Buckeyes and Penguins
My family is an Ohio State family. My father, my wife, and my brother are all Ohio State grads. I remember when I was small, my father would drive to Columbus, pre-freeways on Route 62, to take us to the games. Ohio State wasn’t doing very well in those days, and often times, the stadium would only be ¾ full. Ferguson ALWAYS carried the ball. We would have brunch in the Ohio Union and watch the band at the skull session at St. John’s Arena. If the family was flush, we would stay at the Holiday Inn over night. It was a big deal.
When I attended Ohio State beginning in 1970, I became addicted. My wife and I honeymooned on the 50 yard line of Ohio Stadium. We had 50 yard line seats for the Michigan game that year, and no wedding was going to get in the way. It turned out to be one of the best Michigan games I have ever seen. If I remember correctly, Ohio State won the game with 5 goal line stands against Michigan. They burned cars on High Street that night.
After we graduated, we attended every home game for several years. It was good to be back in Columbus on the weekends after being in Ada, Ohio, where I attended law school. We stayed warm by bringing the hooch in flasks. When we poured the whiskey into the hot coffee, the whole section knew that we were trying to “keep warm.” We snuggled under the stadium blankets, met with old friends. It was a good time.
It is different now. What was a big time business is now a mega business. The only way to assure yourself of season tickets is to donate huge sums of money, and the university has no shame in asking for it. You can give annually, or purchase an insurance policy naming OSU as a beneficiary. You are then given the “opportunity” to buy two season tickets. The rest of us peons are thrown into a lottery and may be able to buy two tickets to a game, usually not one of the good ones. And we sit behind the posts or in the end zone.
The stadium has been “updated”. They added seats by permanently filling in the end of the horseshoe, and adding seats to the top of C Deck. That involved putting a new façade on the stadium onto which the new seats could be built. But mostly they wanted to add luxury boxes. Looks real nice. But you are not allowed to bring food or water into the stadium anymore, let alone booze. Ostensibly, this is for security reasons. I suspect the real reason is they want to sell you a $3.00 bottle of water or a $5.00 hot dog.
We haven’t attended a game in years. It is just too painful to remember what it was like “way back when”. For me, my “way back when” goes all the way back to 1955 when my folks brought me to Columbus for the first time. The Neil Avenue apartment building where my parents lived in 1946-49 is still there, and my today family still has to walk right past it to get to the stadium. Same buildings, different people, 60 years later. I wonder if anyone who lives there now knows my parents were there long ago.
Then there was the “way back when” to where my wife and I met, dated, and got married. Our old haunts are all gone. Columbus has built up the South Campus area, where we lived, to where it is almost unrecognizable. We used to go to a place called the Blue Danube, a “townie” tavern on High Street. It is still there, but was closed for renovations the last time we tried to walk down memory lane. Yesterday, while driving my car, the radio station played some Chicago, and for a minute I was 20 again, partying with my fiancé and my friends at Andy Kapp’s. Then some bimbo with a cell phone cut me off, and as they say, you can’t go home again.
This football season we are going to try something new. Youngstown State is one of the top Division 1-AA teams in the country. It is time to root for the home team. This is still old fashioned football. Players are on scholarships, sort of. You can still buy tickets at the ticket office on game day. No booze in the stadium, but it is more like don’t ask, don’t tell. And YSU even has a fight song, and it is one of the better ones. Time to trade some Buckeyes for Penguins. Yes, the YSU Penguins.
We’ll leave Ohio State to television. Go YoCo.
When I attended Ohio State beginning in 1970, I became addicted. My wife and I honeymooned on the 50 yard line of Ohio Stadium. We had 50 yard line seats for the Michigan game that year, and no wedding was going to get in the way. It turned out to be one of the best Michigan games I have ever seen. If I remember correctly, Ohio State won the game with 5 goal line stands against Michigan. They burned cars on High Street that night.
After we graduated, we attended every home game for several years. It was good to be back in Columbus on the weekends after being in Ada, Ohio, where I attended law school. We stayed warm by bringing the hooch in flasks. When we poured the whiskey into the hot coffee, the whole section knew that we were trying to “keep warm.” We snuggled under the stadium blankets, met with old friends. It was a good time.
It is different now. What was a big time business is now a mega business. The only way to assure yourself of season tickets is to donate huge sums of money, and the university has no shame in asking for it. You can give annually, or purchase an insurance policy naming OSU as a beneficiary. You are then given the “opportunity” to buy two season tickets. The rest of us peons are thrown into a lottery and may be able to buy two tickets to a game, usually not one of the good ones. And we sit behind the posts or in the end zone.
The stadium has been “updated”. They added seats by permanently filling in the end of the horseshoe, and adding seats to the top of C Deck. That involved putting a new façade on the stadium onto which the new seats could be built. But mostly they wanted to add luxury boxes. Looks real nice. But you are not allowed to bring food or water into the stadium anymore, let alone booze. Ostensibly, this is for security reasons. I suspect the real reason is they want to sell you a $3.00 bottle of water or a $5.00 hot dog.
We haven’t attended a game in years. It is just too painful to remember what it was like “way back when”. For me, my “way back when” goes all the way back to 1955 when my folks brought me to Columbus for the first time. The Neil Avenue apartment building where my parents lived in 1946-49 is still there, and my today family still has to walk right past it to get to the stadium. Same buildings, different people, 60 years later. I wonder if anyone who lives there now knows my parents were there long ago.
Then there was the “way back when” to where my wife and I met, dated, and got married. Our old haunts are all gone. Columbus has built up the South Campus area, where we lived, to where it is almost unrecognizable. We used to go to a place called the Blue Danube, a “townie” tavern on High Street. It is still there, but was closed for renovations the last time we tried to walk down memory lane. Yesterday, while driving my car, the radio station played some Chicago, and for a minute I was 20 again, partying with my fiancé and my friends at Andy Kapp’s. Then some bimbo with a cell phone cut me off, and as they say, you can’t go home again.
This football season we are going to try something new. Youngstown State is one of the top Division 1-AA teams in the country. It is time to root for the home team. This is still old fashioned football. Players are on scholarships, sort of. You can still buy tickets at the ticket office on game day. No booze in the stadium, but it is more like don’t ask, don’t tell. And YSU even has a fight song, and it is one of the better ones. Time to trade some Buckeyes for Penguins. Yes, the YSU Penguins.
We’ll leave Ohio State to television. Go YoCo.
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