I love all things football. I get really excited when September rolls around because the season is starting. I get sad come February because my Saturdays & Sundays are no longer filled with football watching.
I enjoy college and professional football equally. I follow my undergrad (Univ. of Louisiana-Monroe) and grad school #2 (Univ. of Georgia) alma mater on the collegiate level and the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers on the professional level.
During the fall I make at least 3-4 trips to my undergrad alma mater for football games. This year, for the very first time, my school had an unbelievable season and we made it to a bowl game!!! How awesome is that? Well, the game didn’t turn out in our favor, but we had a blast no matter.
The weather wasn’t going to be great so I made sure to pack warm gear and layers. In looking through my closet for a jacket that would be suitable for warmth and rainy weather I found one with the name of the school from when I was an undergrad:
I graduated in 1993 and at some point in the late 90s the name of the school was changed to the University of Louisiana-Monroe. Many of us who finished when it was NLU are still nostalgic about the name and cherish anything with NLU on it as you can’t purchase gear with that name on it anymore.
Thursday night we hung out with some friends of my guy from when he was at NLU. We hung way to late for my liking, but that’s what you do, right?
One of my sorors and her son met us at the hotel late Friday morning and we made our way to the stadium for the Independence Bowl. It was cold, not rainy, thankfully. There was a fanfest in the coliseum next to the stadium so we headed in there until 45 minutes to game time.
We made our way to the stadium to get our tickets and enter the game.
It was crowded on our side of the stadium. It was great to see the fanbase out to support the
Robert & I at the Independence Bowl
team/school in this first ever bowl game. The game quickly turned into a runaway for the other team, kudos to the Ohio Bobcats, and the weather got worse. It was getting colder and colder and then it started to misty rain. We were miserable. We headed out toward the end of the quarter 3 as we were quite frozen.
We finally thawed in the car and back at the hotel. We hung out there the rest of the afternoon/evening. We headed up to a friends room to visit with her:
The three of us were all at NLU at the same time and we’re all sorors!
Later that evening folks came by our room and another late night ensued. I was SO sleepy, at one point I was sitting on the footstool, propped against the wall, asleep. I can’t hang! Especially after the late night on Thursday! I think someone even showed up to the room about 11 pm. I was thinking, isn’t it time for these people to leave? I was so sleepy I had a headache. I think they finally left about 1 am and I immediately crashed.
We got up at 9 am Saturday morning, dressed, ate breakfast at Waffle House and made our way back to Baton Rouge.
