Today I experienced my very first Football game. That's right American Football. The sport from the Blind Side and Remember The Titans - two brilliant films which if you haven't already seen, then you should! It was amazing. For starters 'College Ball' here is huge. It's broadcast on the TV and hundreds of people come and support, it's massive. I'm not a big sports follower, in fact I realised today that, other than going to football games at my Middle School in Virginia which don't really count, I'd never before been to a big stadium and watched a big sports match. Despite this I was shocked at the sheer number of people camped outside the stadium; the number of people drinking and cooking hamburgers and hot dogs from the back of their trucks at 10 o' clock on a Saturday morning. My first introduction to 'tailgating' - a party held from the boot, sorry 'trunk' of someone's car or, ideally, truck. It was a mass sea of 'true blue', the UCONN colours ('colors') and there were husky paw prints along the road because the husky is of course our school mascot.
There was a marching band who were amazing and there were not-quite-so-cheerful-cheerleaders and the mascot running around the field.. pitch? And last but not least the actual game. It was a whole fanfare of events, there was not a moment of boredom. In between people shaking their keys to distract the opposite team and people dancing to try and get on the camera and general cheering and swearing at the refs it was one very exciting experience.
Despite this I have to also say that I have never seen such bad sportsmanship. Everyone was so mean to Syracuse - the opposing team. I mean come on give them a break they have to wear bright orange for starters, yuk! I've never heard such bad language in all my time here as people swore at opposing players and our quarterback who apparently isn't very good - I mean he did keep dropping the ball or something but give him a break he must be roughly the same age as us and he has alllll these people watching him. It was probably largely to do with the aforementioned 'tailgating' and the fact that most people there were pretty off their faces.
I'm afraid I can't tell you who won because we got cold and left early. That and the fact that these games last for hours! Although the players only play for a total of 1 hour broken up into four 15 minute quarters, the first quarter lasted for roughly 45 minutes! They faff. I mean I know I faff but seriously?! They stop and start and show various adverts and then parade cute little boy scouts across the pitch and then play for a few more minutes and then stop and start throwing free stuff at you and then play for another 30 seconds and then stop while the marching band marches around a bit and on it goes and on...
About that Marching Band....
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