I don’t really follow American football anymore.
It has been 25 years since I watched an NFL game on television, and John Elway was playing in that one. It was Super Bowl XXXIII, and it was six years after the one Super Bowl I saw in person. It was one of the last of 50 or so NFL games I covered in person from 1980 to 1994, in nine different cities from New York to San Diego.
I have written before about how wonderful it was to be in old Mile High Stadium in Denver on late autumn afternoons in the late 1980s, but none of the eight other NFL stadiums felt quite as wonderful. I remember seeing the lovely Dana Delaney on the sideline of the L.A. Coliseum at a game between the then-Los Angeles Raiders and the old Cleveland Browns, which was nice but still not Mile High.
It didn’t compare to college football. I didn’t cover as many college seasons, but I did South Carolina in 1983, Colorado and Colorado State in 1987 and UCLA in 1990 and 1991. I think the last game I ever attended in person was UCLA and Washington in 1999 at the Rose Bowl for my daughter Pauline’s sorority’s Daughter-Dad game.
I covered college games at great stadiums like South Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma. I covered the Rose Bowl twice, the Holiday Bowl once and the Peach Bowl once. That Peach Bowl, in 1983 at old Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, might have been the most awful day of my career.
It was frigid in Atlanta, so the windows in the press box were closed. Since most sportswriters still smoked back then, the press box was a miasma of smoke. Add to that a buffet that consisted largely of rancid barbecue and I spent the afternoon fighting back a really bad headache and nausea. A day to forget.
Things got better. Three seasons later I was in Colorado and the first game I saw at Folsom field was Colorado and Nebraska. CU’s field has one of the greatest pregame entries, where Ralphie the mascot leads the team onto the field.
The next year I covered Colorado State at Wyoming on Halloween. CSU was dreadful that year, going 1-11, but it was an interesting trip nonetheless. It was my first time in Wyoming, and the highest altitude at which I ever covered a college football game. In fact, the university plays up the altitude as a home field advantage, with a sign on the outside wall of the press box.
“WELCOME TO 7,220 FEET”
I don’t think CSU was intimidated by the altitude. Their field in Fort Collins, CO, is at an elevation of 5,003 feet. Still, they were a bad team that year and lost the game, 20-15.
At any rate, it has been a long time since I attended a game. We did go to a few high school games in 2002 in California, but that wasn’t for the football. Our son Virgile was the drum major of his high school band that fall, so we went for the halftime shows.
The only following I do now is on the web, where I check each Saturday to see how the three college teams I care about are doing. I lived in Ohio from age 3-13, so I care about Ohio State. I lived in Virginia for all except two years from 13-32 and I spent four semesters at the University of Virginia, so I care about the Wahoos.
And of course, I have lived in Georgia for 14 years, so I’ll end this with a beloved saying:
“HOW ABOUT THEM DAWGS!!”