M-A-R-Y-L-A-N-D MARYLAAAAAND WILL WIIIIN!!
I had a ticket to the Maryland vs. UNC game this afternoon. XD
I woke up a little after 12:00, fooled around on the internet a bit, got dressed, and headed out. I had lunch in the Union, a wrap and milk from McDonalds and a yogurt with some granola from the Co-op. I was wandering around outside for a little after that, thinking about going to check out the tailgaters, when I see the marching band up the street. I head over, and apparently the team's all heading into the stadium and everybody's making a fuss about it (by which I mean the marching band and the cheerleaders were being loud and attracting a small crowd of bemused onlookers). Our coach Ralph Friedgen, who is the size of at least three normal people, walked right by me.
By that time it was about 1:00, so I went to wander around the parking lot and look at the tailgaters. Sometimes the university sponsors activities and stuff out by the soccer fields that anyone could get in on, so I wandered over there to check it out. The National Guard or someone had set up this thing where you tried to throw a football through a hole from a certain distance away, but other than that there really wasn't anything going on. The weather was warm, a little humid and windy, but it was supposed to pour later and my parents kept sending me text messages about how there was a tornado warning. I messed around until about 1:45, then headed for the student gate.
I got in the stadium a little after 2:00 and got a seat in the second row from the field XDD The players were warming up, which was fun to watch. Honestly, I don't know why there aren't more female football fans, I mean at any given time it's at least 22 of the buffest guys you'll see all day running around in really tight spandex pants. I can now say the effect is better before they put their pads on 8D ♥.
Dark clouds had started showing up by then, and there was some discussion amongst the other idiots brave souls who had showed up an hour and a half early about the likelihood of us all dying in a tornado (Conclusion: "Dude, this isn't Oklahoma, we'll be fine"). For some reason they had the UNC players warming up right in front of the UMD student section, so because Maryland fans are such a classy bunch there was a lot of heckling going on. It was mostly variations on the classics "You're gay" and "Your mom's a whore", although there were a few others ("Hey, 32! How the hell do you pronounce your name, I want to heckle you!") as well as pointing and laughing whenever one of them dropped a pass. It also started pouring rain about then.
By the time the opening stuff rolled around (just before kickoff at 3:30) the rain had mostly let up and it was just drizzling a little. As they were singing the national anthem, though, when they got the to "...the bombs bursting in air" they set off some fireworks in the end zone, and it was like it was some sort of signal to the weather gods to start dumping buckets on us (it was literally, like, the fireworks went up, and as we were all looking upwards the rain let loose). Which was annoying because it was the only time during the day that I had my baseball cap off, so my glasses got all wet. It was pouring so hard that we couldn't hear the end of the anthem over the sound of the rain.
Kickoff happened in middle of the pouring rain. After an unsuccessful offensive series we snapped the ball WAY over our punter's head and he went back to chase it into the endzone, resulting in a safety. Then UNC scored a field goal, and we were down by five points barely five minutes into the game.
By halftime we had scored two touchdowns and they had had a touchdown and another field goal (and a field goal attempt that pinged off the upright right in front of me. I heard it go "ping" even XD;; ), making it 15-14 UNC.
The halftime show was pretty cool, but at that point I was soaking wet and freezing, and debating going home to watch the rest on TV. I realized how bad it had gotten when I started sending text messages to Mom and Allie, but I couldn't make my fingers move very fast across the keys or hit the buttons very accurately. Still, I figured I might as well stick it out to the end, or at least until it looked like the winner was pretty well decided.
By the fourth quarter we'd managed to put together a pretty gutsy drive (quarterback scramble fourth down conversion yay!) into the red zone, where we stalled on third down with about two minutes left and had to kick a field goal, which we made, making the score 17-15 UMD. The other team failed in some way that I forgot after the kickoff, so we got the ball back and all we had to do was kneel and let the clock run down.
The fans were super jazzed, and as soon as the game was over people started jumping the fence into the field. I decided I wasn't going to go unless they opened the gates, since everything was wet and slippery and the fences are pretty high and I'm not that tall and I figured I'd fall and break my ankle or something. Luckily after about twenty seconds of screaming people mobbing them they opened the gates, and I joined the rush out onto the field with everyone else.
The field was a lot more spongy than it had looked from the stands, and my shoes were soaked through after about two steps. We were all jammed in worse than any concert I've ever been to, and with all the people around it was probably warmest I'd been since about an hour before the game started. I didn't managed to touch a player (which is apparently the major goal of things like this) because I couldn't even tell where they were in the mob because everyone around me was taller than I am. There was a lot of screaming and chanting, though, and I wholeheartedly got in on that. I got a couple photos of the mob on my phone, too, which I will upload when my phone isn't all the way over on my desk.
After various screaming and carrying on, I decided it was time to go home. It was about sixty degrees out and I'd been soaked to the bone for about five hours. I, with others, jumped the fence back into the stands (because for some reason they opened the gates to let us on to the field but shut them after us so we couldn't get out again) and headed back to my dorm, which is luckily barely a five-minute walk from the stadium. I trudged up the four flights of stairs, ordered a calzone from the internet, changed out of my wet clothes (like all of them, even my socks and underwear were wet), bundled myself up in two blankets and started writing this, in that order.
So anyway, that's what I did today 8D
GO MARYLAND!
I woke up a little after 12:00, fooled around on the internet a bit, got dressed, and headed out. I had lunch in the Union, a wrap and milk from McDonalds and a yogurt with some granola from the Co-op. I was wandering around outside for a little after that, thinking about going to check out the tailgaters, when I see the marching band up the street. I head over, and apparently the team's all heading into the stadium and everybody's making a fuss about it (by which I mean the marching band and the cheerleaders were being loud and attracting a small crowd of bemused onlookers). Our coach Ralph Friedgen, who is the size of at least three normal people, walked right by me.
By that time it was about 1:00, so I went to wander around the parking lot and look at the tailgaters. Sometimes the university sponsors activities and stuff out by the soccer fields that anyone could get in on, so I wandered over there to check it out. The National Guard or someone had set up this thing where you tried to throw a football through a hole from a certain distance away, but other than that there really wasn't anything going on. The weather was warm, a little humid and windy, but it was supposed to pour later and my parents kept sending me text messages about how there was a tornado warning. I messed around until about 1:45, then headed for the student gate.
I got in the stadium a little after 2:00 and got a seat in the second row from the field XDD The players were warming up, which was fun to watch. Honestly, I don't know why there aren't more female football fans, I mean at any given time it's at least 22 of the buffest guys you'll see all day running around in really tight spandex pants. I can now say the effect is better before they put their pads on 8D ♥.
Dark clouds had started showing up by then, and there was some discussion amongst the other idiots brave souls who had showed up an hour and a half early about the likelihood of us all dying in a tornado (Conclusion: "Dude, this isn't Oklahoma, we'll be fine"). For some reason they had the UNC players warming up right in front of the UMD student section, so because Maryland fans are such a classy bunch there was a lot of heckling going on. It was mostly variations on the classics "You're gay" and "Your mom's a whore", although there were a few others ("Hey, 32! How the hell do you pronounce your name, I want to heckle you!") as well as pointing and laughing whenever one of them dropped a pass. It also started pouring rain about then.
By the time the opening stuff rolled around (just before kickoff at 3:30) the rain had mostly let up and it was just drizzling a little. As they were singing the national anthem, though, when they got the to "...the bombs bursting in air" they set off some fireworks in the end zone, and it was like it was some sort of signal to the weather gods to start dumping buckets on us (it was literally, like, the fireworks went up, and as we were all looking upwards the rain let loose). Which was annoying because it was the only time during the day that I had my baseball cap off, so my glasses got all wet. It was pouring so hard that we couldn't hear the end of the anthem over the sound of the rain.
Kickoff happened in middle of the pouring rain. After an unsuccessful offensive series we snapped the ball WAY over our punter's head and he went back to chase it into the endzone, resulting in a safety. Then UNC scored a field goal, and we were down by five points barely five minutes into the game.
By halftime we had scored two touchdowns and they had had a touchdown and another field goal (and a field goal attempt that pinged off the upright right in front of me. I heard it go "ping" even XD;; ), making it 15-14 UNC.
The halftime show was pretty cool, but at that point I was soaking wet and freezing, and debating going home to watch the rest on TV. I realized how bad it had gotten when I started sending text messages to Mom and Allie, but I couldn't make my fingers move very fast across the keys or hit the buttons very accurately. Still, I figured I might as well stick it out to the end, or at least until it looked like the winner was pretty well decided.
By the fourth quarter we'd managed to put together a pretty gutsy drive (quarterback scramble fourth down conversion yay!) into the red zone, where we stalled on third down with about two minutes left and had to kick a field goal, which we made, making the score 17-15 UMD. The other team failed in some way that I forgot after the kickoff, so we got the ball back and all we had to do was kneel and let the clock run down.
The fans were super jazzed, and as soon as the game was over people started jumping the fence into the field. I decided I wasn't going to go unless they opened the gates, since everything was wet and slippery and the fences are pretty high and I'm not that tall and I figured I'd fall and break my ankle or something. Luckily after about twenty seconds of screaming people mobbing them they opened the gates, and I joined the rush out onto the field with everyone else.
The field was a lot more spongy than it had looked from the stands, and my shoes were soaked through after about two steps. We were all jammed in worse than any concert I've ever been to, and with all the people around it was probably warmest I'd been since about an hour before the game started. I didn't managed to touch a player (which is apparently the major goal of things like this) because I couldn't even tell where they were in the mob because everyone around me was taller than I am. There was a lot of screaming and chanting, though, and I wholeheartedly got in on that. I got a couple photos of the mob on my phone, too, which I will upload when my phone isn't all the way over on my desk.
After various screaming and carrying on, I decided it was time to go home. It was about sixty degrees out and I'd been soaked to the bone for about five hours. I, with others, jumped the fence back into the stands (because for some reason they opened the gates to let us on to the field but shut them after us so we couldn't get out again) and headed back to my dorm, which is luckily barely a five-minute walk from the stadium. I trudged up the four flights of stairs, ordered a calzone from the internet, changed out of my wet clothes (like all of them, even my socks and underwear were wet), bundled myself up in two blankets and started writing this, in that order.
So anyway, that's what I did today 8D
GO MARYLAND!