After my 3 mile walk to my car after a long day at the stadium, sipping tea was the only thing I could do without enduring any pain. My back, my feet, my heart….This was a new experience in more ways than one yesterday. I went out and tailgated with my guys Turtle (@TurtleBITW), Matt (@CoachBourbonUSA on Twitter) and Justin (@JustinRenck) from CardinalSportsZone.com (Cheap Plug). Me and Turts got to old Cardinal Stadium about noonish. Justin got there shortly after and he set up shop right next to THE Red Rage tailgate. A literal museum to all things Cardinal, The Red Rage is what most people would consider, the mecca of the Tailgate world. As seen on Wave3 Sunrise (Cheap plug for WAVE) those guys throw DOWN!!! They got there before 5am and partied the whole day. It was pretty awesome. Thanks to Lauren Jones from Wave3 for getting this together for those guys! Follow the Red Rage on Twitter at @TheRed_Rage so you know when and where to meet on game days!
I watched the Rain Game, the NCAA Basketball Championship and then watched a group of beverage enjoyers rock the “Power Hour” and then go to war on the Cornhole boards. It was pretty awesome. Then attention turned to going and picking up my tickets. Around 4 I headed towards the Cardinal Hall of Fame Café to meet my buddy Chris. I had the Ville Burger (amazing) and Chris had the Pizza which I thought was a wuss safe pick. Hi Chris! We then went to go grab the tickets from Brian from Twitter (@_cynyc_). We were gonna grab the tickets and go find a parking spot but to our surprise, Brian had included a parking pass. So we rushed to get back to our car and park so we could make it to CardMarch.
It was INSANE! people as far as you could see. Just amazing. It was exactly what the guys needed as you could even see a few get emotional when they seen their family at the front of the line. We waited for about 30 minutes for tweedle dee & company to figure out how to start getting people in the Stadium. Me & Chris met up with Steve (@Stiz_CSZ), and went and sat in the CrunchZone and just soaked everything in. It felt like a big time game and you could tell it was a big time atmosphere. As we got to be about 40 minutes from action the team came out and you could tell they meant business.
We were officially ready to go! So me and Chris headed towards our seats to sit down for good and get ready for war. Another first…the fans! I will admit with about 15 minutes before kickoff I was worried. tons of empty seats everywhere. I just knew I would have to hear it from the attendance police. But not so fast my friend…At kickoff the place was rocking. It stayed that way all night thanks to @DJKDogg. I have never been that pumped for the entire duration of a game in my life. I know I wasn’t the only one either because everyone stood the entire night. It was truly an experience I will never forget. Here is where I watched the game from thanks to Brian who had seats next to us. The fans were truyly awesome. Sat next to my guy Sam AKA @baseboy124 and he stood up in his seat most of the game! lol. A+ to the fans last night.
So then the game is played. After a huge 21-0 run in the first half I kept thinking to myself, we needed to score on that first drive. The first drive started with a 71 yard pass from Will (@WillGardner_11) to DP (@TalentedYoung9) which was all the way down to the 4 yard line. We failed to score and I told Chris that it would hurt us in the end. 21 points later I wasn’t so sure of it but knew after multiple INT’s by Jamies, that we needed to go into half 21-0 to have a chance. They scored by freak accident and went in up only 21-7 with the reigning and defending National Champs on the ropes at the half. They got the ball first also to start the second half. We need a Muhammad Ali type punch to their gut going into half and didn’t get it. On to the second half. The Cards D were going to have to come out strong to give us a shot and they did. Gerod Holliman (@GMS_HOTROD) recorded his second INT of the game on the opening drive of the game. He tied Anthony Floyd for INT’s in a single season with his 10th. At that moment I knew the game was over. Jameis did not as he stripped Gerod and FSU got the ball back. The D made up for though forcing FSU to turn the ball over on downs. The Cards drove down and kicked a FG but still I was not eased. I had seen open routes to the flat all night and evidently so did Jameis because they abused us in the middle for the rest of the night putting up almost 700 yards of offense on us and never looking back winning 42-31 including a 21-7 run in the fourth quarter. This time the first I was experiencing was the first time I was in person for a big time game that we lost. Make no mistake, the crowd, the players and the game were awesome. I am so proud of the guys though. We played an amazing game, we just ran out of gas. But we will have these big time games every year now. This was in fact a big time game. Jake Owen, Ali, CC Sebathia, Tino Martinez, Jack Nicklaus and just about every NFL Card playing right now and a lot of the important guys to our history as well. FSU fans were amazing too. It was so refreshing to be able to have mutual admiration throughout the entirety of the game. I got Tweets like this after the game.
https://twitter.com/SamiNole89/status/528171471085244416
@hokiesmash @CardSportsZone @KilroyFSU I'm so going to Louisville in 2016. That place looked awesome tonight.
— Stephen Long (@thecolonel82) October 31, 2014
I've been to FSU games at every ACC stadium except BC & Pitt. Louisville is behind only Clemson in terms of stadium atmosphere. Great crowd.
— KilroyFSU (@KilroyFSU) October 30, 2014
Those kind of things let you guys know that we have represented ourselves great as a whole. I met a hundred FSU fans and they were awesome. Even our trash talk ended with a laugh at the end of each taunt. So different from those other guys. Speaking of those other guys, I walked next to a group of 5 “FSU” fans that had uk blankets with them. So if you ran into one of the few bad FSU fans we can suspect to know who they were.
Hey but that ain’t none of my business…lol. All in all it was an amazing night and as Steve just mentioned to me you left the game knowing you were just a part of something special. I will be in Doak next year so to the people who tweeted me from Tallahassee, let me get a room…haha. Well we have just 4 games left this year so let’s go win out! Go Cards!
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