Four Spartans and the Perfect Game

You can tell the people that don’t get to go to football games very often, because they get to the game really early, look at their tickets, look around the stadium, look at their tickets again, then wander around the seats for a while and plop down next to an old lady.   Here’s my dad, Mark and Arthur at the MSU-Purdue game a week or so ago sitting near the old lady who soon informed us we were in the wrong seats.

Now once you’ve sat down in the wrong seat it’s hard to make it look like you know what you’re doing, and we made things even worse by going off in three different directions.  Mark went down stairs and back up, Arthur went up and then down, and my dad and I went over, down and up.  We all eventually found our spot and sat down.  Worried we might blow it again, though, we had a young lady in front of us take our photo.

We didn’t sit down much after that, though, because it was too nerve-racking.  See, right after the band came onto the field, there emitted from the west end zone a large puff of smoke.  Out of the smoke the Spartan players came running, and I mean really fast, and I was convinced they were running from giant flames or a big fireball.  Equally disconcerting was the fact that they ran full speed until they reached the other end of the end zone, near us.  

Then, as the smoke disappeared, the players lined up nonchalantly as if nothing had happened.  And as if they were going to take each other on.  

I found this all quite odd, and was about to ask my father if indeed the bad guys–in this case the Purdue team–was going to show up when, alas, they emerged onto the field, smoke free.  As they faced off against each other and pushed each other around, a voice came over the loudspeaker asking us to turn our attention to the sideline near us so the seniors and their parents could be formally introduced and photographed with the coach.   This went on for several mushy minutes until finally, the family members disappeared, the players lined up as if they really intended to take each other on, the anthem played and near the end–before the land of the free!–two F-16 fighter jets flew over in salute to the men of the armed forces or the team or somebody important enough to warrant two jets rattling the entire stadium.  Finally, the band left, a coin was tossed and repocketed in the ref’s pants, the ball was kicked off and we started getting our butts kicked. 

The butt kicking continued for the entire first half.

Soon it was half time and the teams disappeared and the band came out again.  The band formed squares . . .

 . . . and more complicated patterns.

And then members of military came out in camoflauge that didn’t exactly blend in.  I thought perhaps they were looking for the guys that made the smoke at the beginning of the game, but instead of weapons, they were carrying this giant American flag.

Of course, I missed getting a photo of the giant American flag because I was distracted by this mush ball fatherly figure standing next to me, a man in his early 70s who got teary-eyed when the anthem was played and the seniors had their photos taken with their parents and the coach, and who was teary-eyed at the sight of the giant American flag.  I grabbed his hand and stood proudly next to him as the band played the songs of the various armed forces.  And I clapped for him, a veteran of the Navy, when Anchors Aweigh was played.

Then I ran off to the underside of the stadium where the women were lined up in a neat, winding line for the women’s restroom while the men were a disorganized mass all pushing into the men’s restroom at the same time.  After a single glance at our tickets, Mark and I returned to our seat.  Arthur returned with four hotdogs, three of which he consumed.  Dad showed up with a tiny seat cushion for someone with a rectangular butt.  I was wondering if there’d be another puff of smoke to announce the return of the team when I was thunderstruck:  this was Arthur’s first Spartan game, Mark’s first Spartan game and my first Spartan game in a long time.  All four of us had graduated from MSU, yet we’d never gone to a football game together.  I don’t know when my dad last went to Spartan stadium, but surely, they don’t fly F-16s every week, bring out gigantic flags and honor men that served in the military.  The sky was blue, the weather perfect, and it would come to be that MSU came back to win with a blocked field goal, followed by an interception with less than a minute to go.  It was a perfect day.

So thanks to my stepmom, Norma, for getting the four tickets from her co-worker at Sears.  My father said it was the most fun he’d ever had a football game.  And it was for me, too. 

See, it matters not who wins or loses,  it’s who was with you when you experienced the game.