Saturday In Columbus October 26, 2008
Posted by Matt Brown in Uncategorized.Tags: Buckeyes, Columbus, Football, Humor, Ohio State, Stories
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I have quite a love/hate relationship with Ohio State. Their administration drives me crazy…because the school’s population is roughly that of Alaska, it takes forever to get anything done (do you have any idea how many Matt Brown’s there are??). Its often not very academically rigorous, and I’m stuck taking tons of general education classes that have nothing to do with what I want to study (I’m sorry, you can’t study Journalism this quarter, because your political science degree requires you to take Geological Sciences and Spanish).
However, for a few weekends in the fall, none of that matters….because there is nothing like a football Saturday in Columbus. This Saturday would be extra special, as the #3 Penn St was coming to town for a rare night game at the ol’ Horseshoe.
While some folks in our neighborhood started..ahem…”pregaming
The Lane Ave party was in full force. Every other house or apartment building had dozens of scarlet-jersey clad party-goers out on the lawn…some lazily tossing footballs, others engaged in the Columbus tradition of cornhole (which is kind of a poor man’s version of horseshoes, only with beanbags), and others just pounding Natty Light. What was unusual to me is not that so many people were outside partying, but how many of them weren’t students. It wasn’t just freshman milling around, but their parents, and without a trace of irony! I lost track of the middle aged women I saw sipping cheap beer from red cups while 20 year old guys zipped footballs around them. I hope they’re all related….
As Lane moves from the off-campus hovels, and towards campus, the party becomes more and more organized. A mini festival, called “Hineygate” (no, I don’t know why either) is set up outside of a Holiday Inn, with a beer garden, live music, and all manner of fried foods. Here, nary a student can be found…the party is almost exclusively townies, alumni and “too old for college” folk, milling around drinking while a classic rock band butchers ACDC in the background. Not my scene.
Which is okay, because then it was about time to meet some guys and girls from APO for one of the coolest Ohio State rituals, the pre-game TBDBITL Skull Session Concert, at the venerable St.John Arena.
TBDBITL stands for The Best Damn Band In The Land, a title that the Ohio State Marching Band unquestionably holds (TBDBITL has yet to get blown out by an SEC team in a big game). A few hours before each home game, the band gives a free concert in the ol’ John, along with a top local high school band. I’m a Marching Band Guy at heart, so these concerts are always great for me. Whatever frustrations or misgivings I might have towards the university melt away when I’m arm in arm with my fraternity brothers (who, because I’m in APO, are almost exclusively pretty girls. Yeah, I know its weird), singing Carmen Ohio, our Alma Mater, and screaming like crazy for a Tuba Player. Ohio State’s offense may be vanilla and boring sometimes (ok, all the time), but their band is always something else.
The show ends, and we head up to the Horseshoe, Ohio State’s stadium, to watch our beloved Buckeyes. Even though I’m a Senior, I have terrible seats…about three rows from the very top of the 105,000 capacity stadium. We joke that we’re in a different zipcode up there. I don’t actually mind being that high up though…we can see the whole field fine, and we’re far away from the fatcat corporate sponsors who wouldn’t know what quarter we’re in, let alone clap and make some noise. The band finishes their pregame, and OSU and Penn St start to battle.
Despite having perhaps two of the most dynamic offensive players in the country in Pryor and Wells, Ohio State’s offense is well…offensive. Me and my buddy Sean compensate for the total lack of offensive production by getting disproportionately excited over routine Special Teams plays. Are we punting? We’re chest bumping. Are we in kickoff coverage? We jumping and screaming. Heaven help us when we actually kick a field goal…we’re jumping into rows of strangers, hugging and high fiving everybody in sight. We’re getting quite a following in our section…its hilarious, I promise. Why go for touchdowns when we can PUNT AND GET BACK ON SPECIAL TEAMS??!?!
OSU gives us…Special Teamers plenty to be excited about, taking a slim 6-3 lead into the 4th quarter. The game has been nearly devoid of highlight plays, so this exchange might have taken the cake…
Me: (after an OSU first down was overturned by the officials), I AM SICK OF THIS ACTIVIST REFS! Guys, we need to stop this legislating from the official’s box, and let the players play the way that God intended! WE NEED STRICT CONSTRUCTIONIST REFEREES!!
Drunk Fan 1: *burps*
Drunk Fan 2: ….
Drunk Fan 3: ….FUCK PENN STATE!!!!
Yeah. Sometimes its hard.
Anyways, we’re all getting pretty excited in the 4th quarter, as we still have that slim three point lead, and we’re driving down the field, milking the clock. Suddenly, disaster strikes. Our prize quarterback fumbles the ball, and Penn St takes over at the OSU 35. A few min later, and Penn State suddenly ahas a 13-6 lead, with less than a min. left. I leave my fellow Buckeye fans, and head for my long walk home.
Could the Buckeyes mount a courageous comeback and win the game? Sure. But I’m an Ohio Sports fan, which means more heartbreak than normal people can stand (The Drive? The Fumble? 2006-2007 BCS Title Games? JOSE FREAKING MESA?? I gotta stop…I’m going to throw up). I lacked faith. My buddy Sean stayed, and I hit the pavement.
But as soon as I left the stadium, I could fear the roar of the crowd behind me. I ran to the nearest TV I could find, which was set up for some corporate tailgate party, to watch the last min or so. What happened? Allow me to switch my baseball cap and OSU jersey for a tweed jacket and poet’s cap…
Things did not look so hot
For the Buckeye 11 that day.
The score stood 13-6
with but 1 min left to play
and with Mo Well’s being awful
and Beanie turning up lame
the odds were just not that good
that OSU would win the game.
But suddenly Hartline made a catch
and Robiske did the same
and a long, chain moving run
was done by Brandon Saine.
The men in red were driving
and erasing all our doubts
that with 35 seconds we somehow
might find a way to pull this out
Now somewhere folks are happy
and pretty girls dance and sing
Somewhere folks laugh, and have a brew
and victory bells ring
Somewhere there is peace and joy
and nobody there is sick
but there is no joy in Columbus
Mighty Pryor thew a pick.
Fear and Loathing with Intramural Football October 13, 2008
Posted by Matt Brown in Uncategorized.Tags: College, Football, Humor, Stories
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Jumping around from city to city so much has made a lot of things difficult for me, like finding enough guys for a friendly game of pick up football. So, when my roommate asked me to play on intramural football team, I jumped at the chance, without knowing any important details.
…like knowing the name of the team, for example. IM sport team names are a great opportunity for a good joke…and our squad squandered the chance. No joke, I am now a part of the “Columbus Clap” (Catch it!). I feel like this might have been kinda funny say, in middle school…but did I really just pay 12 bucks for a T-shirt that has an STD on the front, and my name on the back? Is that what I have to do to make friends in this town?
Oh well. Whats a little public humiliation between friends right? Thats what college is all about!
Anyways, after a few haphazard practices (which basically consisted of us throwing around a football for 40 min, and then getting slurpees at 7/11), we had our first game on Sunday. It was…an experience.
Before I begin the tragic tale of the Columbus Clap, let me tell you a little bit about my own personal athletic history. The Good Lord has blessed me with a few talents, but it does not appear that athletic ability was one of them….or “luck” in general, now that I think about it. I played baseball for several years on habitual losing teams (and ended with a career batting average somewhere south of .200), and because I was about 135 pounds when I graduated high school, football and basketball were completely out of the question. Instead, I was the king of the marching band, and proud of it.
But nothing sums up the totality of my life playing sports like my ill fated foray into competitive swimming.
At my mother’s urging, I joined a summer swim team in high school. Our community pool resembled a pond (or perhaps an open sewer) much more than a swimming pool…it didn’t have chlorine, it was a pale green color, and animals still lived in it. Never has a swim team enjoyed a greater “home pool advantage”, then when we faced some of the yuppie country club swim teams.
Me (to the guys in the other lanes) “Yeah, don’t worry. We’ve only seen 3 snakes today”
Anyways, I braved these harsh conditions, and over the course of the season, improved from “utter and biblical suckitude” to “marginally respectable” in the 100 backstroke. This was enough to get me into a “playoff” swim meet. All of my friends, teammates, and everybody else would be there, to watch me try to not get in last.
Now, because of my crappiness, I never bothered to do things that real, competitive swimmers do to get an edge…like shave all my body hair, or wear a speedo. Those extra 4 seconds never mattered enough to me, so why sacrifice my pride? This practice continued all the way until that fateful swim meet.
We can all see where this is going can’t we?
I was near the front of my heat, but right after I kicked out of that flip turn into the final 25, disaster struck. I was backstroking like a madman, but my swim trunks decided to chill out by the wall. I swam out of my trunks. In the playoffs. DOING THE BACKSTROKE. No matter what else happens to me in life…no matter how many heartbreaks, no matter how many disappointments, no matter how many times the Cleveland Indians effing blow it…(JOSE EFFING MESA!!!)…nothing that bad could ever happen to me again.
So yeah. I don’t have good luck with sports. Keep that in mind here as I tell the rest of the story.
Hardship struck our little band of ragtags early, when two of our players couldn’t play for mysterious reasons. That left us down to 6…and IM football is a 7 on 7 game. We were worried for a little while, but when we saw that our opponent was ‘The Evan’s Scholars”, we relaxed a little bit. We were going against a team of honor’s college kids. How bad could it be?
We had NO idea. First, the Evans team had at least 15 players on it…enough for a completely seperate offense and defense. They had their own uniforms, their own plays, and many looked like they actually played some serious football in high school. We had two kids on our team who played in HS…and along with a few Madden wizards, some marching band kids, and a high school football journalist. We were screwed.
Evans scored on their very first play from scrimmage…a simple 10 yard pass play over the middle, followed by 5 of us missing tackles. It didn’t get any easier from there. We threw more passes to the other team than our own. Only one of us had cleats, so we all slipped on our butts in the wet grass. We got tired after 20 min, and were run over up and down the field. With just a few min left in the first half, we were down 26-0, and had no prospects of changing that.
Our goal quickly changed from “win the game”, to “lets at least score a touchdown”, to “uh, lets get to that 20 yard line over there”. Our library of trick plays that I had researched (from the “Statue of Liberity” to the “Annexation of Puerto Rico”), went completely out the window. We’d go back to the huddle, and have a conversation similar to this”
So, whats the play? HB pass? Trips right? Post?
….
Eff it. Lets throw it downfield.
Somehow, we got a little bit lucky, and found ourselves a mere 5 yards from scoring a touchdown, and restoring the game to quasi-respectability, with a min left. In those 4 plays, we somehow managed to do everything wrong that was possible…dropped passes, blown routes, falling our on butt trying to cut a corner, and committing penalties that we weren’t even sure were real (What the hell is illegal touching?? We’re the Columbus Clap, not the Columbus Larry Craigs). We couldn’t score, and went into halftime down 26-0.
The second half wasn’t any better. Being a sportswriter at heart, I tried to keep a few stats in my head, and they weren’t pretty. Evans scored on nearly every possession. We threw at least 7 interceptions, and I’m pretty sure we got most of our first downs on penalties. At least our stupid name would lead to good headlines, once we get our butt kicked again (Evans Scholar’s beat bad case of the Clap, Page 4).
We ended up losing 56-6. Our bodies hurt from flinging ourselves all over the field in vain. We had no chance at victory, and unless we bring in some ringers, Tuesday doesn’t look so good either.
But I still had fun. Thats what these are all about right? Playing football and making some friends?
But I’m warning you guys. If you don’t get your crap together by week 3, I’m demanding a trade. I hear team “Thats What She Said” is looking for a Running Back/Sportswriter….
