TAILGATING – PART 2

This season I plan on heading to at least four different stadiums throughout the country to take in a college football game.  One of my life goals is to go to as many FBS stadiums as I possibly can, trying to get to them all (Or at least the important ones, I am not sure if there is much need to go see where teams such as Ball State, San Jose State and Tulsa play football.)  So far I have been fortunate enough to attend games at Sanford Stadium in Athens, DKR-Memorial stadium in Austin, Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, The LA Coliseum in Los Angeles, and Folsom Field in Boulder, CO.  As I make my way onto these campuses I will discuss what I saw, how I felt and how it compares to the others, in order to try and find my ultimate gameday experience.

September 26, 2009.  Arizona State @ Georgia, Sanford Stadium, Athens, GA. 

It would be hard to explain my experience in Athens without starting the story on Friday night.  I arrived into Atlanta in the late afternoon, and after meeting up with my fellow Sun Devils we rode on into Athens.  We settled up at a college roommate’s house and immediately hit the town.  The downtown area is littered with bars that had amazing $2 beer specials, beautiful women in black and red and the occasional Gold clad Sun Devil fan.  We found a little restaurant with more beer specials and ate until we could no more.  We spent our evening at Boar’s Head which was an awesome dive bar with beautiful women everywhere.  We ended the evening at a bar called The Loft which was more of a club then a bar, but it was fun nonetheless.  We made our way to the drive-thru at Crystals and around 4 am got the beauty sleep required to raise hell in Athens. 

Saturday morning we awoke with blood running through our veins as the excitement of the day built inside of us.  Around noon we picked up some BBQ at the aptly named B.B.Q. Shack, grabbed a couple cases of beer and a handle of Jim Beam and made our way through the Arches into North Campus.  Already there to welcome my 10 fellow Sun Devils was a group called the Mustache Nation.  They were wearing the most ridiculously real mustaches ever seen; offering rides for five cents a pop.  We spent the first hour or so with our fellow Devils raising hell and shotgunning beers.  After the scenery got stale we walked around the North Campus to see what the Georgia fans had to offer.

One of the funniest things on North Campus is what they call the Family Friendly Zone, a roped off area where families can enjoy an afternoon without alcohol.  It is safe to say I saw two people in there the whole day and they were tossing a football around.  This my friends, is a good sign.  I had read up on tailgating in Athens and was told to be friendly with the Georgia fans and they will feed you and give you drinks, and I was not disappointed.  Within minutes of starting our walk, our new good friend Merv asked us to join him for a beer and a shot and to sample some of his roasted Javelina.  It was amazing.  I will most likely never eat that animal again, but I could not resist and it was well worth it.  We picked his brain on Georgia traditions and gave him our outlook on the Sun Devils and what he can expect to see on the field that evening. 

Every stop we made, people were just as friendly as Merv.  We played some games with the guys from bubbanearl.blogspot.com/ and drank many beers with them as well.  We mingled with the beautiful women all over the campus and I cannot say enough times how friendly and excited Georgia fans were to see that we actually traveled all the way to see their unique game day experience.

While trying to locate some restrooms, we took a stroll through the rest of the campus.  We walked down a street that led us right to Sanford Stadium.  From this vantage point you could stand on a bridge and see right down onto the field.  It was one of the cooler things I have seen near a stadium and it would be awesome to get to see it every day if you went to school there. 

I then went to go meet a cousin of mine at one of the fraternity houses, so we walked down around the other end of the stadium and right as we were passing by, the ASU bus pulled up and unloaded all of the players and coaches.  It was impeccable timing as I was able to high five all of the players and wish them luck for the evening’s game.  We finished our walk to the fraternity house just as the rain started coming down.  We were treated to more food, beer and beautiful women and for that we must thank the Georgia AEPi house.

As game time neared and the rain came down harder we took the walk back over to the stadium.  We followed the hordes of Sun Devil faithful up the ramps to the 600 level high atop the stadium.  Our perch if you will.  Although the seats were way high up, it commanded a great view of the field, though it was hard to see numbers and close plays. 

The rain fell steadily through the first half, which, unfortunately for us took away from the noise and craziness I was expecting from 92,000 screaming Georgia fans.  The stadium was filled up to probably 90% capacity, and luckily for us, our defense gave them a good enough scare that the place never was truly rocking.  If you are ever caught in a downpour at Sanford Stadium I do recommend going into the bathrooms where they have heaters.  It saved my life at halftime although it did take away from me being able to see the band play their halftime show.

The game was a great one as my Sun Devils gave them a fight to the end, but AJ Green was too much for us as he hurt us with ridiculous catches all night and capped off his career evening with a block of our field goal that would have given us the lead.  It was truly a heartbreaker, and if they would have let me sit in the stadium and cry all night, I would have done just that.

After the final whistle, 90,000 people exited the stadium, headed right back up through North Campus in a huge wave.

To my delight the only thing I heard out of Bulldog fans was, “good game.”  It is nice to visit a place that understands football.  I think they could see the look of disappointment on our faces and they knew that they had just been taken down to the wire and were extremely classy.  About an hour later it hit me that I was somewhat glad we lost, because if we would have won, we would be talking trash and acting like the classless, uneducated football fans that most Arizona State fans can tend to be.  We finished our evening at a bar called All Good and watched the end of the Houston – Texas Tech matchup.  We got some early morning dinner at Little Italy Pizzeria, which is a must eat at attraction.  I had the meatball pizza and it was amazing. 

The evening ended on that note and it was back to sleep for a 7 am wake up call for a drive back to Atlanta.  I had a few hours to kill so I took the metro to downtown Atlanta and saw some of the very cool architecture the city had to offer.  I strolled through Olympic Park and had breakfast at Ria’s Bluebird, which had some of the best pancakes I have ever eaten in my life. 

As of now, Athens, GA, is absolutely the best place I have ever had the pleasure to take in a football game.  The Georgia faithful were some of the nicest people I have ever met and they did everything they could to make sure we enjoyed our visit.  I honestly could barely count the amount of rude people on one hand.  The women are sweet as could be and knowledgeable about football as well, which is really, really sexy.  I spent the entire week after my trip telling everyone ad nauseum that I had absolutely the best weekend of my life, and I meant it.  I highly recommend traveling to Athens on a day that UGA plays a non conference game against an opponent not named Georgia Tech.  Come decked out in the opposing teams threads, tell them you just flew cross country to see what Athens has in store and get ready for the Southern Hospitality to begin.  And tell them I said hello, and I miss you.

Until I return from Baton Rouge.

Signed,

Neil Kogut

Comments

s2d writing staff2

0

 

 

Sounds like a great experience. I will have to do a tour such as this one when I have time. As well as an MLB stadium tour as well...

Monday 12 October 2009, 05:44

Please login to post comments or replies.