Game Day

Today's game day here at Big U. This, my friends, is a major, major event in the life of a small rural town in a large state somewhere to the south of where you are (I'm pretty sure I'm south of most everyone who reads this blog, except for the Australians. They're practically arctic ::grin::). At any rate, game day is a big deal.

The parking lots were closed to students at 6:30 pm last night. I did stop and ask a security guard where I could park for the rec center today and he kind of looked at me like I was suddenly growing two heads out of my neck. He said that there was one lot available to students who didn't have a football parking permit, but good luck - it was already full at 5 pm yesterday. Then I had the post office and pharmacy run this morning - gak, the traffic. According to said traffic person yesterday, 82,000 people are/were expected for today's game (current score, for those of you not at all interested, is 13-3. We're the 3).

Keep in mind that the population of this town is 67,000. About 45,000 of those people are university students. The stadium holds 80,000 people and there are approximately 20,000 parking spots on campus. Yes, the mind boggles. Not sure where all of these people came from, where they're staying and where they're going to go.

So I've been effectively shut out of campus today, as there's nowhere to park and the off-campus shuttles don't run on the weekends. But it was a joy when I made my second errand run this afternoon, at the halftime game show. The roads were empty. Bliss. Very nice. Everyone is wearing school colors - maroon and white. I just went with a white top, because my maroon shirt has actually is emblazoned with the logo of my alma mater, whose colors also happened to be maroon and white (as are the official colors of this site ::grin::). I'd also like to mention that for the longest time, I didn't even really know that my alma mater had a football team (were you aware of them, Bjorn?). Basketball was our religion back in those days. Here, basketball barely rates a mention. It certainly doesn't close down the parking lots.

On my way back, I drove through campus and checked out the stadium - lots and lots of maroon everywhere (did I mention that at home games, our fans stand for the entire four hours?) and you gotta feel for the visiting team. Anyway, it was cool to drive by the stadium and then to be home about three minutes later and turn the television to ABC and see the very same scene.

I don't know much about football, but given that there are only 2 minutes left, I'm not sure we're going to be able to snatch victory from jaws of defeat. Ah well. The fans more than make up for that in terms of their spirit.