(Written by kencraw)

A few things I didn’t comment on in my rush to get the blog posts out while hurrying around on the road:

The Ohio State marching band

Of course tOSU is known for their marching band and I was pretty excited to see them perform. One of the things I love most about college football is the marching bands and am impressed by the level of professionalism and musical talent I see out of so many different bands, particularly our beloved California Marching Band, but also UCLA, USC (as long as they’re not playing that one STUPID, STUPID, STUPID song) and others. Then there is of course the antithesis of talent, the Stanford band, but that’s a post for another day.

There were two things of note that made the tOSU band special in my mind. The first was how sharp their formations were. Everything was very precise. They were able to pull off things like two lines crossing through each other very well and without affecting other areas. I remember Texas A&M doing the same thing, but they did it by sharply sticking to 90 and 45 degree angles. tOSU was able to do it with lots of different angles and groupings. They made designs with broad arcs and curves as well as stellar straight lines.

The second special thing was how creative they were. Sure they started with the script Ohio that is their trademark, but they did a lot more, some of which was clearly a first-time thing for this game. Their halftime show was particularly impressive along this lines with their tribute to NASA and the various spaceships they made, again demonstrating their ability to have complicated designs with high precision.

Interestingly, the music itself was not as notable. While it was on the better side as far as bands go, it was also on the quiet side, which was surprising considering the size of the band.

In any case, I liked the tOSU band and very much understand why they are lauded. The script Ohio is a great tradition.

The Buckeye Bounce

If there is one thing I will never forgive tOSU for, it is “The Buckeye Bounce”. If you don’t know what it is, you can see a youtube clip of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHrierJkGw0.

The reason I hate them for it is they played it ALL the time, and it got stuck in my head. It was like the above mentioned USC song.

To make matters worse, later that night I heard the same dang song at the Stanford game via the TV. Contain the virus! IT’S SPREADING!

I will give it this, it had a great effect on the crowd. Whenever the PA folks thought they needed to whip up the crowd, which was a lot, they busted it out and it worked very well. Along those lines, Cal could use their own equivalent. It worked much better than the dumb “Make some noise” meters they show on the jumbotron.

More about The Horseshoe

I didn’t really say all that much about the stadium other than it was cozy… It’s really two separate structures. Originally just the horseshoe shaped part was made, and then they added an entirely separate structure at the end of the horseshoe by the south endzone. This creates two walkways into the stadium, one for each team.

Of note: the students are in the endzone. Cal students, please remember how increasingly rare and wonderful your 50-yardline seats are.

The stadium actually has 3 level for concourses even though it is only a two-deck stadium. Being so used to poor stadiums, I thought the bottom concourse would be the only one with food, but later found out they had concessions on all 3 levels. Which was nice from the upper deck.

The upper deck was pretty steep as far as upper decks go. We were pretty high up off the field. Our view was fine, a bit like my 2nd from the top row seats at AT&T last year.

The stadium is showing signs of age, both in the seating area and in the concourses. I have a feeling a face-lift upgrade isn’t too far away.

The nicest part (or most notable depending on how you look at it) of the stadium was the entrance on the north end, the middle of the original horseshoe. Here’s a picture of it:

You can’t really see it in the picture, but those three entry ways have some pretty nice stained glass pictures. The center is the “O” and the two outside ones are pictures of game action.

It was pretty nice. It had that same feel that the new Memorial gives you. Both nice and with a strong connection to our history.