As A Juxtaposition | The Boneyard

As A Juxtaposition

Chin Diesel

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I could put this in the student section sucks thread or the watch party thread, but it goes on a different tack. In some parts of the country it is common place for fans to show up to the game/stadium just to tailgate and hangout. They then watch from a bar or from a Wifi/Satellite link.

I've personally done this at a couple of bigtime LSU home games at night and it's somewhat odd at first. But people actually prefer to be at the game environment to sitting in their living rooms watching it on their lazyboy.


Georgia officials said Monday that they're preparing for as many as 90,000 fans without tickets to be in Athens this weekend.
 
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On the other hand I’m guessing lots of seats available for Ark State or Samford or Vanderbilt. FYI even though those games are “technically” sell outs, they typically get around 68 000. Probably nobody waiting outside either. Guessing if the Irish were playing at the Rent this weekend it would be jammed fwiw.
 
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Have been to several Ohio State games. For a Penn State game, they had 100K in the stadium and 120K outside at the 2+ huge party locations that they set up just for those who want to be "at" the game. Massive screens are put up to watch in real time, stages set up for pre-, halftime, post- game entertainment. It truly is an experience.
 

UConnNick

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This happens a lot at Texas A&M, which was voted the best tailgate scene in America a few years ago by Tailgater Magazine.

My niece's sister owns a business in Bryan - College Station. She and several other prominent local businesses put on a huge tailgate outside Kyle Field for every game. She has season tickets as well, but rarely uses them.

They put up a huge tent, have a 120 inch HDTV, and we watch the game there. All the food and drinks are free, including beer, wine, and liquor. All it costs you is the gas to drive there. For the Thanksgiving game vs LSU, some LSU fans join us and one guy brings a full Cajun food spread, including jambalaya, boudin, alligator, the works. He also cooks about 12 or more Cajun fried turkeys. That's some of the most delicious turkey you will ever have.

Why bother sitting in a cramped seat, 92,000 capacity stadium when you can sit in a comfortable lounge chair, watch the game on a huge, HD television screen, and get anything you want to eat or drink for free anytime you want. It's a no brainer.
 
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It's a preference thing. I prefer live events (concerts/sports/etc) and I like to go to the movies (especially now with the reclining chairs). I completely accept that people have a good setup at home, but I guess I like getting out of the house.

Of course - I also drive all over the place to watch my son run DIII XC/Track - so maybe I'm just not sane - especially when you look at travel time divided by running time :)
 
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On the other hand I’m guessing lots of seats available for Ark State or Samford or Vanderbilt. FYI even though those games are “technically” sell outs, they typically get around 68 000. Probably nobody waiting outside either. Guessing if the Irish were playing at the Rent this weekend it would be jammed fwiw.

Lol I’m a Georgia season ticket holder (“had” to sell my ticket to the Notre Dame game cuz my buddy is getting married on cape code this weekend - my wife may never forgive me)

But, I was at the Arkansas State game and it was 100% sold out (although late arriving crowd and obviously a lot people left at halftime).

For the Vandy game (at Vandy btw) there were 30k UGA fans there and it was a super expensive ticket
 
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Lol I’m a Georgia season ticket holder (“had” to sell my ticket to the Notre Dame game cuz my buddy is getting married on cape code this weekend - my wife may never forgive me)

But, I was at the Arkansas State game and it was 100% sold out (although late arriving crowd and obviously a lot people left at halftime).

For the Vandy game (at Vandy btw) there were 30k UGA fans there and it was a super expensive ticket

I should’ve prefaced this by saying, this isn’t “normal”

Over the past 3 years Kirby has whipped this state into a mania (something us UConn fans know about :) )

The Georgia fanbase is in full on “sellout for an exhibition against Marathon Oil”-mode right now
 
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Lol I’m a Georgia season ticket holder (“had” to sell my ticket to the Notre Dame game cuz my buddy is getting married on cape code this weekend - my wife may never forgive me)

But, I was at the Arkansas State game and it was 100% sold out (although late arriving crowd and obviously a lot people left at halftime).

For the Vandy game (at Vandy btw) there were 30k UGA fans there and it was a super expensive ticket

Going to have a great weather weekend on the Cape. If you go to the big ocean, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet and points North, stay waste deep! Have fun!
 

Chin Diesel

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I should’ve prefaced this by saying, this isn’t “normal”

Over the past 3 years Kirby has whipped this state into a mania (something us UConn fans know about :) )

The Georgia fanbase is in full on “sellout for an exhibition against Marathon Oil”-mode right now

Yep. UGA on the upswing with fan momentum while Bama is trying to sustain and not lose.

UGA
Tenn
Bama
LSU
Auburn
A&M

They can all pull off the mega game day experience in SEC. I don't think Gators get there. Maybe during Tebow mania.

PSU, Longhorns, Buckeyes and a few others nationally are the few others.

Will UConn ever reach that? Not in next 25 years. But winning solves a bunch of problems with attendance and engagement.
 
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Yep. UGA on the upswing with fan momentum while Bama is trying to sustain and not lose.

UGA
Tenn
Bama
LSU
Auburn
A&M

They can all pull off the mega game day experience in SEC. I don't think Gators get there. Maybe during Tebow mania.

PSU, Longhorns, Buckeyes and a few others nationally are the few others.

Will UConn ever reach that? Not in next 25 years. But winning solves a bunch of problems with attendance and engagement.

Bama fans have the closest approximation to UConn WBB fan syndrome as I’ve seen.

They had their “mania”; and it’s very difficult to continue to invest and care that passionately about each individual game (especially if it’s, say, an exhibition against Marathon Oil).
 

nelsonmuntz

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Did anyone go into Yale's stadium back in the day? I have no idea what it looks like on the inside, and I went to 4 Yale Bowls.
 

UConnNick

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Did anyone go into Yale's stadium back in the day? I have no idea what it looks like on the inside, and I went to 4 Yale Bowls.

The original Yale Bowl seated 70,000. It was built in 1914. It was constructed by digging a huge, oval-shaped hole in the earth and piling the excavated dirt symmetrically around the rim of the hole in a perfect oval shape. Then they built the 30 entrances, called portals, all the way around. Those were long tunnels underneath the upper part of the bowl, reinforced with concrete obviously so they don't cave in. It is really quite a marvel of engineering. When you walk in you are exactly the same number of feet from the field level as you are from the top rim...I believe it used to be 54 rows all around, so 27 rows up from field to ground level.

The seats were all bleachers except they did have a rather high back plank to lean against when you sat back.

My dad and I used to attend every Yale game throughout the 1960's and early 70's. My sister got married in 1967. They eloped but we still could have gone to the wedding. It was in NH somewhere. Instead we went to the bowl that day to watch the Giants play the Minnesota Vikings. There was one exhibition game there each season with the Giants. Later the Giants played two seasons there when Yankee Stadium was being refurbished.

There were many great games there. Yale was mostly mediocre during the decade. They won the Ivy League in 1960. The center on that team, Mike Pyle, went on to play with the Chicago Bears. We saw Pete Gogolak kick five FGs to beat the Yale freshmen team. He was the first soccer style kicker in the NFL for the Giants. We saw his brother kick for Princeton a couple years later. Charley kicked for the Redskins.

We saw the first game UCONN ever won against Yale after 16 tries. They wouldn't play us in Storrs for obvious reasons, so all the games were always at the bowl. Rick Forzano was the UCONN HC that day, along with Lou Holtz and Sam Rutigliano as assistants, all of whom went on to careers in the NFL and Holtz in the NFL and college. Skip Holtz was born in Willimantic.

When Gene Campbell intercepted a Yale pass late in the fourth quarter the crowd (40,000+) of mostly UCONN fans went wild. So did we. I was there with a UCONN co-ed, her father and my father. We were jumping up and down. It had pretty much been expected that might be the year...1965.

The two other years Yale was good were 1967 and 68, when they had Brian Dowling at QB and Calvin Hill at tailback. They won the Ivy League in a game at Palmer Stadium against Princeton and finished 7-2. We attended that game. The next season was the famous one when The Game at Harvard Stadium saw both teams perfect at 8-0. Yale was ranked 18th in the country and heavily favored to beat Harvard, a great defensive team but mediocre offensively. I think Yale was favored by close to two TDs.

That was the now infamous 29-29 tie, when the headline in the Boston Globe the next day read, "Harvard beats Yale 29-29". That was accurate We saw that game. Harvard had to score 16 points in 42 seconds to tie it. Harvard would have won if they hadn't missed an XP on their first TD. There were thousands of fans on the field behind the goal posts for the last minute of the game at the closed end of the horseshoe. They went completely crazy when Harvard's Pete Varney caught the 2 pt. conversion pass in the EZ on the last play which tied the game. He was mobbed, everyone was mobbed. Tommy Lee Jones was a senior All-Ivy OG on that Harvard team.

Yes, many memories from the old Yale Bowl, where the smell of cigar smoke permeated the air. I think all the games started at 12:30 pm because there were no lights so the games had to end before the sun got too low in the sky. With no TV, no OTs and no instant replay, the games moved along very quickly. They'd get modest crowds in the 20 - 30,000 range for lesser opponents like Columbia and Cornell and some OOC games, but they'd get huge crowds some years for Dartmouth, Princeton, and always for Harvard. Dartmouth had some great teams in the 60's, Princeton in the early 6O's and Harvard in the mid to late 60's.

I saw a lot of future NFL stars and players. The Gogolaks, Gary Wood, a great QB for Cornell who later went on to be a backup QB for the Giants, Archie Roberts, QB for Columbia who had a brief pro career, Calvin Hill, longtime tailback for the Cowboys and later the Redskins, Marv Hubbard, who played for Colgate and later was a star tailback for John Madden with the Oakland Raiders, Mark Van Eeghen, ditto, Ed Marinaro, amazing tailback from Cornell and runner up for the 1971 Heisman Trophy, later played a prominent role with the Minnesota Vikings, Pat McInally of Harvard, went on to garner fame with the Bengals as a TE and punter for several seasons, John Dockery, a great Harvard CB who later became a starter for the NY Jets, and last but not least, our own Husky tailback Vinny Clements, the pride of Southington HS and later the NY Giants. I think his pro career was cut short by injury. God knows the Giants could have used a tailback during those seasons.
 
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I worked as an usher at the Bowl when I was a kid in the 70s. Portal 29, which is on the visitor’s side. Didn’t get paid, but got tips. Saw some great Yale teams, including those that featured John Pagliaro from Derby. He was a great back. My freshman year was 1982, when the nature of the rivalry change. UConn had been getting close, but couldn’t beat Yale. In 1982, we did, 17-7. From that point on we dominated the series, losing only once. The last game was a UConn blow out in 1998. IIRC we scored every time we had the ball — never punted.
 
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And to all of those who are complaining in the other thread about the kids not going into the stadium -- yes, it's a issue. But it is not a new issue. It's been an issue since we started beating Yale in the 1980s. Many of my friends boasted that they went to the Bowl and didn't even go into the game. As a former player, that used to bug me. But it has been a part of UConn culture since then. And I agree that it is becoming part of game day culture around the country -- for many actually watching the game interferes with the social aspect of the experience. It is what they value more. Yes, that still bothers me.
 
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I never went inside during any of the UCONN/Yale games. I did work there as a hot dog vendor during one of the World Cup exhibitions.
 

CL82

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I never went inside during any of the UCONN/Yale games. I did work there as a hot dog vendor during one of the World Cup exhibitions.
I did. I don't really remember much though.
 

McLovin

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Lol I’m a Georgia season ticket holder (“had” to sell my ticket to the Notre Dame game cuz my buddy is getting married on cape code this weekend - my wife may never forgive me)

But, I was at the Arkansas State game and it was 100% sold out (although late arriving crowd and obviously a lot people left at halftime).

For the Vandy game (at Vandy btw) there were 30k UGA fans there and it was a super expensive ticket

I live in Nashville. The city was overrun with Georgia fans. Literally every other person I saw walking down the street for 4 days was dressed in a Georgia shirt. If 30K fans went to the game, there was probably another 30K who just came to the city to watch it at the bars...
 

Chin Diesel

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I live in Nashville. The city was overrun with Georgia fans. Literally every other person I saw walking down the street for 4 days was dressed in a Georgia shirt. If 30K fans went to the game, there was probably another 30K who just came to the city to watch it at the bars...

SEC teams treat games at Vandy as an in-season bowl game and mini vacation.
 

Chin Diesel

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Georgia fans were surprisingly polite. Let's see how the LSU fans are this weekend...

Probably a bit more rowdy but they'll share their food and hoist a toast and a drink with you.
 
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Going to have a great weather weekend on the Cape. If you go to the big ocean, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet and points North, stay waste deep! Have fun!
And don’t wear a seal skin bathing suit.
 

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