| Tailgating - Part 3 - Florida @ LSU - 10/10/09 - by Neil Kogut |
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| Articles - NCAA Football Articles |
| Written by Neil Kogut |
| Monday, 11/02/09 November 2009 09:24 |
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TAILGATING – PART 3 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. October 10, 2009. #1 Florida Gators @ #4 LSU Tigers, Tiger Stadium, Baton Rouge, La. At the beginning of the season I looked through this year’s schedule and circled this date as a game I was planning on attending. At the time, and for the following weeks, I thought to myself that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all talk and when the time came, I would not attend this game. At happy hour with some friends, I mentioned the game, and when they said they would drive, I realized I would be making the five hour trip into Louisiana for what could possibly be the game of the year. Leading up to the date of the game, my friend Albert and I scoured the internet looking for any way to find tickets to this game. We checked Craigslist and Ebay, encountered fraudulent ads and overpriced deals. I was told that tickets at the game would be nearly impossible to find and even more ridiculously overpriced, so even though we were unsure if Tebow would play and if the rain would drive some fans away we decided we needed to get tickets any way we could. On the Thursday before the game I found a craigslist ad in New Orleans offering two endzone seats for $400 total. I had a family member in New Orleans front the tickets for me and overnight them to Houston by Friday so we could make it up to the game. Now all that I had to worry about was the legitimacy of the tickets, but that would be discovered in due time.
Heading out from Houston there were four of us. Ash, the LSU fan, Rachel, the Florida fan, and Albert and myself, the we don’t care who wins but let’s hope it’s LSU so we can party real hard fans. The night we left it was raining like floods were going to come and we weren’t even out of Houston before we almost got in a life ending car crash. A friendly tip for all the drivers out there; if a passenger tells you that you need to change lanes now, please look to see if there are cars in said lane before swerving to do so. Our trip to Louisiana almost ended before we even left the city limits. The four of us spent the next two and a half hours driving through the pouring rain heading to the Coushatta Casino where we would spend the night. I was trying to balance how I would gamble, as I had already spent $200 dollars on tickets and wanted to play a game that would make my money last the longest. Blackjack was out. I went to check out the poker room, and when I turned around all my friends had disappeared. It’s amazing how timing works, because when I found them, they had saddled up to a full craps table and I was left to watch. After about a minute they suggested we move to an empty table. After about four rollers, we hit the run of a lifetime, or at least a weekend. Now as far as I have been taught the field bet is a sucker bet. For whatever reason, I had five dollars on the field when the roller hit a field number. I kept the five on the field and he hit it again. This continued for roughly 14 of the next 15 rolls and since we had been occasionally pressing the field we were all in complete shock of how hot this roller was. When the dust had settled we had all won enough money to pay for our tickets, and after eating at the most vile buffet ever visited, it was time for sleep and the big game on Saturday. We awoke early in the morning, showered and hit the road to Baton Rouge. We stopped at a place called Boudin King in Jennings, La. Boudin is a type of pork sausage common in the Cajun areas of the state and is very interesting. We got some Boudin to go along with some gumbo for breakfast and it was a very interesting meal to say the least. The next 90 minutes were easy until we hit the gameday traffic a few miles outside of Baton Rouge. When we finally crossed the bridge and got closer to campus we sat in traffic for almost an hour. To each side of us cars were lined down the street with purple and gold clad Tiger fans drinking and tailgating unaware of what the evening held in store for them. From this vantage point, it seemed like this day was going to be crazy and something to remember for a long time.
We finally settled in at Ash’s cousin’s apartment and after shotgunning a beer or two, it was time to get into the fray. We took a long walk through campus up towards the student union. We met some people on the lawn in front and after I found a LSU shirt at the campus bookstore, we fired up some Boudin and played some beer pong in a Sukkah. Looking back now, I am not sure how kosher it was to have Boudin in the Sukkah, but this was Louisiana. After a while I started getting antsy and wanted to see more of what Tiger fans had to offer. We wandered for a bit and immediately I realized that this was not going to be as easy as it was in Georgia. While in Athens everyone wanted to show me a good time because they knew I was a visitor. Wearing gold in Baton Rouge, everyone assumed I was at home and would have my own tailgate to visit. The only other option was to don some blue and orange, but being SEC foes, that wouldn’t have gone any smoother. In fact I would have been repeatedly referred to as tiger bait.
If you are an LSU fan you might not want to hear my critique of your pregame experience as I was severely disappointed. For one, I felt no electricity in the air. The fans were not nearly rowdy enough, not excited that they were going to be the most watched game of the evening. I didn’t see too much good food being grilled up either. I know it had to be around, but the areas I was in lacked the smell of some great gameday cooking. It seemed like more fans were more interested in drinking then getting fired up for the game. I tend to think that those are one in the same, but for whatever reason I just didn’t feel like LSU fans were ready for the evening. I had many people after the game tell me that when LSU knows they are going to lose, or when LSU doesn’t have a good quarterback they just kind of shut it down and don’t become as excitable as they should be. This was awfully disappointing to me as half of the reason I go on these trips is to feel the energy of a campus before a huge game such as this one. The relative apathetic feeling that came from one of the more storied and successful programs in the country really bummed me out. As I made my way to the game, I did happen to meet a few diehard LSU fans, Mike the Tiger and some friends from Houston who made the trip and shared some more Boudin, brisket and beer with me. Coming up on the stadium I got this feel of the Coliseum in Rome. The top of the stadium has the open archways that give it that look and remind you that you are heading in to see a battle. It took me a while to battle the lines into the stadium and when I got to my gate it was time to see if my tickets were real or fake. As I approached my ticket taker, pulled out my ticket and she scanned it, my heart sank as the four letter word STOP appeared in red. I was about to bull rush her, knocking her over as I escaped into the sea of gold and purple, but she scanned it again and that magical word GO appeared in green. I came up the ramp and as I looked out into the stadium for the first time I got the chills. The lights were on, the teams were on the field, but there was still no buzz in the air.
As the teams warmed up, I took some time to watch Tebow get ready and at this point assumed he was a go for the game. The loudest the crowd got was before the teams left the field when Florida’s whole team used the middle of the field as a spot to congregate and get pumped up. The Tigers didn’t like that very much and they joined the circus and the crowd got rowdy as the two top-5 teams faced off for some extra-curricular jabbing. The teams left the field and the Tiger Band from the South Land marched into the LSU formation and played us a little pregame ditty. The time was rapidly approaching kickoff and I was sitting in the endzone opposite where LSU would be entering the field from. As the time grew nearer and the crowd got louder fireworks went off and to my dismay I couldn’t see anything because the field was littered with the smoke of the fireworks. That was somewhat disappointing because nothing gets my blood boiling more then seeing the home team enter the field with a good introduction before a raucous crowd. With all the tradition and hype LSU has they could have had a much better intro; something to get the folks pumped up. Instead they had some players give some low key speech and before you knew it they were on the field. In my opinion the intro should build and build and build until the top gets blown off the joint as the home team comes charging onto the field. The game itself was a tad low key as it was a defensive struggle at its best. This game exposed the fact that LSU has no offense. I know they were playing the defending national champs, who have a top notch defense, but it seemed like they were never able to do what they wanted to. Tim Tebow on the other hand was simply brilliant. It is all the little things that he does that make him so good. His footwork is impeccable and his fakes have great timing. LSU played very stout defense, but just couldn’t put their offense in good position to score. The game was rather quiet as LSU only threatened to score a touchdown once. There is no doubt in my mind that if they would have scored that touchdown the place would have erupted. One thing that I found interesting was that a school of such prestige only had one player enshrined in their ring of honor before this game, Billy Cannon. Tommy Cassanova joined him in the ring of honor in front of a Louisiana record crowd of 93,129 people. This was the second state I had set an attendance record on my journeys in the past month. The walk back from the game was almost as much fun as the game itself. It started by leaving the stadium but realizing that I needed to use a restroom before we got much farther. We re-entered the stadium and found some LSU cheerleaders that were gorgeous and let us take some pictures with them. We saw a gate opening onto the field and decided what the hell, let’s walk right onto it.
That was maybe the coolest part of the trip as we took some pictures and got to soak it all in from the field. We tried to make our way to midfield where they have the eye of the tiger, but at that point we were kicked off of the field, but not before I was able to kiss the twenty yard line and say goodbye to Tiger Stadium. As we walked back to our quarters for the evening, we strolled down Nicholson Street eliciting cheers of “We’re number 9!” and asked the passing fans how we could lose to a girl named Shebow? It’s a wonderful thing when you are drunk and unaffiliated to a team. We needed a beer so my buddy boarded an unoccupied party bus, grabbed some beers and we drank all the way home. By that time it was late, we were exhausted and our LSU hosts understandably didn’t want to go out and party, so seven of us crashed in the living room of an apartment, in what was a glorious mess. The ride back to Houston was quick and easy as we recounted all of the memories we had made that weekend. LSU was a very cool place to see a game, but I can’t help but know that there was a better time out there that we missed. It was unfortunate that the fans didn’t bring their A-game with the top team in the land waiting in the wings. Tiger Stadium was a beautiful site on a Saturday night and I hope I will have my chance to return and be shown how it is to party in Death Valley, one of the greatest scenes in all of the college football landscape. Saddling up for Dallas and the shootout, Signed, Neil Kogut
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