Football Dominates

I haven't ever tried to write sports commentary, but it's hard to blog and not comment on sports when that's all you do in a day. I mean, I played racquetball early this morning, but that doesn't count because anything you do on a Saturday before noon is bonus activity. I ended up stopping by Andrew's dorm at 2 and he said he had just woken up.

After my morning extra credit awake time, I picked up my Chinese friend Yang from his apartment to introduce him to the aspect of American college culture called "tailgating." First I had to explain what tailgating was as he carefully documented the experience with his camera.

"Those people in purple and yellow are LSU fans," I said, pointing out some already-toasted Louisiana State supporters. "I hope we beat them."

"Me too," Yang said. "Is it okay if I take picture them?"

"You want to take a picture of them? Sure, go ahead."

He leaned out the window like the foreigner I used to be when I was in China and snapped a shot before we drove away. I introduced him to so many Americans when we got to the RUF tailgate that he gave up on any hope of remembering people's names and loosened up a bit talking about himself. We also worked out a system where I would introduce him to someone. When the person said his/her name, I would repeat it in really clear English so he would hear it better. I started doing that after one guy's name was Chuck, which Yang thought sounded identical to the word "truck." (They don't have the "tr" sound in Chinese.)

Yang and I tailgated for a while, and then when he left I stopped by the Cru tailgate and hung out with more people. Then tonight was the game we had been getting all pepped up for.

I can't decide whether I like the Associated Press summary of it or the concise, straight-up version from ESPN. Regardless, UF played an amazing game. This was an important game, since we've already lost once this season and if we had lost again tonight our season would've been over. On the other hand, LSU was ranked #3 so winning would seriously boost our pitiful 11th place. And then we won, and won by enough that Tim Tebow could sit out our last few offensive plays and let the second-string quarterback try to bring the ball in for a touchdown.

Understanding football strategy is a large part of your football experience. People who know things about football can get outraged at a ref far better than we normal fans. For them, when the ref blows the whistle for a penalty, they already know what the ref is going to call and are shouting about how it can't be true because we saw it and because we're UF and UF doesn't deserve penalties because we're awesome.

Sometimes their rhetoric gets a little shaky, but that's why we have a band who drowns them out with honor and distracts everyone until the next play with our cheers.

It's taken me several years of coming to UF games to let my mood be influenced by a football game. Now, though, if we lose I feel like I've lost, and when we won tonight I felt like I deserved to go to sleep because we had just done a great job.

Great job, Will. Now let's get some sleep.