Going to away games - a good experience?

aibarr
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:37:17 +0000

When I was a student I was in the marching band so I’ve travelled to a lot of campuses. Mostly good, but there are always some bad. I’ve had frozen fruit thrown at me at one campus.



Navy throws cheese, incidentally. That was a while ago, though, I think they’ve stopped doing that. A pity-- it was kind of amusing.

I was drum major of a fairly infamous college band. I’ve had cokes thrown at me, I’ve had people insult my mother as I walk towards the stadium, I’ve had 109,778 people boo me while I was on the field. (Yeaaaah, most of that was deserved…) There are certain schools where football is the only show in town, and most of the folks in the stands are fans of the football team and probably couldn’t get into the university of the team they’re cheering for. And that’s just fine, but they often don’t have a sense of responsibility to the university that the team represents, so anything goes. There are also some students who have absorbed the university identity so completely as their own that they take it as a personal affront whenever anybody has the audacity to do something so awful as to root against their school’s football team (or call their city the tenth circle of hell… okay, that was probably uncalled for, too).

Still, there are a lot of schools out there whose fans are just class acts. Texas is pretty great so long as you’re not a bitter rival. I was really impressed with Michigan fans, who offered me tailgate fare and complimented my glockenspieling. The fans at Louisiana Tech offered me beer. Michigan State laughed at our jokes and invited us to hang out with them afterwards.

Tell your daughter not to write off away games entirely. Have her ask around about the opposing team’s fans before she goes, and better yet, ■■■■■ their fan message boards to see whether there’s a ton of bad blood before she packs her foam finger and facepaint. Often, away games can be a great experience, and I’m sorry that this one turned her stomach.