…Continued from the previous post.

It was late in the first half and a crisis was unfolding in the student section.

With a tightly contested game taking place between St. Francis University and the home team Cal Polytech, we lost a “G”. Apparently one of the female fans who made up a human billboard spelling out “GO MUSTANGS” across 10 adjacent bare midriffs got a call and had to leave.

There were two options:  Carry on with a somewhat incomplete message for the rest of the game, or recruit a stand-in. Fortunately, nine women working together can be awfully persuasive, and soon enough some helpless male was bearing a large, hastily spray-painted “G” on his now-bare chest. He was clearly not wild about the idea, but gamely did his part throughout the evening, despite temperatures that began to drop precipitously after dark.

Welcome to Division 1 college football, slightly off the beaten path.

This Homecoming Game at Cal Poly’s Alex G. Spanos Stadium had all the best intentions of being just like the games they play in the glamour conferences, but the execution…well all I can say is “O Mustangs!”  

There were of course, the game day stadium standards:  The beach ball batted around in the stands. The animated hidden-ball-under-the-helmet shuffle on the scoreboard. The Kiss Cam on the video board, which never fails to draw an “awwww” when an elderly couple shares a smooch with the rest of the crowd. And in one of the best pairings of sponsor and promotion that I’ve seen, the R&R Dental Care Smile Cam – which should require no additional explanation.

And then there were some things I’ve not seen before, and sincerely hope I never see again. I speak of course of the “Jersey Shore Fist-Pump Cam”, a video board montage of images from the show and live shots of the crowd doing…well, I’m not exactly sure what they were doing. What, I wondered, does football have to do with a bunch of foul-mouthed, narcissistic substance abusers? Wait a second…I just described half the roster of your average NFL team. OK, now I get the connection.

On the other end of the spectrum, in a nice, genuine tradition, every time Cal Poly would get a first down, the announcer would say “And that’s a first down…”, to which the crowd would enthusiastically reply “MUSTANGS!” It wasn’t elaborate or heavily produced, and nobody was going to get their face on television doing it, but it was communal and authentic, in the face of so many things done in the name of Big Game fan entertainment these days that are not.

And there was also a football game.

The St. Francis Red Flash had come all the way across the country from Pennsylvania to act as traditional Homecoming Game fodder. Coming into the game they had one solitary win in seven outings. Matched against Cal Poly, the 22^nd ranked team in the country, this had all the makings of a rout.

But the Red Flash didn’t conduct themselves like they had come for a beatdown. And they sure didn’t play like it. As expected, they fell behind quickly – but they didn’t go away. In fact, they put together a lengthy drive at the end of the first half and scored a touchdown with 41 seconds left before the break. Their point-after kick tied the score, but an offensive penalty on the play forced a retry, which sailed wide. At halftime Cal Poly led just 13-12.

With a little time on our hands, The Bird and I decided to go for hot chocolate. Yes, hot chocolate. There was a chill in the air, and the kind of atmosphere that pretty much demanded nothing else but.

On the way to the concession stand, we passed a pop-up tent which housed energetic members of the women’s varsity basketball team. They were on hand to hand out schedule cards and pump up excitement for the upcoming season. I was approached by one player who so earnestly insisted that we come and watch them play, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I lived a couple hundred miles away. So now I’m on the hook for a Lady Mustangs hoops game.

Still further along, we came across a bunch of kids playing with a small football on a grassy slope underneath the scoreboard, and I couldn’t help but think that this was undoubtedly the high point of the evening for them. That’s how kids become sports fans – not necessarily because of what they see at a sporting event, but more because of what they experience.

That St. Francis touchdown drive to close out the first half served as a wake-up call for Cal Poly, who came out and scored a touchdown just seconds into the third quarter. When the Mustangs scored again on their next possession, the scheduled thrashing was officially on.

Except that nobody notified the Red Flash that they were supposed to roll over each time they fell behind by two touchdowns. So they didn’t. Led by extremely talented quarterback John Kelly, they survived the frenzied first few minutes of the second half and then matched the Mustangs score for score, keeping the game always theoretically within reach.

And when they converted on a fourth down and goal to pull within eight points of Cal Poly at the end of the third quarter, it was nervous time over in the student section.

This turned out to be a wonderful thing, because all of the gimmicky “entertainment” was summarily suspended and the fans reverted to the basics of vocally rooting for their team –a lot of wild cheering when Cal Poly recorded a big gain, and disruptive screaming when St. Francis was trying to call a play. It was pure fan-dom. And it was fun.

This back and forth scoring duel opened up each team’s offense and there was twice as much passing as had taken place in the first half. St. Francis’ Kelly in particular was brilliant, both in scrambling and in hitting downfield receivers on the run. For his part, Cal Poly QB Tony Smith began consistently finding flashy wide receiver Dominique Johnson. All told, Smith and Johnson (yes, their real names) connected eight times for 115 yards, including a 21-yard touchdown pass that finally put the game out of reach.

As the clock ticked off the final seconds of the game, one of the biggest discrepancies between Big Time college football and this – Good Time college football – presented itself.

At the end of a Big Time football game, most of the players dash for the locker room, crossing paths with the media rushing onto the field. A phalanx of police and security personnel escort the two opposing head coaches across the field for the traditional post-game handshake, and then quickly shepherd them off to the tunnel.

In Good Time football, that whole scene is replaced by The Midfield Mingle, in which players, cheerleaders, band members, girlfriends, families, friends and a random collection of other miscellaneous fans gather on the field and…well…just hang out for a while, reveling in post-game satisfaction and making plans for later on.

The Mingle is a scene of pure Americana, and I almost feel sorry for the Big Time football players who rarely get to enjoy it. Notice I said “almost”. Because in exchange for The Mingle, those players get to experience the thrill of competing for a spot in a playoff system that builds to a crescendo throughout the month of December, and ultimately culminates in the national…oops – sorry, I forgot. While it exists in every other level of play, they don’t actually have anything like that in Big Time college football.

So to recap, the Good Time football players get The Mingle AND The Play-offs, while the Big Time football players get…well, they get to play in an often lightly attended exhibition game, played a long way from home. And maybe a nice jacket and an iPod as part of a gift package.

And oh yes, how could I have forgotten? They get the satisfaction of knowing that their school made a pantload of money from them playing in that exhibition game. A win-win if ever there was one.  

 

 

Next Up:  The PBA World Series of Bowling