Went to the game yesterday and overall our experience was a positive one. There were two concerns from the game.
First, I have a sunburn on half of my face. I mean seriously, the left side of my face has a sunburn and not my right side? Garbage.
Second, two guys in my row. Guy one, we'll call the teacher. Guy two we'll call Euro. Euro (had British accent and apparently needed teachers assistance to understand) was a super nice guy and seemed to enjoy himself and was good to sit by. The teacher on the other hand... he had plenty of liquid intelligence in him. I will briefly describe his attempts at winning the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl SuperFan award, but will leave out his clear understanding of the 'F-bomb'...
- Start of the game he wanted to sing Don't Give A Damn... his persuasion skills failed to attract anyone. By itself no big deal, but a pre-cursor to come.
- National Anthem - Political statement time brought to you by teacher (Talking in a yell) "...DID YOU KNOW OUR GOVERNMENT CAN ARREST CITIZENS FOR ANY REASON???? AND HOLD YOU???" No reaction garnered, thankfully.
- At one point attempted to start the Stadium OHIO cheer because in his eyes, the UF side of the stands were mostly Buckeyes anyway. 0-2 in starting cheers.
- Virtually every offensive play that Braxton was under center "Oh great another run right up the middle!" If it gained 5 yards... "Just keep doing it!" If it did not "Why don't we spread them out and pass it!?!?"
- End of the first half we're driving with 2-3 minutes to go, he successfully argues with himself to Euro explaining how we should be running the clock out; we are around mid-field mind you; AND how we should be using our timeouts because we get the ball back to start the 2nd half. Pretty impressive feat if I must say so myself.
- At halftime teacher explains to Euro that he has to visit Columbus because our band plays the opposing teams fight song before the game.
- I guess around the middle to end of the third quarter, teacher jumps on his pulpit to explain that "without two Spec Tean TD's we win... you NEVER see two TD's by Special Team and we should be winning this game." Don't worry about our anemic offense or UF's turnovers, those ST TD's simply should not have counted. There was a UF fan in the midst of Buckeye fans that was just smirking at the guy and acted real cool about it.
Again, it was a good time and the fans (save one) were interacting with the other side and it was jovial in every instance I saw.
Chicago Pizza and Sports Grille was a very good pizza, no Giordano's, but a very good pizza. Service was terrible and slow, but the pizza was worth it. Jacksonville Landing was really cool and the Main Street Bridge was neat to see at night. Made for good photos.