A few observations about yesterday's "game day":
HAYN and I rode to the game with a well-to-do Husky booster (who had 50-yard-line tickets just above the Don James Center). For as big as this game was (third largest crowd in their storied stadiums' history, and ther students weren't even back for classes yet), the pregame atmosphere was relatively sedate. The parking wasn't even full of vehicles and partiers...it wasn't "sparse" by any means, and the lot was almost full, but the idea that there was still some available tailgating space for this game was surprising.
Husky fans, almost without exception, were quite cordial. Aside from some of the usual dip[censored] Stridex pad club, there was little real trash talking and instead some good-natured bantering. And they also really did think that Locker was the deal and that we "hadn't seen a QB like him before". We partied up with the Husky group that brought us to the game...didn't get trashed, but was "adequately buzzed" before leaving the lot to enter the stadium. BB73 met up me there and he joined us for the tailgate, and we also ran into OSUsushichic and Manfred...both very nice folks (got a photo of us four doing O-H-I-O to upload when I get home). Later on, walking around with HAYN we ran into the fathers of Boeckman and Homan and chatted with them for a bit...you could just tell how proud both papas were of their boys.
Me and BB73 had to literally give our two extra tickets away about 15 minutes before kickoff...and the guy we gave them to (who was a rep for some charity drive and we gave him the tix on the condition the money went to the drive) already had two tix to pawn. Lots of folks were trying to unload unused tickets and I only heard one instance (about 3 hours before kickoff, when my group first arrived at the stadium) of someone asking for tickets. Upon entering the stadium, I noticed there very little vendors inside...another surprise for a game of this magnitude, and a fact that end up costing me later on.
Once BB73 and I walked the winding walkways (no stairs...all walkways) up to the top entrance level and entered the seating area, the field didn't look all that far away...that is until we asked an usher where our seats are and we were pointed to the top of the stadium. Holy freakin' schikey. We walked up an 45-degree steep-ass incline about 100 rows up to about 5-6 rows from the overhang roof. I would've been seriously hurting if I had a true fear of heights. Still, it was actually pretty good since we were right on the 50-yard-line and the only thing that obstructed any of our view was the huge support beam, and we could move a little to avoid that when the teams were inside the north-end 20 yard line. Another nice thing was the fact that the majority of fans in our nose-bleed section were Buckeye fans, and we made a lot of noise.
The stadium was very loud at the beginning of the game...not quite as loud as The Shoe was for The Game last year but it indeed was very loud. The huge metal overhang roofs reflect all the noise back down onto the field. The seats were typical stadium stadium seats, and fortunately neither BB73 nor I are "width challenged", and since the fans en-masse only stood about 7-8 times during the game and thus we spent most of the time seated, that worked out good for us. The view was very good (aside from having to move a bit to avoid the overang suppoprt beam when the teams near the north end zone).
I'll refrain from giving any game analysis for now, seeing as that has been pretty well covered in this thread so far, but I'll say that the crowd spirit that had fired up the home team in the first half, dampened noticeably after our first TD, and they really started sitting on their hands after our second TD. And when UW elected to punt in the fourth quarter down 27-7, the exodus began. It was kind of disappointing seeing them bail on their team like that. Hell, BB73 pointed out to me all the boats in the harbor starting to leave at that time. For a program that is getting back on its feet and with all the pre-game excitement generated by this game, that doesn't send a good message to your team. I almost was glad UW got that final token TD, so that maybe the 70% of the Husky "fans" that left early missed it.
All in all, though, it was well worth the flight over from the islands, but wish they had vendors selling game programs at the stadium (gee, what a novel idea). Two big games (The Game last year and this one), two wins. Lucky for us I'll be going to the USC game and The Game next year...
