The Shoe and Lavell Edwards Stadium

For all you laymen out there, this is in reference to the Horseshoe, also known as Ohio Stadium of THE Ohio State University Buckeyes, losers to Wisconsin, and 10th best team in the land (or 9th worst, whichever way you slice it).

I wanted to do a piece dedicated to the comparison of a game day atmosphere at Lavell Edwards Stadium and Ohio Stadium. I will draw comparisons between the following categories: tailgating, game day apparel, game experience, half-time performances by marching bands, mascots, head coaches, and finally fan comparisons.

First things first.

Tailgating

Here is a picture of the tailgating experience outside of Ohio Stadium:

And now a visage of the tailgating scene at BYU:

Uh, just kidding =) Still OSU, or is this Oktoberfest?

Here we go:

Not that I consider tailgating overly important for the game, but it does serve as an indication of general fan support and enthusiasm. Here tailgaters arrive early in the morning, if not the night before. Some people have hitches on their red pickups where they connect flat screen t.v.’s to watch Lee Corso and co. do the Game Day thing. They also have “eggs and kegs” here which means that you don’t drink anything, but beer all day, starting early in the morning. They would probably even have it in cold cereal, if they ate it. Instead they eat eggs and bratwursts in the morning. Then they have brats and baked beans for lunch washing it down with cold sixers (then they all have “sensible dinners” remember that from the Slim Fast commercials?). When they aren’t cooking or drinking, they play corn hole and drink.

Corn-hole is essentially horshoes, just minus the horse. Oh, and the shoes. Instead they use bean bags with a slanted box with holes in it. It’s wicked fun, not that I’ve ever tried it.

Okay, enough of this nonsense.

Game Day Apparel

Typical BYU fan apparel:

You’ll notice that 90% of the fans seems to grasps the notion to wear blue when it’s a home game. I’ll forgive white, but come on man, red? Seriously?

To be fair, here is a shot of the stadium on game day:

I’d say the majority are wearing blue, but navy 1) belongs to USU and 2) does not stand out very much.

That’s why I say we should bring back the old light blue uniforms from the 1996 Cotton Bowl Champs team:

Tell me that is not a great uniform and what’s more that would stick out a lot better than navy.

Here is a shot of Ohio Stadium against Indiana two weeks ago:

Notice the difference? It is salient? A vibrant color like this sticks out and is intimidating.

Game Experience

The town shuts down. It literally does here. But I have noticed that there is not a lot of commotion going on around Provo either on game day. Despite the fact that Ohio has not one, but two professional football teams, Columbus might as well be a different state, because here Ohio State is the professional team (also considering recent allegations against former Buckeye, Santonio Holmes, there may be some professionally paid collegiate athletes on the team as well). No one cares about the Browns or the Bengals gear here. It's all scarlet and gray here.

Most eveyone wears red all day.

If you showed up wearing anything, but OSU gear, people would most definitely let you know about it. Notice how there is not a single nave blue shirt anywhere. That's right, some folks in Provo (Exhibit A above) seem to think that there is nothing wrong with wearing rival's colors to cheer on their team. Silly heads

It was totally impressive to be at the game. The stadium really is awe inspiring. But the fans weren’t really into it that much. Maybe because it was just Indiana and OSU steam rolled them from the get go, but the crowd got more into the band playing (which will be addressed later) than into the game. To be honest, 100,000+ people were not that loud. I have heard louder at Lavell Edwards. Plus, the lack of Cougar tails was a real negative. On the flip side, the pulled pork sandwiches at the Horseshoe were unbelievable.

I was also surprised at how uninspired the student section was. We sat next to a couple who did not utter a single word the whole game. Not even a “I need to pee.” or “Did you put deordorant on today?” Silence.

I am going to reserve judgment on this crowd noise thing until tomorrow when Purdue comes to town (OSU’s only loss last season), and later when Penn State and Michigan are here to really say how loud or quiet it gets. BYU was definitely louder. I remember back in 2007 against TCU and Utah where it was so loud, I could not hear anything that the person right next to me was saying. That was fun.

The other nice thing about BYU was that no matter who the opponent was, fans were generally excited. We could be spanking UNLV and fans were stoked. Here people, were really ho-hum about the fact that OSU had only allowed 3 rushing yards and 57 overall yards at halftime against a QB, who was averaging over 300 per game up until that point. That was shocking and to be honest, it really made the game pretty boring as a result. I have never been bored at a BYU game. Mad, yes, but never bored.

This may be due to emotional investment, but I was not terribly disappointed when OSU lost last week, but I was mad that BYU could not even throw a pass to a receiver. Jake, what are you flippin’ scared? You can’t throw to a check down receiver as your initial option every time you drop back, especially on 3^rd and long. When you need 14 yards for a first down, three yards is not going to cut it my friend?

Based on one game, I would have to give LES the edge in game experience over The Shoe.

Half-time Performance by the Band

Do you even remember what the BYU, "The Power of the Wasatch" band played at the last home game for half-time? Exactly. The band is lame my friends. I purposely did not look at the field during half-time just so I wouldn’t be bored to tears. Just so I wouldn’t gouge my own eyes out and stab myself in the ear drums with a sharp number two pencil. In fact, I would often purposely drink as much water as I could during the first and second quarter just so I would have to go to the restroom and not have to listen to the band. OSU’s band on the other hand plays “Sloopy”, with all the fans singing O-H-I-O instead of “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” during the chorus. The whole stadium was singing it, which was pretty amazing. The other thing about the band is that they are called “The Best Damn Band in the Land”. How’s that for a title? They were very entertaining. Also, the choreography was pretty awesome:

I don’t know what game this is from, but the band typically has some famous alumni, like Jack Niklaus, dot the “I” in Ohio.

Mascots

In a fight, who do you take, Cosmo or Brutus?

I’d take Cosmo any day. How can you do flips and karate chops with a head like Brutus’? However, here is Webster’s Dictionary of a buckeye: “a large nut-like seed of the horse-chestnut tree family. The fruit contain tannic acid, and are poisonous for cattle, and possibly humans, although often eaten by squirrels and badgers” (well this explains the loss to Wisconsin). So careful there Cosmo, this guy may have been tackled by the U. of Ohio Bobcat (though he did evade him the first time: ), if eaten, we Cougar fans may be forced to ask “Y tu Brute?” Okay, that was bad.

Coaches

They’ve got “The Vest”.

We’ve got the horse man (Bronco).

I’d take both over this knothead:

They had Woody.

We had Lavell.

Atleast Lavell never punched an opposing player. He won an NC. Hayes won five. Big Whoop!

Both Tressel and Bronco are classy guys and great coaches who endure a lot of criticism for being successful. Go figure!

Anyway, this sums up this post. Ohio State is great, but I would not rather be anyway else on a game day on Saturday than LES. That place is special my friends.

Cheers,

Seth