I'm really missing the live football experience - even for a losing team
I live near East Carolina University. We used to have a good football team and at our best we were actually contenders for the top 10. I don't even remember what year it was but we were in the top twenty, had just beaten the number 1 ranked team in the country, and it was looking like our sports programs were going to go sky high as all news stations were talking about the Pirates on a national level. Of course we would later lose 2 games that season to unranked teams and make asses of ourselves in a rather inconsequential bowl game as is tradition at ECU.
Anyway, going to these packed games at home was and is something that I truly relish.
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When the Pirates hit the filed with the purple smoke and the cannons firing off all to the tune of Jimmy Hendrix's "Purple Haze" playing at max volume, it really gets your heart pumping. Seeing the ocean of purple and gold shirts in the largest stadium in that part of the state and realizing that your team actually could be good this year really drives the fans wild. It's a real shame that we haven't been worth a shit as a team in a great many years but still the fans turn up in droves even to watch a team that almost certainly is going to lose.
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Tailgating is a huge part of the entire process as well and it seems as though there is a competition among fans to see who can bring the most stuff with them. People are bringing full bbq pits with them and i can't even imagine how they got it into their trucks. There are no humans strong enough to lift one of those cast-iron monsters but they work it out somehow.
The "student" section of the tailgating field isn't a place that I feel terribly welcome anymore because I am of legal drinking age by 20 years now. So if we wander over into "their" section it seems as though people turn away as if I am a cop or something and am going to bust them for underage drinking.
There will be no tailgating this year and it remains to be seen if anyone will be allowed to attend any of the home games. I don't know about you, but i have felt as though the games I have seen that feature near empty or empty stadiums simply don't have the electricity or excitement that a "regular" game would and should have.
I live about an hour's drive from Dowdy-Ficklen stadium and gladly make the drive any time that the Pirates have a home game that I am allowed to attend. Our record last season was a terrible 4-8 and our expectations are not really high this year as it seems destined to be bad, again.
Even a losing game is a fun game to attend and I am not a fair-weather fan at all. Here's to hoping that we can put some of this Covid nonsense behind us and get back to some football!
Do you have any live sporting event stories? I'd love to hear about them, even if they are about soccer (which seems to dominate the STS community!)
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I used to live in CLNC and Jacksonville, NC. I would watch the Pirates and the Panthers most weekends. It was fun to watch, most times, especially during their good years, but often was painful.
I have always been one that preferred to watch sporting events from the comfort of my living room as I never have like crowds, but I understand completely what you are missing.
I dunno if you were around for this but the Steve Logan years were my favorite. The David Garrard and Richard Allston dual quarterback days where they were contenders for major bowls nearly every year.
I didn't follow ECU religiously, I just watched them when I had nothing else going on and they were what was on TV. I watched the Panthers back when Kevin Green played for them.
That's quite a stadium. We have a local football club here but the stadium only seats a couple thousand. I have to say that I am a bit disappointed in the stadiums here but this probably has a lot to do with the intense heat and humidity combined with the lack of shade.
yeah, that's a powerful combination of sucky
When i was very young I would frequently go to the packed stadium in our hometown for college games. That was so exciting and even though I was 8 I think, i still have very fond memories of it.
I've been seeing that internationally and in the USA people are starting to be allowed to go back to games and this is a good thing. Covid be damned!
yeah it'll be nice once people can admit that Covid isn't that dangerous and it is on the individual, not the collective, to avoid getting it if you are afraid of it.