Pittsburgh at Virginia Tech
October 16, 2021
Pitt wins 28-7
Kenny Pickett, 14th year senior QB, was largely held in check as the Panthers chewed away at the clock thanks to a most anemic VT offense that had absolutely no identity.
My wife and I haven’t attended any games in person to this point in the season. Frankly, we were concerned about the close proximity seating and unfiltered breathing providing too much of a health risk even though we are both vaccinated. After much consideration, including looking at the virus data trends in the area and a favorable windy forecast, we decided to give attending a shot.
We hadn’t sat in our new seats since reseating before the 2020 season. Up to this point, I’d always given them away to extended family members. Our new seats, along the east side 30 yard line in the nosebleeds, are only a row behind our old seats but a bump closer to the aisle.
We chose to get into these fabulous seats about an hour before game. The sky was flashing by in a mad dash toward some unreachable pressure equalization. But the weather was dry while the flags were shredding.
For us, everything went off the rails when our new neighbors arrived. No one to my right. An angry couple to my wife’s left. A mature couple soon joined by their college student son directly in front of us. Three amigas of widely varying ages directly behind us.
As the longest first half in VT football history played out like a torturous black and white dream, our neighbors began to invade our life in disturbing ways. Angry man beside my wife began a three hour F-bomb monologue pointed toward Fuente, Cornelsen, Burmeister, Turner, Tim Sands, Whit, Hamilton, Homecoming Royalty, Hokie Pokie, concession lines, stadium loudspeaker volume, Blackshear, Gallo, and Dax (just because). I’m sure I left a few out. We wondered how someone so very angry gets any joy out of life. (Disclaimer: I held my foul tongue until the ridiculous interference retraction in the third quarter.)
Meanwhile, the mature couple in front of us was joined by their son who was already teetering on the edge of verticality. It had taken most of the first quarter for his Pop on the phone and signal flares sent up to steer him to the triple nosebleeds. Their homecoming was heart-warming. Mom and son shared a deep embrace followed by the same between father and son. I was moved. Then they sat, and I found that their backs were now pinning my knobby knees back into my gut. Dad then got up and began his beer runs. He spent most of the rest of the game shuttling back and forth refreshing the beer supply for Mom and son. Meanwhile, Mom and son began to escalate their embraces into something a bit more affectionate.
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| Comfortably Numb |
It was more than a little uncomfortable to watch and feel as their entangled arms massaged my naked knees. They vacated the stadium late in third period just in time for us, as I’ll explain in a moment. I watched as they slowly descended out of the clouds to the portal far below. Mom and Dad went ahead of their son. Meanwhile, he implemented the tried and sometimes true “Hold-Onto-The-Center-Rail” strategy for inebriated exit. After some serious challenges with gravity and magnetic fields, he successfully disappeared into the portal.
Before I write about the three amigas, I want the reader to understand a bit about my experiences with alcohol. All through my teen years, college, and career, I drank- sometimes to excess. When it came to attending VT games as an adult, I found that I enjoyed them more if I was sober. I finally reached bottom with my drinking on May 19, 2014. After spending the day enjoying bourbon and Cokes, I drove out to see my friend play in his Celtic band at a local winery. There, I sampled the local wine and felt the need to have a craft brew or two, since there were also beer tents set up at this event. Also understand that I was about six weeks removed from reconstructive left knee surgery. So I was still on crutches and wore a heavy brace. When the concert in the cow pasture was over, I began staggering on crutches back to my vehicle and ended up face-planting in a cow pie. I just laid there and one of my sober friends happened by and volunteered to drive me home. I stopped drinking that day.
The three amigas, probably related to each other, arrived escorted by two older gentlemen. The women came already primed and with a nice cache of stadium beers and airplane bottles. They were happy people. As the affectionate couple invaded our space from the front, these ladies encroached from behind. Constant kicking in the back. During most of the second quarter, I had a smelly shoe poised beside my right nostril as one of the ladies was most comfortable sitting with crossed-legs as she leaned over to banter with her mates. Not much football game attention. It was more about the homecoming festivities, the royal court, shopping for earrings at the gift shop, and long peeing lines (They are ridiculous!). The first beer was spilled beside me, but I was poised to keep it from spreading. I plucked out my handy paper towels which I carry for just such emergencies, and I Bountied the beer tide before it got to my stuff stored under my seat. Another minor spill happened at half, and again the paper towels took care of any potential collateral damage. Late in the third quarter, the big one struck.
Having just arrived from yet another trip to the beer concession, the middle amiga, who was just behind my wife, opened her can. It immediately began spewing beer all over, and the lady somehow managed despite her condition, to contain it -minus the beer suds that coated the back of my wife. A few minutes later, the middle amiga again lost control of her can and knocked it over with her foot. This time the beer spewed like lava from a volcano right through the crack under my wife’s seat and down her leg and into her left shoe. I don’t think that the middle lady even knew what she had done. I deployed the rest of my Bounty on the wave, and we evacuated to the now-vacated row in front of us.
We have never left a game early until Saturday. After VT gave up on yet another offensive possession, we chose to exit the stadium figuring that we could salvage some joy by taking a sunset stroll across campus back to our car, which was in the former commuter lot parking garage. I must confess that I inflicted shock and dismay on an innocent fan when I tried to brush aside an empty water bottle that was laying in the aisle as we went down the steps. It got away from my foot and launched into a lady’s shoulder a few seats into the row. She looked at me in shock, and I’m sure she must have thought I was hammered.
The walk was truly healing. We didn’t speak of the horrific game we had just witnessed. We didn’t discuss the fans we encountered. We just drank in the incredible beauty of our campus. The lush green drill field, the vibrant leaves, the endless orange and maroon sky.
One final trial awaited us. We made it back to the parking garage and waited for my sister to get back from the shuttle bus. We broke out a few simple sandwiches, veggies, and Cokes. I turned on the 2016 Honda Civic’s radio, and we listened to the post-game. After a few minutes, we decided that there was nothing that we wanted to hear about that game. So I went to turn off accessory mode. Now, I struggle with certain technologies, apparently. I was supposed to push the brake and push the ignition button or maybe I was supposed to push the brake pedal twice and push the button or maybe it was push the button and not pump the brake. Whatever it was, I did it wrong, and now the car‘s electrical system was freaking out and all normal car function was frozen, including the gear shift. I tried everything to free the car from its seizure, but nothing worked. Fortunately, I knew that I could manually free the gear shifter by popping a pen into a slot behind the shift mechanism in the storage compartment. I managed to get the car to neutral, but it the electrical system was still frozen.
What I didn’t mention is that this exact same thing happened two years ago in almost the same location before a game. That time, I freed the stick and got a guy with a huge pickup truck next to us with cable to try jumping the car. That worked immediately and the system reset itself. So I was confident that all we needed was a jump. With the garage pretty much empty, I decided to call AAA, and that’s when I discovered that I had left my wallet at home. After some tense moments, I was able to get the AAA phone number and secure some service within the next 126 minutes. Fortunately, AAA was beyond responsive. Within about 20 minutes Dacota from Campus Automotive rolled up with his portable starter kit and helpful outlook on life. The car immediately fired up. My sister had been recovered from the shuttle, and we headed back to Roanoke without any further setbacks.
As you can tell, our first game in two seasons was not especially fun. The positives were walking across campus, the pregame views in the stadium, and being rescued by Dacota. The negatives far out-weighed any positive. The neighbors, the money-less concessions, the beers, the distracting jumbotron. Oh and the mauling by Pitt. It’s like the fan base no longer goes to the game for the game, but rather to… I don’t know what. From here on out, we will follow the team more from the distance. I’m sure some would tell us to not let the door hit us on the way out, but we don’t have surplus discretionary income to spend of something that really isn’t very entertaining.
I suppose that at least we didn’t have to watch the game broadcast with endless sideline shots of Narduzzi whining about everything, and that’s something. Go Hokies.
Here are some other photos from our visit
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