There is no more distinctly American experience than a football game, I concluded. Whatever culture America may have can be found at a football game. It's quite interesting.
It was a good game. We won 42-14. I lost interest somewhere in the middle of the third quarter, and managed to completely miss the last A&M touchdown. At the end of the game I looked at the scoreboard and was surprised to see 14 instead of 7. Oops. Bad fan.
The first two-thirds of the game I spent in the student section. The people shouted things like "get his ***!" and "****, he missed" and "come on." (My parents read this so I have to watch it.) In other words, very vague. Most people were drunk.
Two-thirds of the way through we moved to a section of regular seats where a friend and her family were sitting. The people here are the die-hards. Gray hair. Little kids. Those bleacher clip-on seats. These people have been following OU football forever, and are probably at every home game. They said things like, "come on, Venables, what were you thinking?" and "look at Bob, he is so angry about that." They refer to the players and coaches by their specific names, and call them "our boys" or something like that.
I don't know which crowd is weirder.
At half-time the band was playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and then all of a sudden put down their instruments and started dancing. It was pretty unexpected and amusing.
pre-game:
Thriller:
there's a lot of the two of us on this blog:
3 comments:
oh my goodness, everything is so huge... the band, the stadium... reminds me again how rinky-dink our football program is.
*sigh*...the home football game experience...that's good stuff. that shot of the drumline crisply dressed on the goal line at the start of pregame warms my soul. and you really can't beat 350 band nerds dancing to thriller during a half-time show. and the whole winning thing is nice too.
I didn't realize you went to this game. Or did I? The lameness of our football games cannot be overstated. Some day I might find a reason to go to a UTenn game or something. 107k people.
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