Cheering at a Whisper

I'm a little emotionally constipated tonight. My buddy Hank gave me a call earlier in the week telling me that he scored a few tickets to the Georgia-Georgia Tech game and asking if K and I wanted to go. Of course my answer was yes. This looked to be a good game this year, especially after Tech thrashed a ranked Miami last week.

The only problem was that the tickets were student section tickets, meaning that Hank and I, both decidedly Tech fans, would be stuck wearing neutral colors and cheering and complaining silently the entire game (and using borrowed student IDs to get in). I'm sure that any of the UGA students around us would have noticed our unnatural (for that section) allegiances had they paid close attention, but honestly, I'm not sure anyone was paying any attention to us. We tended to keep our conversation either neutral or really quiet. There were only a couple of times either one of us let any excitement slip, and each time it was a wordless exclamation that could have been interpreted either way. Regardless of whether anyone noticed our blue and gold allegiances, no one commented on them, so I think we were fairly successful in not being jackasses. Honestly, if we'd gotten our tickets in a more official manner I would have said screw it and cheered my ass off. It was an exciting game (and Tech won!), but considering the circumstances of our being in the student section we felt it wisest and best to keep our jackassery to a minimum. It would have sucked to have gotten kicked out and have had to miss that ending.

This abnormal reserve in the face of football action actually led to an odd sequence when, late in the game, Roddy Jones broke free for a long run and I started yelling in my excitement. The only thing is that instead of sounding like I was cheering in ecstasy, I was able to cheer in a very angry tone. "Oh my god! I can't believe it! Wow!" managed to come out as if I just have a very sarcastic way of expressing disappointment. It was very surreal to be happy on the inside and angry on the outside.

One thing I thought about while watching the Jackets somehow erase a disheartening first half with a brilliant third quarter: Josh Nesbitt would really kick ass at pooping in the woods. Remember how I portrayed my experience with wilderness defecation earlier in the week as traumatic and difficult? It wouldn't have been so hard for Nesbitt. He takes a snap with perfect forest pooping posture. Here's video proof:



Yeah, I know that's not a great shot, but if you watch the quarterback at the beginning of the clip, that's Nesbitt. He practically rests his chin on the center's rear end before every snap he gets so low in his squat.

Going back to the game, if Virginia could have knocked off Virginia Tech today instead of losing by three points, this would have potentially been the greatest season for Georgia Tech since 1990 as they would have gone to the ACC championship and quite possibly beat Georgia, won an ACC championship, and won a BCS bowl all in the same season. As it is, they'll probably erect a few shrines to Paul Johnson in Atlanta this week in honor of his having humbled the Dawgs after seven consecutive years of losing to the damned Redneck and Black of Athens.

That's just proof that I was there. Sorry about the poor image quality. It was raining today and I didn't know my seat would be under the overhang of the upper deck so I only took my phone and not my camera. That's the image the instant the clock ran out and Tech officially won. The guy flying the GT banner can seen in the end zone just left of center in the photo.

That's actually a closeup of the scoreboard. Sadly, the scoreboard kept screwing up during the game. At one point it said that Tech was up 313 to 28 or something. They finally just shut the big score down (which really hurt the shot I had planned on taking should Tech have won) and replaced it with a much smaller score line at the very bottom that my camera phone smudged into oblivion. It actually read GT 45, UGA 42. On the scoreboard in the second half they kept showing shots of Uga (the live bulldog mascot) in his little doghouse on the sidelines. He always looked so sad. By the end of the third quarter he'd shoved himself into the far corner of his abode in his attempt to block out the horror being visited upon his team.

And for no real reason at all, an overweight cat carrying around a marsh rabbit. If you're squeamish, don't worry, I spooked the cat seconds after this photo was taken and the rabbit ran free. The cat gave me the evil eye for the rest of the weekend after that.