Memories of College Football

(This first "real" post is a good example of how random my posts here will be. A show I was watching (Stephen Fry in America) got me thinking about my feelings on college football and reminiscing about my experiences with it and I decided to write a blog on it.)

A view from my first Michigan football game

I've never been a knowledgeable, enthused fan of football, but I did get relatively into it my freshman and sophomore years of college (freshman more so, I petered out halfway through the season sophomore year). As a University of Michigan student, you get the choice to buy student tickets for the whole season, which I did my first two years as an undergrad, the first year buying tickets with a group of friends from high school and the second year with a group of "friends" from the dorm. There's a student section of seating which is really the best place to be seated in the stadium. It's, for one thing, where all the students are. It's where all the good cheering goes on and where it's the most fun to watch the game. Freshman year we didn't have seats in the students section and therefore had to sneak over for every game. We quickly learned that this required a certain level of stealth; our usual maneuver was to have my friend's boyfriend's group of friends go in with their student section tickets, one of them would then come out with his ticket and his friend's tickets and get the rest of us into the student section. Ohhh, we were so sneaky. Us and hundreds of other students, of course.

What I enjoyed about football games, and still would enjoy I'm sure, is the feeling of excitement and inclusiveness. Everybody there is excited about the game, cheering on their team. It's a real team activity, not just the sport itself, but also the watching and the cheering. As universities do, UMich has different student cheers and it was always lots of fun doing choreographed cheers in the student section. The best and most uplifting in my memory is singing the fight song whenever the team would get a touchdown, and of course when they would win. We would also sing the chorus of "Living on a Prayer" when the game got to halftime, as the marching band played, that was another highlight for me. UMich is also known for its special waves; they do it traditionally, sped up, slowed down, and then split. It's hard to explain the split (well, maybe not, but I'm bad at explaining things).  It starts in the middle, with one side going left and the other right; when the two meet it doesn't stop, they just sort of mesh and pass through eachother. The only time I saw all of these waves pulled off completely was my freshman year and it was beautiful in that autumn, football rush way. Another tradition in the student section was for groups of students to toss someone up into the air whenever the team made a touchdown, tossing them once for each point we had. This meant that each time a touchdown was scored on our side, the student section would be full of flailing limbs and stadium security rushing around to stop them. 

The marching band as seen from our sophomore year seats

The downside of football, for me, was the weather. I love autumn; on a perfect fall day when the air is crisp, but not cold and it's bright and sunny, it's wonderful to head down to the stadium and spend a few hours cheering. In my experience, however, those days seldom fell on football Saturdays. On the days we had football games the weather was either unseasonably hot or veering into Winter coldness, both weather situations in which it is not all that pleasant standing out in a stadium for hours. My very first football game (our embarrassing loss to Appalachian State), I got one of the worst sunburns of my life; it was a sunny September day up in the 90s. Later that season, at our Ohio State game (which we also lost... this was during our not-so-good streak), we stood through a mixture of slushy rain, hail, and snow, eventually leaving after we could take no more (of our performance and the weather).

Tailgating is another tradition of college football; however, it's one that I don't have too much experience with. I tailgated twice, I think, at UMich and it was for only about half an hour or so both times, stopping by a booth or frat to eat a burger before the game. The most tailgating I've ever done was at MSU while visiting friends. Ironically when I tailgated there, I never went to a game. Tailgating and games don't seem to go together for me. I loved tailgating at State though, and had really great times doing it. Some fond memories are of pudding shots, spiked cider, apple cider cake, and Kyle holding five different beverages at one time. I've love to be able to do it again.

My direct relationship with UMich football ended after the season my sophomore year when I stopped going to the games. I didn't buy student tickets for my last two years because my feelings towards football did not at all justify the price. And, quite honestly, I didn't enjoy going to the games anymore. The often unsavory weather and standing for hours on end was starting to overshadow the joy of cheering and exuberant group-think. Still, I harbor overall happy memories of college football and would like to go to a game some time in the future as an alumna. 

One blog ends, another begins

Over the past year I was part of a collab blog called Facets of Us with four other great girls (Cassie, Alexandra, Carlyn, and Casey!). Along the way, we lost two of the girls to the busy-ness of life, leaving just three of us at the end, but I am glad to have met and gotten to know them all. At times it was hard to remember to blog every week, or to make time to blog, but it was a great experience and also taught me a bit more about responsibility and how to manage my time in order to get those weekly posts out. This is the last week, the last day, to be more exact. I'm quite sad to see it ending and realized that I will miss sitting down and writing a post each week. Well, that's where this blog comes in. It's actually been sitting here for a year or so now, waiting for me to get up the inspiration/motivation to start using it. As Facets ends, it is the perfect time to channel that energy into this blog.

For awhile I've been thinking of using this blog to just write down random thoughts and memories that come to mind randomly, so I think that's what I'll be doing, at least to begin. In short, I'll just use this blog however I want to use it because it is, after all, my blog! I also doubt very many people will read it at all, so I'll be using it for myself in order to document my life and random, oftentimes very odd, thoughts.

In conclusion (because this is a school essay)... I don't want to stop writing a little bit each week and so enters this blog!