (they gave the ball BACK?? Oh no, I'd have kept that thing) Blocked kicks? Saw several! And it was also a relatively clean game - very few yellow hankies thrown.
The Marching Monarchs have uniforms very similar to the Marching Virginians of VT - but the 'drum majors' were trying to be more like drum majors of an HBCU marching band. Sorry, that just didn't work. Drum majors in a corps-style band don't stand out front and twirl their mace - they DIRECT the band. Instead, they had the band director on a ladder directing. Not a big fan of that, sorry. Pick a style - either be a corps-style band or a high-stepping band. The hybrid thing does nothing for me. Size-wise, they were about 1/2 the size of the MV's. They played pregame, halftime, and postgame. At halftime, they played to the "home" side and then turned to the bleachers in the end zone (student section) and played another part of the show. That was impressive, how they recognized the student involvement in the game.
Intro music was "Crazy Train" by Ozzy. (not quite "Enter Sandman," but what else is??)
I did NOT, repeat, did NOT!! like the unsportsmanlike behavior of the fans when the opposing team came on the field. They booed!! OMG, that was so offensive to me. And Mark - and he was very vocal about the fact that it was unsportsmanlike and rude to the opposing team. I'm almost tempted to write to the paper and bitch about it. That shit needs to stop, and stop NOW.
The guys in front of us, after we'd chatted awhile, asked about 'airplane bottles.' I looked at them, and said "airplane bottles? y'all are amateurs!" Yup, we snuck a pint of Jim Beam in the game. With four people to share with, a pint doesn't go far. And after the game, I did my standard cup-collection. Got a few quizzical looks from folks - but we now have a set of 8 big cups and 6 small cups printed with the inaugural season logo on them. Prolly will collect more throughout the season too. It was interesting what the stands looked like after the game and how different the 'trash' was. I saw NO discarded bottles of liquor. When collecting cups, I wasn't having to pass some of them up b/c they had tobacco chew remnants in them. Still, I wouldn't want to be the folks having to clean up.
Kickoff was 6pm. At 8pm, I put on my headset radio and began listening to the VT-Alabama game while sitting at the ODU game. Sadly, you know that the outcome wasn't the greatest (for me at least). But hey, UVA went down to W&M - whoohoo!!
Now, all of this was done yesterday on a bum foot. Friday night, I stepped on a piece of glass at my house that cut the shit out of my foot, so I was kinda gimpy - booze and football excitement kept the pain down, but I think I'll be paying for that today.
Next week: Marshall at Va Tech, Virginia Union at ODU (won't be there - have an APO reunion picnic in Richmond I wanna go to). Plenty of more games to attend. It's neat to be a part of new traditions - but it was also wierd to not hear Tech Triumph after a score, or the cannon being fired after every score.
YAY for football!!