- Jun 19, 2014
- 21,666
- 48,639
Founding Member
It's the offseason, boring as he11 around here and Ive been meaning to tell this story for years so might as well now.
Close your eyes and harken back to a time not so long ago, when visions of speedsters streaked towards the endzone, Urban's 4 keys to the game were the stuff of legends, and an SEC championship seemed a real possibilty. It's November of 2006 and we were in the throws of a season to remember. One complete with epic highlights like Jarvis's blocked FG, wins over UT and the dwags and a few low points as well like Chris Leaks incomplete forward pass... errrr "fumble." Fresh off a W in a game that will go down as one of the great defensive SEC battles of all time, with an ending that was sheer joy for gators everywhere, we were over the top and "flying high." So I suppose a trip to the big top was the perfect follow-up act.
It was a clear, warm day in trailertrashy, blue skys and few clouds, a early kickoff was set to allow for max gator pandomonium upon completion of what we all knew was a forgone conclusion. I arose early and began a little pregaming at a freinds house only 5 minutes from the stadium. In full disclosure this friend was a battle-buddy of mine but unfortunately a nole - classic ying and yang. For his part, Ive never met a finer dude and Soldier, but alas noones perfect. We hit up a local watering hole with a few other Army buddies in tow, within walking distance to the derection set. I was in great spirits knowing fully that it would be a glorious day. My buddy had secured us 4 tickets in the student section and with his connection, I was able to use one despite not having a student ID. We enjoyed ourselves and the brewskis and around 1130am began making the "infamous" walk to what I would soon learn was one of the worst venues in all of college football.
Getting into the stadium was fairly routine, absent his connection being all too thrilled about allowing into the student section, a guy who had a blue shirt and gator hat on. I wore them with (straight) pride. Once inside the stadium and moving towards our seats I remarked to myself that they must have been doing some kind of renovation project because of all the bright yellow scaffolding that was running everywhere. It appeared to me to be a giant game of pick up sticks had just gone down. I mumbled sometihng to my buddy about it and he looked at me perplexed, then said, something to the effect of "What? Isn't this how yalls stadium is set up?" I facepalmed inside. Onward to the seats we forged, and what a venerable sea of half-drunk highschool dropouts I found. The crowd was amusing if nothing else. I stood in an area surrounded by a few piss-drunk idiots who wanted to fight from the very second I arrived at my seat. My buddy, the good guy that he was, made it a point to tell the semis that anyone who had a problem with me, had a problem with our entire group and us being clearly bigger and in much better shape, the looks ended as quickly as they had begun.
The game was fairly ho-hum. Leak didn't wow by any stretch of the imagination but our defense was locked in and bubba caldwell made a huge TD run from about midfield off a jet sweep. Another memorable moment occured at halftime as we were inside the stadium heading to get some concessions, having left our seats with a minute left to try and beat some of the semis. I was walking around that giant stack of pick up sticks when I came to a chain link fence on wheels. I stopped, checked my bearings to be sure that I had in fact just come from this direction and there had been no rolling fence there. I looked around for key landmarks as I always do and I was became very confident that I had been retracing my previous steps. Just about the time I was ready to start secong guessing myself, along comes a sea of clowns with big floppy red shoes and gold colored helmets walking right between the fence and me. It was at that moment that I realized they didnt even have a tunnel, but simply rolled up a fence and partinoned the walkway off when the team enters and exits. It was almost as hilarious as the last kid to walk past me, the kicker. He had to have been all of 5 feet tall with cleats on. The second half was mostly more of the same. Leak through a nice long TD pass to dallas baker in the endzone and the only prayer fsu smelled of answering on a kickoff return was snuffed right out when he was shown to have stepped well out of bounds near mid-field. The game ended with Tebow delivering some punishing blows near the hole's endzone and a kneel-down on the goal line for a nice W and a chance for the mother of all college football births.
As we began to exit the stadium I laughed while once again walking through what I now understand to be called the "erector set" however I prefer to phrase it as the derection set, for obvious reasons. I was through the moon, we just capped off an 11 win season and by all arguments were as good as any team in the country. No semis or clown cars could slow me down!!!! And then I got outside the stadium...
Holy hell, I'd never seen anything like it before, not even at LSU. The entire area was completely trashed, all the grounds both grass and pavement areas were completely piled with garbage. Trash cans had been filled and then continued to have trash placed near them to the point that the cans were no longer visible and in their place stood 8 foot tall pyramids of garbage everywhere you looked. Random trash, carboard beer cases and opened cans decorated the lawn like Christmas lights on Clark Griswolds rooftop. I'd really never in my life scene such a dump, and from a reasonably decent looking place only 3.5 hours earlier. We shuffled through the garbage, the random areas of vomit and pissed on pavement, and made it back to the bar where we had kicked things off. I remarked to my freind that I had never seen anything so filthy at a football venue and that even at places like LSU where the fans are known for being crazy drunks, they at least have a little pride in the appearance of their stadium. Once again, he gave me that confounded look and said, "I dunno dude, this is how it always is. The ROTC freshman and sophomores have to show up at 630am every sunday and spend the day cleaning everything up anyway so who cares." And it was at this moment, when I realized that fsu truly is the barnum and baileys circus of college football.
Close your eyes and harken back to a time not so long ago, when visions of speedsters streaked towards the endzone, Urban's 4 keys to the game were the stuff of legends, and an SEC championship seemed a real possibilty. It's November of 2006 and we were in the throws of a season to remember. One complete with epic highlights like Jarvis's blocked FG, wins over UT and the dwags and a few low points as well like Chris Leaks incomplete forward pass... errrr "fumble." Fresh off a W in a game that will go down as one of the great defensive SEC battles of all time, with an ending that was sheer joy for gators everywhere, we were over the top and "flying high." So I suppose a trip to the big top was the perfect follow-up act.
It was a clear, warm day in trailertrashy, blue skys and few clouds, a early kickoff was set to allow for max gator pandomonium upon completion of what we all knew was a forgone conclusion. I arose early and began a little pregaming at a freinds house only 5 minutes from the stadium. In full disclosure this friend was a battle-buddy of mine but unfortunately a nole - classic ying and yang. For his part, Ive never met a finer dude and Soldier, but alas noones perfect. We hit up a local watering hole with a few other Army buddies in tow, within walking distance to the derection set. I was in great spirits knowing fully that it would be a glorious day. My buddy had secured us 4 tickets in the student section and with his connection, I was able to use one despite not having a student ID. We enjoyed ourselves and the brewskis and around 1130am began making the "infamous" walk to what I would soon learn was one of the worst venues in all of college football.
Getting into the stadium was fairly routine, absent his connection being all too thrilled about allowing into the student section, a guy who had a blue shirt and gator hat on. I wore them with (straight) pride. Once inside the stadium and moving towards our seats I remarked to myself that they must have been doing some kind of renovation project because of all the bright yellow scaffolding that was running everywhere. It appeared to me to be a giant game of pick up sticks had just gone down. I mumbled sometihng to my buddy about it and he looked at me perplexed, then said, something to the effect of "What? Isn't this how yalls stadium is set up?" I facepalmed inside. Onward to the seats we forged, and what a venerable sea of half-drunk highschool dropouts I found. The crowd was amusing if nothing else. I stood in an area surrounded by a few piss-drunk idiots who wanted to fight from the very second I arrived at my seat. My buddy, the good guy that he was, made it a point to tell the semis that anyone who had a problem with me, had a problem with our entire group and us being clearly bigger and in much better shape, the looks ended as quickly as they had begun.
The game was fairly ho-hum. Leak didn't wow by any stretch of the imagination but our defense was locked in and bubba caldwell made a huge TD run from about midfield off a jet sweep. Another memorable moment occured at halftime as we were inside the stadium heading to get some concessions, having left our seats with a minute left to try and beat some of the semis. I was walking around that giant stack of pick up sticks when I came to a chain link fence on wheels. I stopped, checked my bearings to be sure that I had in fact just come from this direction and there had been no rolling fence there. I looked around for key landmarks as I always do and I was became very confident that I had been retracing my previous steps. Just about the time I was ready to start secong guessing myself, along comes a sea of clowns with big floppy red shoes and gold colored helmets walking right between the fence and me. It was at that moment that I realized they didnt even have a tunnel, but simply rolled up a fence and partinoned the walkway off when the team enters and exits. It was almost as hilarious as the last kid to walk past me, the kicker. He had to have been all of 5 feet tall with cleats on. The second half was mostly more of the same. Leak through a nice long TD pass to dallas baker in the endzone and the only prayer fsu smelled of answering on a kickoff return was snuffed right out when he was shown to have stepped well out of bounds near mid-field. The game ended with Tebow delivering some punishing blows near the hole's endzone and a kneel-down on the goal line for a nice W and a chance for the mother of all college football births.
As we began to exit the stadium I laughed while once again walking through what I now understand to be called the "erector set" however I prefer to phrase it as the derection set, for obvious reasons. I was through the moon, we just capped off an 11 win season and by all arguments were as good as any team in the country. No semis or clown cars could slow me down!!!! And then I got outside the stadium...
Holy hell, I'd never seen anything like it before, not even at LSU. The entire area was completely trashed, all the grounds both grass and pavement areas were completely piled with garbage. Trash cans had been filled and then continued to have trash placed near them to the point that the cans were no longer visible and in their place stood 8 foot tall pyramids of garbage everywhere you looked. Random trash, carboard beer cases and opened cans decorated the lawn like Christmas lights on Clark Griswolds rooftop. I'd really never in my life scene such a dump, and from a reasonably decent looking place only 3.5 hours earlier. We shuffled through the garbage, the random areas of vomit and pissed on pavement, and made it back to the bar where we had kicked things off. I remarked to my freind that I had never seen anything so filthy at a football venue and that even at places like LSU where the fans are known for being crazy drunks, they at least have a little pride in the appearance of their stadium. Once again, he gave me that confounded look and said, "I dunno dude, this is how it always is. The ROTC freshman and sophomores have to show up at 630am every sunday and spend the day cleaning everything up anyway so who cares." And it was at this moment, when I realized that fsu truly is the barnum and baileys circus of college football.
