Sunday, August 31, 2008

football game!

As I promised, here's an entry on one of the biggest spectacle on Grounds -- football games. I'll skip the actual game itself since it was pretty much a foregone conclusion and talk about everything else associated with it.

Firstly, tailgating. Starting around morning really, tables with food and drink and speakers will appear all over Grounds. Most lawn rooms will have a table outside, all the parking lots are filled with alumni who have a table behind their car. Most of the Greek houses on Rugby Road have a huge to do, so there's lots of people eating, drinking and talking everywhere. Even at 11 am when we had a 3:30 pm kickoff. The thing with parking lots on game days is... don't use them. A) You'd have to buy a permit and B) you'd be squeezing by 10 thousand other drivers but really C) traffic is less than a snail's crawl, so you'll most likely be beating your wheel in frustration instead of getting excited for the game. Some savvy students living near Scott Stadium will rent out parking spaces for the day, easily picking up $200 for an afternoon of almost no work.

I was really surprised at how packed the stadium was. I got there at 20 minutes before kickoff and wow, it was completely and utterly packed. There wasn't a seat to be found, even when I climbed up to the uppermost levels. I don't recall the first game of the year ever being so packed, but it was such an amazing sight seeing everyone turned out, ready to support our school.

This brings me to the age old tradition of 'guys in ties and girls in pearls' -- one that dates back to Jefferson's time when they would dress up nicely for any big event. Seeing as it was the first game of the year I decided to go with the tradition and put on a sundress and a pearl necklace. There is however a more modern tradition being pushed by our current football coach, the 'sea of orange', basically encouraging everyone to dress up in all orange. The stadium was flooded with orange, this might eventually become the sole UVa tradition, who knows?

I'd like to put in a shout out to our marching band as I think they are pretty awesome. Definitely great performances, and they put in so many hours in practice. My big in my sorority is actually a member of the color guard, and another sister is part of the french horn section, props to them!

Another great favorite of mine is our pre game video. UVa's mascot is the Cavalier, whom we affectionately call the CavMan. Prior to each kickoff we have a video of Cavman defeating the opposing team's mascot. It was nice to beat the Trojan on screen if not on the field. =)

Sorry if I sound rather incoherent, I'm writing this with half of my mind on work. You pretty much get loaded with work in the Comm school, and being my delightfully overachiever self, of course I'm trying to get everything for next week done over the weekend. Alright, so that was a slight exaggeration, but I'm looking at the 300 pages of reading and my eight hour shift at work tomorrow and feeling slightly sick. O_O