Day 15: Welcome to College Gameday

Its game day, and around here the game starts at 12:30, so I drove over to the university area arriving around 10. Its another clammy overcast day. I park near my cousin Tom’s house yet again, and walk to Noah’s Bagels for what now seems the hundredth time. Today, however, the place is jammed with people getting ready for the game. After hanging around for a bit, I walked through the University’s botanical garden near the boat landing to the stadium.

Turns out that UW has a tremendous tailgating scene, much more intense than Texas’. The most notable thing about it is that people actually “tailgate” on boats that dock as close as a few hundred feet from the east end zone. The stadium is located next to the University boat docks, and the campus itself is adjacent to Union Bay. People come right up to the harbor and tailgate in their boats. Its like nothing I’ve ever seen. The school also runs a water taxi across Lake Washington bringing people over to the game from the other side of the lake. Of course, the tailgating here has nothing on LSU, which is the most robust of anywhere I’ve been. People get there on Friday and start making jambalaya, red beans and rice, chicken, barbecue, and other goodness. Oh, and drinking vast quantities of alcohol. The games don’t usually start til Saturday night, so that leaves all day Saturday for drinking, which probably contributes to Tiger Stadium being Death Valley. UW is not Death Valley. More like Wine Cooler Valley.

The stadium reminds me a lot of how Texas’ Memorial Stadium (now DKR-Memorial) used to be in the 80s when I first went to school. It still has a track going around the field. The concession stands serve only the standard stadium food (no garden salads or sushi). One major difference is that both the upper decks have huge porticos, which makes no sense for Seattle as there’s never any sun in any UW game I’ve seen on TV. Another difference is the field is oriented east-west, rather than north-south as are nearly all other football fields. I guess the winds prevail from the west in Seattle. MSNBC rated Husky Stadium as the fifth best college football stadium in the country.

The game experience is also the sort of no frills approach I remember from school. The teams don’t run out of a tunnel, they don’t run through some dry ice fog, the PA system doesn’t blare loud commercials, and there’s a large scoreboard but not an obnoxious jumbotron screen like DKR or Kyle Field. This proves it is possible to have just a football game. The crowd is pretty loud. Its 74,927, the third largest crowd in school history. I sat on the 30 yard line, about 50 rows up. These are great seats although they’re in the old folks’ section. Apparently you normally have to donate to the athletic department for these seats. I sat next to a guy from LA, who went to school at UW and often comes in for the games with his wife. On my other side is a pretty loud OSU fan who’s getting some minor grief, but who’s howling the whole time. The west end zone is a sea of red, confirming my view that OSU has taken over the town. More surprisingly, most of the first couple of rows of the south side stands are red as well. I can’t think of many other major college programs where the front row ticket holders would sell their seats to the enemy.

The game itself was good. UW led at the half, and stayed close til a three minute stretch that included a block field goal, giving up a long touchdown pass, fumbling the ensuing kickoff, and then giving up another quick touchdown. The referees were horrible. They were Pac-10 referees, which was a little surprising, given how Pac-10 referees hosed Oklahoma last season in the Oregon game. Maybe this was the crew that gave OSU that phantom pass interference call in the 2002 National Championship game against Miami.

I've mentioned before my general hostility to big time college sports, particularly football, as a tremendous hypocrisy. The universities sign huge TV contracts with the networks and are awash with cash. They're now moving to start their own networks and sell the programs as syndicated packages, just like any other good cartel (OPEC would be proud). This is before they hit up their alumni for donations, and charge obscene prices for generally awful games. UT this year at home plays Arkansas State, TCU, Rice, Kansas State, Nebraska, and Texas Tech. That's about one and a half decent games. Last year they played Sam Houston State. Then, like a good monopolist, they make it impossible for the workers whose labor creates all this wealth to realize any of it, under the guise of the "student-athlete." All they get are scholarships, which on their face do have some value, but they can't work during the school year to make any money to pay for as much as a pizza, and the coaches monopolize the players' time so much its difficult for most of them to take the time to get the value out of their scholarships. The schools make millions selling jerseys with the players' numbers on them, and the players don't see a dime. So a lot of the schools turn their heads as the players break the rules to get money, then profess to be shocked, shocked when they're caught. The schools make it extremely difficult for the players to transfer to other schools, even if the coach that recruited them there leaves. On the other hand, the coaches act like their contracts don't even exist, and hop to the next opportunity that comes their way, and in many cases make huge salaries. Division I football is a multi-billion dollar industry, except when it comes to the actual participants, for whom it is a "scholarship activity." Its like that line in North Dallas Forty-every time I say its a game you say its a business, and every time I say its a business you say its a game. Now, would I have jumped at the chance to play college football? Sure. But that doesn't excuse this situation, any more than it would excuse not paying someone for a job they enjoy.

After the game, I went back to my car and changed into my running clothes and went for a six mile run on the Burke-Gilman trail. This was not nearly as easy as the run from Thursday. I guess Concrete’s rejuvenative powers are only temporary.

Then after grabbing dinner at the Whole Foods Commune, I went to the movies at the Harvard Exit theatre. This is in Capitol Hill, and is a really small, old theatre, replete with antique furnishings and cool lobbies. Not unlike the River Oaks theatre in Houston, only much smaller.

Tomorrow-going home.