The Blue Board

quote:
Playing Calling Baton Rouge This is, This is… Garth brooks, but on Saturday night on the field it was 93,000 plus, the most they have ever had in Tiger stadium and umm… they play this song and there is a video of swamps and there’s people and there’s pictures of les miles and uh, I was told by one of the equipment guys down there said that that is Les’s favorite part of the day. Like, Watch Les when this is going on. So I’m trying to watch Les, but I’m trying to watch the people, and when 93,000 people yell that LOUISIANA bit and they sing every bit of it and then the band plays BUMM BUMM BUMM BU, you love that part too.

Everything they do is orchestrated, everything they do has got some kind of hand motion and yelling… a lot of it’s profane and maybe that bums some folks out but I thought it was awesome. And, let me make one thing clear, I got asked this a lot by my Madison people. Madison Wisconsin, you guys know my affinity for you.

Not, not like I’m stepping out on you, I’ve said yours is the best college town and I don’t change how I feel but I’m gonna say this… For three hours on Saturday Night, I don’t know that there has ever been an atmosphere in SPORTS that I’ve been a part of that was as memorable to me. I have no dog in this fight. I mean look, I’ve been to games where I’ve watched Maryland win a national championship, that was very personal to me. Makes me think of my dad who left us too soon, and I’ve been to Redskins games where I have everything invested, as a kid rooting for my team.

I have nothing but being a sports fan on the line on Saturday night. And I’ve never seen something that felt like that. Or heard anything that was as sustained as that. Spencer Hall, my friend that writes for Everyday Should be Saturday in sports, SB nation among others, he’s got the gold standard definition of this, the 2007 game story he wrote that we quoted the other day and he was right.

Everything I saw about it, the fact that it’s… The stuff they eat. I don’t know what Boudin is, but I want some now! They fry everything, I think when they brush their teeth at night they don’t put the toothpaste on and put water, I think they put bourbon on it just to get it wet. The people were hospitable to us, I understand folks in the SEC maybe they aren’t always so kind to you when you show up to Red Stick as they call it, but they were awesome to us.

And, as I said to you earlier Ryan, to me if you see a movie or you read a book or you see something that lingers with you afterwards, that’s how you know it was great. What we saw Saturday night is something that won’t soon leave me. Just because I felt so incredibly fortunate to be there on a night where they were playing with their pride on the line after what happened to them in the Title Game and they wanted to prove a point to Alabama.

And they did all of that and they lost.

And I don’t know how you get past that. I guess it will be incredibly tough to move on from it. But everything that was part of the experience, I was told it was going to be awesome. It was better than I was told it was. There’s a guy down there that would know, saw a text today that says “that’s the best that stadium’s ever been”.

If it is, then I count myself a sports fan that I was there. I got a zillion videos I took just so I could remember what it sounded like in my ears. Ya’ll did it as good as it could be done... and… you didn’t win, but it didn’t mean that you didn’t win in a way because that environment is just, there is nothing beyond it.

There is nothing I would put ahead of that that I’ve EVER seen in any sport. When you’re there, you don’t want to miss anything. You know what I mean, when you are standing on the sidelines, you’re looking into the corners and everybody’s out there at the beginning and you’re feeling like, alright, am I getting it all, am I getting it all.

There was a tension to that game that was different though then a year ago. And I was in Tuscaloosa for the overtime game when LSU went in there and won. I still feel like because LSU fans for the most part, accepted the fact that they are big under dogs, and not many people were picking them, that losing, as gutting as it was over that 43 second drive, that they still had never gone into it expecting to lose, and now they’re a two loss team, and not a part of the national championship picture, for the most part, they weren’t before it.

So there was a different kind of loss, you see what I’m saying? You see before you weren’t, I don’t think you could be as depressed from that loss as you would have been if you had zero losses in that game. I’d rather lose by 55 points than lose like that, because they were the better team. Saban said it afterwards.

They did every single thing they could do, and it wasn’t enough because in the end McCarron pulled a rabbit out of a hat and was fantastic, he was fantastic in that last drive. And full credit to them for doing it, but I mean just in terms of the vibe and what it was… man… it is seared on my brain and I will remember it incredibly finally and just feel like I was lucky to see an atmosphere where it meant that much. And, it was played at that kind of a level.

You can spare me your sarcasm for people around the country that are going to tell me whatever you want to tell me about “they don’t score this or that”. Go there once. Go there once and then talk. If you haven’t been… no talkie. "