The Cult of the Gridiron

“OH MY GOD!”
-- Yours Truly, screaming like a girl, with no time left on the clock.

I’m not a people person. In fact, I find the human race in general to be the embodiment of squandered promise. Yet there I was -- my arms wrapped around a perfect stranger, a man who I met casually a few hours before. We leapt and screamed in each others arms, overcome with unquantifiable elation.

How did I get here? I thought as the smell of beer and sweat swirled around us. The question was fleeting, flashing in and out of my head like a steamy breath in an early morning chill. Instead of pondering the inexplicable, I turned to the next drunkard beside me and embraced them.

And thus I was inducted into the fandom of Big Ten football.


When I first decided to move to Florida, the buzzword was “experience.” While the impetus for the move had been escape, I knew the simple migration to Florida would mean a dearth of experiences that would not be available to me anywhere else in the world. Little did I realize the bombardment of history I would play witness to in the Sunshine State.

In the first month, I lived through the most active hurricane season in Florida’s history. Then I sat in the front row for the democratic muck of Florida’s presidential election. A month later on my way home for Christmas I spent 15 hours trapped inside a car on the Kentucky Interstate in the most intense snowstorm the state had experienced in 100 years. Still, looking back on my time here thus far, the most exciting and memorable experience has been the University of Iowa’s serendipitous appearance in the Capital One Bowl.

With a few weeks left in the college football season, my uncle and I suggested in passing that we should look into getting tickets to the Bowl formerly known as Citrus. It seemed a provocative and appropriate idea, considering the Big Ten usually makes an appearance and my uncle and I had become increasingly disgusted with Florida’s elitist football mentality. We needed some real hard-nosed football, and this seemed a good way to get our fix.

As fate would have it, the Big Ten not only made an appearance, but it was the University of Iowa, the default favorite of my specific nuclear family, that would be representing my home region. With the Hawkeyes going to all the trouble of flying down to my neck of the woods, clearly I had to do all I could to support them. Another of my uncles up north, Uncle Robert, was a die-hard Hawkeye fan, and using his connections with current alumni, he got three tickets with little difficulty.

This would be quite an introduction to college football. Attending games at Southern Illinois and watching my Salukis get shellacked by Division III teams was never on my to-do list in college. In fact, it never even made the waiting list for my to-do list. And with my family’s busy schedule, we never made the time to drive to Champaign or Iowa City to take in a game. So, not only would I be attending my first major college football game ever, but my first college football game would be a major bowl game featuring the previous year’s co-National Champion. As I said to my uncles after the game: “There’s nowhere to go from here but down.”


The day began much more quietly than I had expected. As the only person in the house with an alarm clock, I got first-rise duties at around 7:45. My Uncle Robert was already stirring and I got our Schnauzer, Scamp, to attack my Uncle Joel’s face until he rolled out of bed. I showered and had my morning bagel, then lounged around as Joel struggled to dress himself and Robert loaded the cooler.

The trials of finding the stadium were minimal and we soon found ourselves parked in a fenced lot a half-block away from the Citrus Bowl. The lot was dense with gold and black shirts, and the few LSU Tiger fans who ended up corrupted the theme of our parking area were quickly booed into the streets.

Since my interest on this particular day was the game itself, I failed to consider that I would first have to survive that holiest of pregame traditions, the tailgate. As an infrequent imbiber of alcohol, I felt immediately ostracized from the dozens of fans gathered around coolers and grills – including my uncles. As they chugged beers in the back of the truck, I concentrated on the two bottles of water they had generously thrown in the cooler the night before.

The tailgate surprised me not in the degree to which people were losing their cognitive function, but in the people involved in that impairment. I expected to see college kids, young folk my age, doing the majority of the drinking. In fact, most of the tailgating involved people of my uncle’s age. As a young man who venerates his elders to a fault, I found something mildly disgraceful about this collection of middle-agers clinging to their twenties like the last drop of water in the Sahara. Men walked to the stadium cradling their twelve-packs like newborns. One overly dedicated fan sported empty beer cans for nipple piercings.

My uncles, two outgoing chaps, blended naturally into the revelry. They chatted with strangers as if they were old pals while I sipped from my water bottle in the back of the truck. Never one to make chit-chat with strangers, I couldn’t help feeling out of place throughout the pre-game proceedings. As if to confirm my status as an outcast, a young man of about my age dashed through the parking lot and slammed a sticker on my back, chastising me for not partying hard enough. He danced immediately away, the bells on his black and gold jester’s cap jingling merrily. Not long after a similar chap, this one dressed only in black and gold suspenders, asked me with great distinction why I was not “consuming alcohol.” I raised my bottled water to him, and said the only thing I could to distract him from his question: “Go Hawks!”

“GO HAWKS!” he yelled, raising his beer and slapping me in the chest. The rally rolled through the parking lot and into the streets, making its way (I can only assume) all the way to the belly of the Citrus Bowl.

Even as these assholes stuck my sore thumb out even further, I couldn’t help but feel my condescension diminishing. In its stead came the overpowering spirit of Big Ten football. When the Iowa band’s bus crept past us, rocking back and forth on its axle, as if it might tip at any second, I couldn’t help but cheer. The big, black 18-wheeler followed. The massive Hawkeye logo on its side stared down each LSU fan as it passed, and with each belch of its horn I felt my nerve endings tingle. The big rig reminded me what I had forgotten in my petulant isolation.

The day was about football.


In every major sporting event I have ever attended, I always make the same observation upon first entering the stadium. It has to do with scale. It happened at Wrigley and Comiskey. It happened at the Army v. Navy Game. It happened at the Capital One Bowl.

Based on the vague world of sports on television, everything seems enormous. If I were a layman, and somebody asked me how far it was from home plate to the ivy in Wrigley, I would say close to a mile. On television, fly balls seem to travel for days, hanging up in the mystical off-screen, before plummeting into the glove of an outfielder, or the basket of a fan’s hands. Yet, when I climbed into the bleachers at Wrigley for the first time I still remember feeling shocked that it was no bigger than the parks I played on in high school. Fly balls didn’t scrape the cosmos, but merely climbed gently into the air before falling back to earth.

I was struck by the same sensation as we climbed the stairs to our seats in the corner of the mezzanine. The field was a hundred yards long, just as it had been when I played. It seemed almost dainty compared to the sprawling battlefield I had in my mind. Of course, the scale of the periphery was quite different than I was used to – it has to be to fit 70,000 people – but I couldn’t help but chuckle at the familiar strip of grass at the center of the raucous crowd. A little voice in my head reminded me “You know this game.”

We made our way to our seats in Row W, and found a complimentary pair of bang sticks waiting for us. The gift immediately solved two problems – my envy of the thousands of people who I already saw with the sticks and my need to buy a pricey souvenir from the gift shop. I waited patiently through the opening festivities (which paled in comparison to Army/Navy’s Chinook/F-14 flyover) until game time finally arrived.

College fandom has a unique bloodline compared to other sports and institutions. The colors alone mean something. Nearly two thirds of the stadium painted black and gold, the other third deep purple, all in one morphing, undulating mass. The student section wriggled with bang sticks, like a thousand millipedes turned over on their backs. Alma Maters echo through the stadium like hymns in a cathedral. The traditional cheers sound out with a thumping pulse, the cheerleaders all but unnecessary thanks to the enthusiastic bellows of their congregation. The fervor reaches the level of religious zealotry, only their idols are young men in a timed war.

As the game began, I maintained my status as an enthralled observer. By default I cheered for the Hawkeyes, though I did not share the familiarity with the team the untold thousands around me did. I could not name a single player, but as the early minutes wore on players (more specifically numbers) began to stand out. On the second play from scrimmage, an Iowa wide-out went 56 yards for a touchdown, and the Iowa fans went berserk. The score was at once exhilarating and horrifying; as tens of thousands of Iowa fans leapt in their seats the concrete shell of the Citrus Bowl twisted and shook beneath my feet.

Still, even sharing in the exaltation of my fellow Hawkeyes did not complete my initiation into Big Ten fandom. That would come on LSU’s first possession.

After a deep kick and two sacks, LSU was forced to punt with their back against the endzone. I nudged my Uncle Robert beside me.

“We’re going after ‘em,” I told him, convinced that we could at least get our hands on the kick. Sure enough, Iowa cut through the LSU line and crushed the punt straight back into the ground. The Iowa stands exploded again as we collapsed on the ball inside the ten.

Suddenly, the man in front of me, a portly Latin fellow, spun around in his seat.

“I heard that,” he said. “Who called that? Who called it?”

Robert quickly pointed at me, and the portly man growled some indiscernible attaboy! and rubbed his hands over the capital “I” on my shirt. For the rest of the game, when the Hawks were in trouble, he would turn to me, rub my belly and ask for my favorable prognostication. Though my magic faded as the quarters wore on, he never faded in his allegiance to the wish-granting powers of my magical abs.

There was no turning back after that. I had been accepted. I was part of the family. I drank from the chalice of the Big Ten, and oh how the Kool-Aid was sweet.


In sports, few things compare to a great finish, especially if you’re on the winning end of it. What images of sport are more enduring than the walk-off home run, the last second field-goal, or the buzzer beater? My most enduring memory of this fall’s baseball post-season was Jim Edmonds flexing after a game-winning home run forced game seven in the NLCS.

This year I have been blessed in that regard. The day before I left for Florida I was in left field when Corey Patterson capped a two-run, ninth inning, rally with a walk-off home run to send the W flag up over Sheffield. I was on a high for a week, even as the Cubs’ Wild Card demise became more and more apparent.

As great as that moment was, the walk-off home run is not a rarity in baseball. It happens a lot. It seemed extraordinary because of the infrequency of my trips to Wrigley. But what I witnessed on New Year’s Day was historic.

After Iowa jumped ahead after a number of LSU miscues, the Tigers clawed their way back, taking their first lead with forty-six seconds left in the game. The next few frantic minutes of football culminated in one of the most amazing moments of my life.

Iowa found themselves on the LSU 44 with the clock shaving off its final seconds. The fans around me screamed for a time-out, but Iowa dashed to the line. As the Hawkeye fans lost their mind, QB Drew Tate snapped the ball…

I will go to my grave saying that I had the best spot in the stadium for this final play. Angled to the field in the corner of the stadium, I saw the possibility long before its culmination. I saw Warren Holloway break coverage. I saw the lane open up. For a moment, I thought I would head home with my head hung low, knowing that Tate had an open receiver, but had failed to see him.

But he did see him.

The ball went up on a perfect line between myself and Holloway. My eyes widened. My mouth went dry. I grabbed the portly latin fellow in front of me.

And Holloway caught the ball. With no time left on the clock, the two remaining LSU defensive backs crumbled on each other, and Holloway streaked through the end-zone. The Hawkeyes won the Capital One Bowl 30 to 25.

I feel any attempt to sell the celebration after that score will result in clichéd hyperbole. I can only say this: if my feet had touched the ground I would have been terrified that the Citrus Bowl would crumble beneath my feet. As the cleaning crew began their work on the LSU stands, the Hawkeye fans stayed for the trophy presentation. After the team headed to the locker room, many of us lingered with our eyes on the field, as if some ethereal encore might play out before our eyes. When it was clear we’d have to rely on our mind’s eyes for that replay, the Iowa faithful began their reluctant return to the parking lot.

Even as I tell this story now, for the umpteenth time, it seems somehow unreal. It is as if an event like that immediately detaches from your person and becomes something more, something greater, something fantastic. The next day I grabbed the newspaper off the kitchen counter and threw it in my file cabinet, aware that the day was already slipping away from me. But all I have to do is pull out that front page of the Orlando Sentinel, with Holloway on his team’s shoulders, holding his helmet to the sky, and I’m brought back. That day will stay with me for as long as I live, and there are at least 35,000 other people who can say the same thing.