a trip to the desert

[jimotis4heisman]

first and foremost, i would like to give to congrats to all the gator fans. savor having both major crowns, its something special.

the crowd. hard to give a breakdown, but seas of scralet and gray were in the dome, in the parking lot, around town all weekend. i was complimented multiple times by uf fans about the behavior of the fans, more than half of these guys said it was the best crowds they had ever seen a team have, size, noise and class. to all of you guys who went way to represent the state/university/all buckeyes with class.

florida. a real classy and nice group of fans, sure i saw a few abnoxious and classless people, but lets be honest the bandwagon is full and every group has a few bad apples. i enjoyed talking to everyone one of their fans, nice people who know their football.

the golf. two rounds, played poorly both times, granted i hadnt had the sticks out since late summer. good golf out their, unless you are long and wild (like me)

the pep rally at chase field (old bank one ball park). i left with a wierd feeling, i didnt like how the captains and tressel approached it, it rubbed me odd and i mentioned it to all the people i was with out their, they seemed to think i was overreacting. otherwise good to see 35k plus to show thier support.

nfl football. barely caught a glimpse of nfl football, and what i did see was at a bar ( i hate watching any sport at a bar)

osu bball. usually i do a nice write up on each game, i watched the ill game at a bar, (see above) i have it dvred maybe ill rewatch soon, if soone enough ill spill my thoughts. on the wisc game, didnt see it i was on the plane, didnt see a minute of it. same deal, though likely ill rewatch this game early sunday morning and none of you will care what i think by then.

the game.some positives mostly negatives, im sure everything has been hashed out, im sure the sky is falling for some, for others tressel still probably walks on water. the reality, the team didnt show up (see comments on the pep rally). anyone who saw the team warm up didnt see nationaol championship intensity, i didnt see michigan intensity, i saw mac school style warm up. if you dont get up for a game you wont win a game of that magnitude. was it embrassing, yes. though, im not the one who will have to look myself in the mirror everyday for the rest of my life and say "did i give my best effort in glendale?" its not the first time ive been embrassed by theosu football team, 94 psu, 95um, alabama under woody come quickly to mind. this team was dismantled. im sure everything has been said so im not going any deeper, unless provoked, but all the questions ive had and said were exposed... to that i give urban his staff and his players credit.

its great to be a florida ggaattoooorrr!
and to that i give them props, b/c it is great for them. congrats gators.

[buckeyeboy]

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

the pep rally at chase field (old bank one ball park). i left with a wierd feeling, i didnt like how the captains and tressel approached it, it rubbed me odd and i mentioned it to all the people i was with out their, they seemed to think i was overreacting. otherwise good to see 35k plus to show thier support.

This has me interested--can you go into more detail?

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by buckeyeboy

This has me interested--can you go into more detail?

well they had very little to say, only maybe five to ten minutes with the four captains and tressel. its hard to really say, its the way they acted and carried themselves than what they said. i got a lazy arrogance feeling, is how i guess i would feel it. i threw that in their to see if i was the only one.

[buckeyeboy]

OK, so what gives--what's the story about TS and his socks and messing around on the sideline? I couldn't see any of that stuff on TV.

[desert_buckeye]

I too was in Glendale (including Buckeye, Tempe, Phoenix, etc) for the entire weekend, and was also at the pep rally on Sunday. The players looked tired and unmotivated to me. I know it was only a pep rally, but there were 35,000 + fans there supporting them. I watched the OSU / Illinois game in Buckeye on Saturday hoping to win a pair of tickets to the NCG (they gave away 3 sets). I felt great going into the weekend, but for some strange reason, the closer it got to kickoff I lost that "we are going to dominate" feeling. I was in the stadium, but was across the street in the Westgate area along with thousands of other fans with no tickets. It was scarlet and gray as far as you could see. Funny thing is, the Gator fans seemed to come out of the woodwork towards the middle of the fourth quarter, and it was a sobering feeling. I live in about 4 hours south of Glendale, so the drive home was better than a plane flight back to Columbus. I tivo'd the game and watched most of it over again (must love the punishment) a couple of times (mostly the opening kickoff) and that was not the team I watched all year as they went 12-0. My eleven year old daughter called during the game (she could not get into the Wesgate area, and went back to the hotel with her mom to watch the game) and asked why they were losing so bad. I told her it was still early, but I knew at that point it was over. No sense of urgency, no motivation, no adjustments, etc. It was still a fun weekend and got to meet a lot of Buckeye fans that made the trip out here, either at the pep rally, in the parking lot before the game, or at the other happenings throughout the weekend. Still damn proud of what the team accomplished this year, and proud to be a BUCKEYE!

[osucollegebuck]

The only thing I thought was weird was that Troy didn't speak longer at the pep rally and he only introduced Datish and didn't say anything else. I just thought he didn't want to take up the entire spotlight and was only being humble. With that being said I had a great time (except at the game 2nd - 4th quarters). It was awesome meeting and hanging out with Buckeyes from across the country!!! Finally, I couldn't agree more with a previous post in this thread that the gators came out of no where and showed up. Anyone who attended the Glitz and Glitter block party would admit it was a ratio of 8:2 in favor of Ohio State.

[osufootball727]

It was odd. Walking around everywhere around Glendale on saturday (Scottsdale, Phoenix, Chandler, the stadium), there were barely any gator fans. For every 10 Ohio State fans you would maybe see 2 Florida fans. Then on game day, they came out of nowhere and outside of the stadium it was probably 65-35 Ohio State. Inside the stadium was probably 70-75% OSU fans, but it sure didn't seem like it after awhile. Where were their fans all weekend though? Maybe they just came out on sunday night or monday morning. It was similar last year with the Notre Dame fans though. Barely any in sight and then come gameday its about 60-40 OSU fans in the stadium. Odd.

[fourteenandoh]

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

.

its great to be a florida ggaattoooorrr!
.

I've still got that damn chant stuck in my head. Must have heard it 1000 times Monday night.

[osufootball727]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

I've still got that damn chant stuck in my head. Must have heard it 1000 times Monday night.

I've had that one stuck too along with the "Gator Bait" one with the band and the song and then "Go Gators"...

...I just hadn't told anybody about it

[fourteenandoh]

the gator bait got so bad that my friends and i started yelling it at eachother from across the bars to get eachothers attention as a joke. we yelled it in the most annoying southern accent we could come up with.

[Scans]

Myself and some friends got out to the phx area on friday. We were staying in Tempe. We had an awesome weekend except for the game of course. Friday night hit the Tempe bars on Mill, not bad...but not that much of a crowd where we were, ASU is still on break. Saturday and Sunday we went to a few clubs in Scottsdale. They were a lot of fun.

Sunday during the afternoon we went to the fashion mall to check out what that was about. Its a huge mall compared to the ones up near cleveland. We ran into Pittman and Wells there, and another buckeye who we couldnt figure out who it was. Ive never seen so many gorgeous chicks in one spot in my entire life i think. Everywhere you looked they roamed.

Sunday night was the best though. All the buckeye parties and the fans were everywhere. Like everyone else is saying, not too many gator fans to be found. Mike Doss was at Radius that night and we got a few pictures with him.

Monday we found ourselves without tickets, but wanted to go to the stadium anyways. Tailgaiting with all the buckeyes was a great time. Although like many have said before...there were a ton of gator fans also there. I Guess Ted Ginn Sr knew someone at the tailgate i was at. He was there for alil bit, just enough time to get a picture with him.

We ended up going to westgate center to watch the game. Pretty much like a way nicer hineygate party. Then the game happend...and at the start of the 4th i took the keys and went to our rental car and just sat in the back seat until my buddies came back after the game was over. I couldnt take seeing the gator fans celebrate.

But they earned it. Congrats.

All in all it was a weekend i will never forget and I hope to travel to all our bowl games to party every year to come. Its a great expierience!

[THEWOOD]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

the gator bait got so bad that my friends and i started yelling it at eachother from across the bars to get eachothers attention as a joke. we yelled it in the most annoying southern accent we could come up with.

"Ya'll GATOR BAIT!!! We beat 7 out of the top 10 teams, who ya'll beat besides Michigan?"--annoying florida fan

What a [censored]ing joke that guy was....he probably can not even count to seven.

"Go get back on your fan boat you [censored]ing hillbilly"--fourteenandoh

[BuckPride]

It was the 4th Bowl game in a row that I attended and I didn't notice anything different in this Pep Rally???


Like all of them, they seemed disorganized IMO, but I never noticed anything unusual in players or coach Tressel! Neither did my wife. FWIW..

[bukIpower]

haha hearin you say "GATOR BAITE" reminds me of "SHAKE AND BAKE"... hopefully he didn't say something like "doesn't that blow your mind".. those have got to be the two most annoying things by a fan. well besides "go blue"