[Editor's Note: I revisited this the following June and added some notes, which are in red]
In about an hour, My wife and I will be leaving for Winston-Salem to watch Notre Dame/Wake Forest.
It's taken me 10 minutes to follow that last line. I've had the tickets for a full five days but the realization is just settling in. The funny thing is I got a flash of nervousness as I was thinking about it. But I guess it makes since. The Irish have a habit of making solid QBs look like Heisman hopefuls, and Tanner Price almost figures to be next [If he hadn't squandered two goal line possessions in the second half, he would have been]. This is the type of game that has customarily broken Notre Dame's season since, well, 1988.
It's going to be strange to cheer while at a football game [It was]. It's been a very long time since I've been allowed to do that. I'd estimate that I've been to 100 football games in the last four years (about 20 high school football games per year, which includes five rounds of public-school playoffs; two years of covering home Panthers games; and two Appalachian State (my alma mater ) football games.
It would've been natural to get whipped into a frenzy at the App games, especially last week when they toppled top-ranked Georgia Southern. Instead, I was back in work mode: which players were on the field, who wasn't, subs, what the last play was, offensive formation, defensive formation, down, yardage, trends emerging, blah, blah, blah. I tried to let it go, and it worked. A little. But there was still a small amount of detachment there. Really hoping that subsides a little bit. [I still think there's something to this, but I've come to realize that my fandom's intensity level is directly proportionate to the amount of time spent tailgating beforehand. My gut tells me there's a correlation.]
The solution , as it occurs to me, happens to have a fortuitous side effect which should help mitigate the cold that is scheduled to sweep in after dark: Maker's Mark. A responsible amount -- not enough to get weepy[check], sloppy [check] or confrontational [Pretty much]. Just enough to get happy and warm, and to cheer without thinking too much.
[All in all, amazing. The Irish tried their best but couldn't quite pull off the loss, winning 24-17. They did go into halftime down 10-17, however]
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