My Road Trip To South Bend

Submitted by maizenbluedevil on

Hey all, wanted to post about this much earlier in the week, but I've been hella busy and haven't had the chance to log on, sit down, and give this proper treatment until now.

As many late-night Friday MGoPosters know, last Friday night, IUandUofM offered up an extra ticket to the ND game on Saturday, per here: http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/free-notre-dame-ticket-someone-who-otherwise-could-not-go#comment-635907 .  I lucked out, became the chosen one, promptly packed my things, got in my car at 1:45 AM, and drove 12.5 hours from North Carolina to South Bend.  

By the way, IUandUofM should be pos-banged for all eternity for his generosity in offering up the extra ticket.  A big thanks to him.  It was fun to watch the game with a fellow MGoBlogger.  

Here are some thoughts about my experience and some pics of my travels....

(The West Virginia sign....a bit blurry as it was taken while driving...  I was on a schedule so I didn't get the chance to find RR's holler while in WV.)

A couple nice pics of the sunrise in Ohio:

 

(The following one was striking to me because it was 9/11...the telephone poles are reminiscent of the twin towers, and the sunrise reminds us of the endurance of hope.)

 

 

Once I got to South Bend, I must say I was extremely impressed with the way ND does parking.  They are very, very quick and efficient.  I was impressed with ND overall.  While they razzed visiting fans, of course, they were hospitable, classy, and helpful.  The campus is very nice as well.  

As for the game itself, we were seated in the south end zone, with a bunch of other Michigan fans/alums.  We were fairly high up, but the view of the game was great.  This offered a much different perspective than you get on TV, and viewing the game from this angle really gave me an accurate sense of just how much RR stretches the field.... watching it on TV, from the side-to-side vantage point, you don't get much of a sense of this.

Also, in person, I got a much better sense of the fakes on the zone read.  Denard's fakes are much more convincing in person than on TV.  This was one of my beefs with the zone read last year....that on reads where the QB handed off, they didn't follow through with the rest of the play like Pat White often did at WVU.  Denard is definitely doing that this year, which is great to see.

As for the 87 yard run, it was awesome to see that live!!  The crowd in our section went nuts for that.  Obviously this was a great game to be at.  

Here are some pics from during the game:

Touchdown Jesus:

 

The Dome:

 

The Band making an outline of the shape of the US at halftime:

 

Obviously the second half was awesome.  The game was epic overall, probably the best sporting event I've ever been at.  What amazed me was that between the penalties, the huge defensive mistakes....like we were finding every way possible to lose the game, and still won it.  In the middle of the fourth quarter, the sun finally came out as well, and, the sun finally shined on us in South Bend.  When the game ended, the people in our section went absolutely nuts!!

Final score:

...Touchdown Jesus approves!!

On the way out, it was one of the coolest things ever as all the M fans poured out of the stadium, singing The Victors, and chanting "It's great!!...To be....A MICHIGAN WOLVERINE!!"  filling ND stadium with our triumphant cheers.  It's hard to describe in words, but, anyone that was there knows how awesome it was.  It was awesome to, finally, have something to be *that* excited about relative to M football!!  

After the game, we went around the stadium and found where the players exit to go to the buses.  We met some of the coaching staff and many of the players.

Impressions:

- Barwis' voice is even more gravel-filled in real life than on YouTube.  His wolves must have already been on the bus though, as I didn't see them.

- GERG is a very good looking man.  (No homo)  His hair is so shiny he could have his own Pantene Pro-V commercial

- I shook Devin's hand and his hands are very large.  Should bode well for him holding onto the ball.

- I'm now much faster from the dilithium residue that remains on my hand after high-fiving Denard

- Tate signed a couple autographs, and seemed to be in good spirits, positive, and upbeat.  Take it for what it's worth as it's an isolated incident, but, I think it bodes well for him staying and being an asset to the team.  He seemed to have a good attitude and I took that as a positive.

- Vincent Smith is *tiny*.  Wow.  I think 5'8" may be generous.  I'm thinking more like 5'7".  Now that I've seen him in person, I find what he does on the field that much more amazing.

- Big Will is huge (obvsly)  

- Also high fived Odoms, Kovacs, Molk, Schilling, Mouton, and many others.  Wasn't able to get to Roh or Martin, but saw them.

 

Overall, it was an awesome time.  Once again, a big thanks to IUandUofM for the opportunity to go....  If there's anything I forgot or left out, hopefully he'll chime in in the comments.

Comments

Michigan4Life

September 17th, 2010 at 12:12 PM ^

is closer to 5'6" than 5'8".  I've seen him in person and there's no way that he's 5'8".

 

BTW, you can shrink the picture into a reasonable size because it's too big for any of us to view.  Looks like you took great pictures!

maizenbluedevil

September 17th, 2010 at 12:48 PM ^

Yeah, I was amazed about how small a lot of the other skill position players are as well.  Denard is the exact same height as me, and about 40 pounds lighter.  It's one thing to read that on paper, it's another thing to see it in person.  Crazy.

Gallon is another that jumped out at me, regarding how small he is.  

Gardner is really our only skill position player that has exceptional size going for him.  

 

I'll try to re-size those pics later.  Anyone know how I can do that with HTML as opposed to re-sizing the actual pics, and reuploading?  (I think there's a way to do that, just don't know how)

umhero

September 17th, 2010 at 4:57 PM ^

The way to adjust the size of the images is listed below:

1 - Go into edit mode for your post.

2 - Select an image.

3 - Click the Image icon on the toolbar

4 - Enter a size in the Width box (probably around 400) the Height will automatically adjust.

5 - save each image after the change and resave your post.

If that doesn't work:

1 - In edit mode, go to the bottom of the post and switch to Plain Text Editor

2 - find your images in the code.  They should look like this <img src="[URL GOES HERE]"/>

3 - Add the width=400px right after the code like this <img src="[URL GOES HERE]" width=400px/>

4 - Save and you should be done.

MGoShoe

September 17th, 2010 at 12:21 PM ^

...Your effort is greatly appreciated.   IUandUofM is quite the gentleman.

It's a good thing that you didn't get a high five from Martin since he'd likely take your arm off.  Consider yourself fortunate.

SWFlaBlue

September 17th, 2010 at 12:28 PM ^

Can't think of anything better than a road win at Notre Dame, next to the Buckeyes, that is.

Crazy how loud the Go Blue chant can sound inthe caverns of the ND stadium.

ChitownWolverine82

September 17th, 2010 at 12:34 PM ^

From the looks of your pics, I was only a section or two over.  Great vantage point for watching the game.  Granted my drive was no where near the length of yours, I was very pleased to see the turnout of U-M fans.  The ND fans I came in to contact with were all pretty cordial, except for maybe one "domefan1" look a like.  Hope you enjoyed the game as much as I did.

MGoBlue00

September 17th, 2010 at 1:25 PM ^

My Dad and I made the trip to South Bend as well, and I must say that I was very impressed with the ND fans and ND in general.  None of the over-the-top idiocy that you run into in other spots (read: East Lansing, Columbus).  I was sporting my "Returning to Glory Since 1993" t-shirt but, because of the weather, it didn't get as much time as it should have.

Go Blue!

michboy40

September 17th, 2010 at 2:34 PM ^

Love the touchdown Jesus pic! I saw the same pic earlier this week that was photoshopped. It had D Rob's head, instead of Jesus, and D-Jesus was holding a GO on the left side, and a  blue on the right side. Hilarious!

Kyrie_Smith

September 18th, 2010 at 10:27 AM ^

My wife got us tickets for our anniversary. (I love her dearly)
<br>
<br>I agree that the vast majority of ND fans were respectful and classy especially after the game.
<br>
<br>The flip side of the coin is that we were there for the game two years ago. (if you don't remember, we lost) So after that game the ND fans were no where near being as respectful and classy.
<br>
<br>So it amazes me how humbling a bitter, soul crushing defeat can be.
<br>