Tempe, AZ
What a day. The forecast was accurate when it said lower 70’s and partly cloudy. But, partly cloudy in Arizona is different than partly cloudy in New York. A few wispy clouds hung over Sun Devil Stadium in the final; Fiesta Bowl to be played there. Next year it moves to Glendale. Anthony and I arrived in Tempe close to noon and drove to the park of the parking deck on 5th and Priest. To our surprise, there were only us and a husband and wife team participating in some tailgating. My phone buzzed with Notre Dame fans. I got on the horn to rub it in to the big Ohio State fan I know, Steve from Charlotte and Turks and Caicos, that I was at the game. I figured he would be jealous. Instead, he was down the street!
Anthony and I met he and Doug, who came in from Ohio, at Pizzeria Uno at about 1:30. We stayed there for about 40 minutes and made the walk to the game. Incredible that they were there. Sun Devil Stadium is poor for crowd control and we inched our way around to get four seats. We were in section 26, which was the lower level. If you watched the game and saw the end zone painted the Ohio State colors, we were on the side of the E in state, eight yards deep and 3 rows up. They were great seats, in the Notre Dame section. The famed Notre Dame band was in the section to us. The girl of the hour was also in our section, Brady Quinn’s sister. She walked by a few times in her half Notre Dame, half Ohio State jersey.
The game was intense and after the first ND drive, I thought OSU might be in trouble. But speed killed and the OSU receivers got open and made plays where the ND receivers couldn’t do much. Quinn played well, but never got a TD through the air. Troy Smith, the QB for OSU played great and converted a lot of big 3rd downs. We sat amongst the ND group, but we had 4 OSU fans right in front of us. There was a lot of yelling and screaming by both sides. OSU deserved to win, 34-20.
My first bowl game was amazing. Great seats and great friends. I took some pretty good pictures too. We met up with Steve and Doug at the Owl’s Nest after the game. It was packed with red shirts. We stayed there until about 8:30 and got back in time for ham and the end of the West Virginia – Georgia game.
The college football experience is hard to be topped in terms of fans and talent. Wednesday night should be awesome. I see USC winning a shootout, but not as high scoring as expected. Nerves always play a part at the start of the big games.