USC Football Mania

Last Saturday was our first home game against Ohio State. USC came in ranked 1st and Ohio State ranked 5th, so the pre-game hype had escalated to a pretty high point. The day of the game, there was a palpable sense of energy infused throughout the entire campus. My own suitemates woke up early, making tons of noise since they were so excited about the football game. When I went to eat brunch at Parkside, there was literally a sea of red; everyone was wearing a USC shirt or some type of USC clothing. 

My friends and I decided to head over to the colosseum at noon that way we could beat most of the crowd. It turned out that there were already well over 1,000 fans waiting in line. Feeling slightly overwhelmed by it all, we plopped ourselves at the end of the line and proceeded to play cards to pass the time until 2:00. Luckily, my friend brought his boombox so we were able to listen to music. The sense of energy around the colosseum was far greater than on campus. There were dozens of drunk people stumbling around, overly loud and exuberant fans, people whose bodies were painted half cardinal and half gold and even a brawl that broke out between a drunk USC fan and an unlucky Ohio State fan that had happened to walk by. The smell of hot dogs, hamburgers, beer, smoke, and even the faint scent of pot permeated the air. 

With so much activity to see and smell, the hours passed pretty quickly. Before we knew it, the line was moving. However, we were given a rude awakening when we reached the front of the line: we weren't allowed to bring our backpacks in. We had to trudge over to a tent on the side where we gave them our bags. It was extremely unorganized and took much longer than necessary. To make matters worse, people were getting written up for underage drinking and other offenses at the same tent, so there were a lot of pissed off people we had to encounter. 

When we finally got into the colosseum, the student section was already 80% full. The time we had spent waiting in the backpack line had let a hundred people behind us skip ahead, so we were left with seats that were five rows from the absolute top. Although I would have preferred being just a tad closer, the view of the football field was great, and we also had a great view of the entire student section. 

The football game itself was pretty exciting. The student fans were extremely loud, impassioned, and Trojans at heart. Nothing beats the first touchdown that you see in a huge stadium of 93,000 screaming football fans. USC played really well offensively and defensively and didn't give Ohio State an inch to do anything worthwhile. In the end, I was really glad that we had won by such a large margin, but I was simultaneously disappointed that Ohio State hadn't given us a harder run for our money.

Needless to say, we lost to Oregon State the next week...