I have shared this with a few of you, but for the general group....in SC football, there is what we call "A Perfect Day." A Perfect Day consists of SC winning, with Notre Dame and UCLA losing. There have been about 40 or so Perfect Day's in history. Even though Notre Dame pulled off the win yesterday against what is looking like an increasingly gutless Michigan team, I am going to go ahead and call yesterday a perfect day. In fact, I cannot remember when I have had so much as fun as a college football fan than yesterday.
I know many of you hate SC, so you don't have to read any further. For those that are interested, just wanted to share my experience, a few pics, and some thoughts. I have to spread this post over several posts because there is an 8 pic limit per post, apparently.
My day started at about 4:30AM. GameDay was on hand at the Coliseum and a group of us wanted to be there for it, so we headed out at about 5:15 while it was still dark. By the time we arrived at the set, it was about 6:30....there were already hundreds of SC and OSU fans all over the place. There was buzz and electricity in the air. I told my brother than I could tell that yesterday was going to be a FUN day.
A took some pics as best as I could, but since I had no SLR on me, I did not get any good zooms. I am waiting for one of my friends to zip me a file of his zoom shots. I promised to get some good ones of Herbstreit....my friend got some good close ones, including a shot of Corso picking the Trojans and putting on the breatplate, helmet, and sword.
I was pretty close, as you can see from the pics. But also, you can tell that they keep the crowds at bay. They also put up this huge netting around the stage. The crew told us that years ago, they had some problems in Florida with fans throwing stuff up there, so since that time, they have put up nets. Since we got there fairly early, we were in what I would call the equivalent to a mosh pit....inside the mains security gates. As such, I was free to walk around the inner permiter and look around, take pics, etc..those who arrived late were on the outside of the permiter and were not allowed to get any closer.
I was able to say hello to Desmond Howard (he picked SC) and also Erin Andrews. I can say this much, I saw her from 3 feet away.....she is sorta pretty and has nice cans, but her face is also weird and she CAKES on the makeup. I kept expecting her to pull away the mask and reveal herself to be Hannibal Lecter. It never happened. But, as I said, pretty nice cans, which is the most important thing.
The most interesting aspect of watching GameDay was, by, far, the parade of signs that people bring....and the non-stop effort security and producers make to confiscate them. I would say that for all the signs you see on TV, there is an equal number of signs that are taken away and thrown into a huge pile. And they don't mess around. They bring cops with them....if people start in with the free speech crap, they are taken away instantly. After a few speech protesters get carted away, the fans are much less bold. As a side note, these stadiums are private property, so no free speechy...sorry, ConLaw lovers.
I have included some signs that I thought were especially clever, as well as a shot of the famous Wazzou flag. By far, the biggest celebrity there is the person carrying the Wazzou flag. The guy was very cool and explained how they have a network of alum that are responsible for coordinating and fedexing the flag all over the country. They take it quite seriously and you are only allowed to participate after you have been approved by the network.
On a side note, there was a Utah guy there waving a Utah flag. He said that there is a group of Utah alum that are trying to do the same thing as Wazzou (hacks be damned, all of them).
there were a lot of "Beanie Baby" signs (I thought that was funny) and lots of dumb signs. A few examples:
This one was hilarious:
I told you....huge cans:
