sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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Sorry for the delay. Stayed overnight in College Park and by the time we had finished dinner and got back to the hotel, I just wanted to get some sleep. Drove back early the next morning and when I arrived back home, again, just wanted to sleep and then catch up on everything I missed.
So without further ado...
Syracuse is about 364 miles from College Park. It took me 5 hours and 45 minutes to make the trip with a couple of stops for gas/food. I picked up the legendary STO on the way down (he is a Binghamton guy). We took I-81, switched to I-83 in Harrisburg, then basically took I-95 from there into College Park (there are beltways and we took a side road, maybe Route 29 near College Park as well) but it was a simple ride done almost exclusively with cruise control on and the E Street channel rocking on the XM radio.
We met up with another friend in CP and proceeded to lot 4B without incident. Got there early, no real traffic anywhere on the way there, no problems. Mark's proxy crew was already setting up the tailgate. They did a terrific job, props to everyone involved. The food was diverse and well prepared. It was one the best tailgates ever. Many thanks to the people that thought of me and my ginger ale addiction.
It was also one of the most highly attended tailgates ever. I believe someone counted 125 people at one time and of course, there were more as people tend to come and go to these things. There were surely at least 150 that stopped by for at least some period of time and probably more. I believe that breaks the former away game tailgate record for an Akron game and it came close to the Clemson tailgate this year, which was the most heavily attended tailgate for a home game.
As we have seen for basketball games, the DC metro area is a great area to schedule away games at. It is not too far for the die hards from CNY to drive to (or fly). The NYC area people can get to it quite easily. The DC metro folks can of course easily attend and the big group we have in the NC/VA area can also drive there without much trouble.
So the loss of Maryland to the B1G hurts SU a lot from this perspective, I am glad we have already scheduled a home and home with the Terps for the future and hope to see that series expanded so we end up playing them 4 or 6 times in a given decade. This is a series SU fans want to see happen and will travel to. This applies for Maryland basketball as well, especially if cowardly Georgetown continues to be too afraid to schedule Syracuse for OOC games.
Speaking of Maryland basketball, the 4B lot is close to the Comcast Center, the relatively new arena (opened in 2002) they play in these days, and we needed to pass by it on the way to the football stadium, so we walked through it on the way over. My quick review: very clean, primitive ceramic urinals, the arena itself is quite intimate considering how many seats it holds (17,950). All individual seats, which look nice but have that unfortunate red skank color. Nice place, it will be adequate for viewing many Syracuse victories in the future.
It was a pretty long walk to Byrd from 4B. Probably .75 of a mile, mostly uphill. Not unlike ascending Piety Hill to get to the Dome. On the way, we saw a number of drunk UM students, all of whom looked alarming underaged.
In due time we arrived and started the final ascent. As mentioned earlier, the upper deck at Byrd is really high and really far from the field, and to get to it, you have to walk up some ramps. The ramps are quite flat, which is great in one way, as you don't have to work really hard to get up one, but bad in that you need to climb a lot of them to finally get to the 300 level. There might have been 16.
I was pretty full from the enormous spread at the tailgate, so the only things I sampled there were a Hebrew National small hot dog (it was good) and a hot chocolate (also good, and badly needed as I elected to wear shorts, a short sleeve shirt with a thin jacket and no hat to show my support for our team. #hardnosed
From what I could see, there were slim pickings available from the concession stands on the 300 level. French fries, hot dogs, soda, hot chocolate, peanuts, popcorn. That was able it. And they ran out of almost everything, including hot chocolate, by the start of the 4th quarter. Kind of hard to believe given the stadium was only about 50% filled with fans.
Speaking of things that were hard to believe...
1) When the UM band matched before the game, they only had 9 tubas out there. First time ever, I think, that we had more tubas than a BCS opponent. How could this happen? FYI, by the time the UM band sat down in their endzone home, a 10th tuba had arrived (too many tacos on Friday night?).
2) The UM fight song appears to be "O Tannenbaum". In honor of this, I humbly provide you with partial lyrics to this song:
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu[N 1] sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
3) Maryland fans appear to have given up on the Terp program. They had tons of empty seats everywhere and I would estimate that at best, half the seats in the stadium had fannies on top of them.
4) Perhaps most shocking of all, I couldn't find a UM student section. I know UM isn't a top level ACC school, and maybe they were confused and went to Cole Field House (it still stands; I was last there in 1991 for the Richmond game and will not be going back anytime soon) or perhaps were at Redskin Stadium. Frends insisted they were sitting next to the band. If this is true, their student section had about 40 kids in it.
Our seats were around the 30-35 yard line, but they were way up, higher than I have ever sat for a game before except for the last SU-Penn State game, where I was literally sitting in the top row, my back to a concrete wall. Like Beaver Stadium, the upper deck seats at Byrd are an abomination. They are incredibly high and incredibly far from the field. Pretty sure the original design didn't make provisions for an upper deck so they had to build it behind, not over the lower deck, and I mean way behind, so the supporting columns don't even start until the lower deck ends. Anyway, thank God for the Carrier Dome and the sightlines we have there. We are very fortunate.
The game started out windy but fairly warm. Probably 60 degrees. As the sun set, it got noticeably colder, but nothing the Syracuse team and fans could not handle. #hardnosed
As for the game, it looked like Syracuse was determined to run the ball against the Terps. They did engage in some short passes at times (UM was giving SU 5 yards on passes by playing 8 or 9 men in the box each play). There is a strong reluctance to pass the ball over the middle, especially on short and medium routes. We tend to run it, throw a screen or throw it long. Very different from last year when that medium throw over the middle was such a big part of the offense. Part of the problem is surely that we don't have a WR well suited to catching balls over the middle. Wales should be good at this but I think he is banged up and I think he has been most of the season. AB should be good at this too but he isn't. Looks to me like he does a nice job on screens and passes down the sideline but on passes over the middle, he hears steps and gets the gator arms a little bit. That has contributed to 3 or 4 interceptions this season, including another one Saturday.
Really liked what I saw from GMII. He is an exciting player to watch. Thought JS played solid. That fumble he had was a shocker. I think he had a really long and impressive string of carries without a fumble that was broken there. Really pleased with his play in the red zone this season. Last year, he was not good there. Had 227 carries and only 3 TDs, was stopped regularly on carries inside the 5. This year he has 144 carries and already has 10 TDs rushing and another receiving. That will help him come next year and the draft.
Thought Hunt played well. Only real issue I had with him was on the pick, where I thought he led AB a little too much. He has quietly run for 337 yards this season, averaging 5.7 ypc. Pretty darned good. His ability to run with the ball has helped open up the passing game and given the staff another weapon to force defenses to not overplay the pass too much in passing situations.
Went to his secondary receiver better Saturday than he has in recent weeks. Threw the ball well. If he can take care of the ball (which is a big if), he is going to be a good college QB.
Really good to see West making plays and becoming an important part of the offense again. I don't know what the problems were earlier this season but he seems to be with the program again and in sync with the QB running patterns.
Thought GM did a decent job calling plays in the first half. We were hurt by a couple of costly TOs when we were moving the ball well that hurt the bottom line but the play calls were crisp, and the gains good, even when handicapped by penalty calls.
Speaking of penalties, I think it is to be expected SU will be called for more penalties than the opponent most games. We play extremely aggressively on defense. I am pretty sure the mindset is to hit the QB, and if it results in an occasional penalty, so be it. Pretty sure the players are encouraged to hit opponents with the ball in the open field as hard as possible as well. OrangePA has been saying for a while now this is a really hard hitting team and I agree with him. That style of play is going to lead to some extra penalties and it is not necessarily a bad thing.
It might be leading refs to call additional calls on us that are bogus. And similarly, to not call those penalties on opposing teams in similar situations because they get the benefit of the doubt. That isn't right and hopefully will stop over time. But I am pretty sure SU has a reputation among the ACC refs as a hard hitting team that plays really physical and needs to be watched closely.
Thought the defense was great. Spruill and Bromley have played with sustained excellence all season long and deserve all conference honors. Davis has played really well since returning from injury. Eskridge has had a wild roller coaster of a season with extreme highs and lows but has greatly reduced his mistakes and I think he has been playing at a really high level in recent games. Hope he will be okay from the rest of the season.
Crume was terrific Saturday, that sack was something beautiful to behold and should be mandatory watching for all short fat men in the world today. Welsh has been good all season and Zeke is looking really good rushing the passer now.
Loved all the blitzes we showed UM. Did some press coverage with Anderson and Reddish to free bodies for blitzing. They did a nice job with it. Davis and Lynch were effective coming on blitzes as well. Good to see this veteran group of players playing to their potential after the struggles for most of the season. CJ Brown took a tremendous amount of abuse. I bet he was hit 25 or 30 times over the course of the game, often very hard and he somehow managed to finish the game. Not a surprise his performance had a steady decline as the SU defense piled up the hard hits against him.
Props to all the SU fans for coming to the game and making noise. Great to see our players asking the fans to make noise at an away game and getting results.
The UM fans I talked to were impressed with our ability to travel. They were not willing to talk trash, kept saying things like "we just want to get through the season at this point" and were the quietest fans I have ever hear at an away game, breaking the record of the quiet NC State fans from a few weeks ago. Randy has destroyed the enthusiasm of the fans in devastating fashion. Hard for me to understand it given they are only 1 game from being bowl eligible. But that is not our problem anymore. B1G, good luck with this.
Regarding the Wilmeth Sadat Singh presentation, I didn't hear an apology from Maryland admins regarding what was done and I thought the hurried treatment they gave in the short period of time between the 1st and 2nd quarters was inappropriate and disrespectful. But I guess I should be happy they at least acknowledged they did something wrong. It was better than nothing.
Wanted to take a minute to say how nice it was to make so many new people on Saturday. Some had handles and I was familiar with their posts, some had handles but rarely post and a lot are lurkers that never post. It is always great to talk about SU sports with fellow fanatics and this was a very enjoyable experience. Great job by Shenexon, MarcusPitt, Crusty and Mrs Crusty, Juicy and Mrs Juicy, the Arundels, the Wilsons, JSOrange97, etc.
See a bunch of you in Tallahassee on Saturday.
So without further ado...
Syracuse is about 364 miles from College Park. It took me 5 hours and 45 minutes to make the trip with a couple of stops for gas/food. I picked up the legendary STO on the way down (he is a Binghamton guy). We took I-81, switched to I-83 in Harrisburg, then basically took I-95 from there into College Park (there are beltways and we took a side road, maybe Route 29 near College Park as well) but it was a simple ride done almost exclusively with cruise control on and the E Street channel rocking on the XM radio.
We met up with another friend in CP and proceeded to lot 4B without incident. Got there early, no real traffic anywhere on the way there, no problems. Mark's proxy crew was already setting up the tailgate. They did a terrific job, props to everyone involved. The food was diverse and well prepared. It was one the best tailgates ever. Many thanks to the people that thought of me and my ginger ale addiction.
It was also one of the most highly attended tailgates ever. I believe someone counted 125 people at one time and of course, there were more as people tend to come and go to these things. There were surely at least 150 that stopped by for at least some period of time and probably more. I believe that breaks the former away game tailgate record for an Akron game and it came close to the Clemson tailgate this year, which was the most heavily attended tailgate for a home game.
As we have seen for basketball games, the DC metro area is a great area to schedule away games at. It is not too far for the die hards from CNY to drive to (or fly). The NYC area people can get to it quite easily. The DC metro folks can of course easily attend and the big group we have in the NC/VA area can also drive there without much trouble.
So the loss of Maryland to the B1G hurts SU a lot from this perspective, I am glad we have already scheduled a home and home with the Terps for the future and hope to see that series expanded so we end up playing them 4 or 6 times in a given decade. This is a series SU fans want to see happen and will travel to. This applies for Maryland basketball as well, especially if cowardly Georgetown continues to be too afraid to schedule Syracuse for OOC games.
Speaking of Maryland basketball, the 4B lot is close to the Comcast Center, the relatively new arena (opened in 2002) they play in these days, and we needed to pass by it on the way to the football stadium, so we walked through it on the way over. My quick review: very clean, primitive ceramic urinals, the arena itself is quite intimate considering how many seats it holds (17,950). All individual seats, which look nice but have that unfortunate red skank color. Nice place, it will be adequate for viewing many Syracuse victories in the future.
It was a pretty long walk to Byrd from 4B. Probably .75 of a mile, mostly uphill. Not unlike ascending Piety Hill to get to the Dome. On the way, we saw a number of drunk UM students, all of whom looked alarming underaged.
In due time we arrived and started the final ascent. As mentioned earlier, the upper deck at Byrd is really high and really far from the field, and to get to it, you have to walk up some ramps. The ramps are quite flat, which is great in one way, as you don't have to work really hard to get up one, but bad in that you need to climb a lot of them to finally get to the 300 level. There might have been 16.
I was pretty full from the enormous spread at the tailgate, so the only things I sampled there were a Hebrew National small hot dog (it was good) and a hot chocolate (also good, and badly needed as I elected to wear shorts, a short sleeve shirt with a thin jacket and no hat to show my support for our team. #hardnosed
From what I could see, there were slim pickings available from the concession stands on the 300 level. French fries, hot dogs, soda, hot chocolate, peanuts, popcorn. That was able it. And they ran out of almost everything, including hot chocolate, by the start of the 4th quarter. Kind of hard to believe given the stadium was only about 50% filled with fans.
Speaking of things that were hard to believe...
1) When the UM band matched before the game, they only had 9 tubas out there. First time ever, I think, that we had more tubas than a BCS opponent. How could this happen? FYI, by the time the UM band sat down in their endzone home, a 10th tuba had arrived (too many tacos on Friday night?).
2) The UM fight song appears to be "O Tannenbaum". In honor of this, I humbly provide you with partial lyrics to this song:
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu[N 1] sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
3) Maryland fans appear to have given up on the Terp program. They had tons of empty seats everywhere and I would estimate that at best, half the seats in the stadium had fannies on top of them.
4) Perhaps most shocking of all, I couldn't find a UM student section. I know UM isn't a top level ACC school, and maybe they were confused and went to Cole Field House (it still stands; I was last there in 1991 for the Richmond game and will not be going back anytime soon) or perhaps were at Redskin Stadium. Frends insisted they were sitting next to the band. If this is true, their student section had about 40 kids in it.
Our seats were around the 30-35 yard line, but they were way up, higher than I have ever sat for a game before except for the last SU-Penn State game, where I was literally sitting in the top row, my back to a concrete wall. Like Beaver Stadium, the upper deck seats at Byrd are an abomination. They are incredibly high and incredibly far from the field. Pretty sure the original design didn't make provisions for an upper deck so they had to build it behind, not over the lower deck, and I mean way behind, so the supporting columns don't even start until the lower deck ends. Anyway, thank God for the Carrier Dome and the sightlines we have there. We are very fortunate.
The game started out windy but fairly warm. Probably 60 degrees. As the sun set, it got noticeably colder, but nothing the Syracuse team and fans could not handle. #hardnosed
As for the game, it looked like Syracuse was determined to run the ball against the Terps. They did engage in some short passes at times (UM was giving SU 5 yards on passes by playing 8 or 9 men in the box each play). There is a strong reluctance to pass the ball over the middle, especially on short and medium routes. We tend to run it, throw a screen or throw it long. Very different from last year when that medium throw over the middle was such a big part of the offense. Part of the problem is surely that we don't have a WR well suited to catching balls over the middle. Wales should be good at this but I think he is banged up and I think he has been most of the season. AB should be good at this too but he isn't. Looks to me like he does a nice job on screens and passes down the sideline but on passes over the middle, he hears steps and gets the gator arms a little bit. That has contributed to 3 or 4 interceptions this season, including another one Saturday.
Really liked what I saw from GMII. He is an exciting player to watch. Thought JS played solid. That fumble he had was a shocker. I think he had a really long and impressive string of carries without a fumble that was broken there. Really pleased with his play in the red zone this season. Last year, he was not good there. Had 227 carries and only 3 TDs, was stopped regularly on carries inside the 5. This year he has 144 carries and already has 10 TDs rushing and another receiving. That will help him come next year and the draft.
Thought Hunt played well. Only real issue I had with him was on the pick, where I thought he led AB a little too much. He has quietly run for 337 yards this season, averaging 5.7 ypc. Pretty darned good. His ability to run with the ball has helped open up the passing game and given the staff another weapon to force defenses to not overplay the pass too much in passing situations.
Went to his secondary receiver better Saturday than he has in recent weeks. Threw the ball well. If he can take care of the ball (which is a big if), he is going to be a good college QB.
Really good to see West making plays and becoming an important part of the offense again. I don't know what the problems were earlier this season but he seems to be with the program again and in sync with the QB running patterns.
Thought GM did a decent job calling plays in the first half. We were hurt by a couple of costly TOs when we were moving the ball well that hurt the bottom line but the play calls were crisp, and the gains good, even when handicapped by penalty calls.
Speaking of penalties, I think it is to be expected SU will be called for more penalties than the opponent most games. We play extremely aggressively on defense. I am pretty sure the mindset is to hit the QB, and if it results in an occasional penalty, so be it. Pretty sure the players are encouraged to hit opponents with the ball in the open field as hard as possible as well. OrangePA has been saying for a while now this is a really hard hitting team and I agree with him. That style of play is going to lead to some extra penalties and it is not necessarily a bad thing.
It might be leading refs to call additional calls on us that are bogus. And similarly, to not call those penalties on opposing teams in similar situations because they get the benefit of the doubt. That isn't right and hopefully will stop over time. But I am pretty sure SU has a reputation among the ACC refs as a hard hitting team that plays really physical and needs to be watched closely.
Thought the defense was great. Spruill and Bromley have played with sustained excellence all season long and deserve all conference honors. Davis has played really well since returning from injury. Eskridge has had a wild roller coaster of a season with extreme highs and lows but has greatly reduced his mistakes and I think he has been playing at a really high level in recent games. Hope he will be okay from the rest of the season.
Crume was terrific Saturday, that sack was something beautiful to behold and should be mandatory watching for all short fat men in the world today. Welsh has been good all season and Zeke is looking really good rushing the passer now.
Loved all the blitzes we showed UM. Did some press coverage with Anderson and Reddish to free bodies for blitzing. They did a nice job with it. Davis and Lynch were effective coming on blitzes as well. Good to see this veteran group of players playing to their potential after the struggles for most of the season. CJ Brown took a tremendous amount of abuse. I bet he was hit 25 or 30 times over the course of the game, often very hard and he somehow managed to finish the game. Not a surprise his performance had a steady decline as the SU defense piled up the hard hits against him.
Props to all the SU fans for coming to the game and making noise. Great to see our players asking the fans to make noise at an away game and getting results.
The UM fans I talked to were impressed with our ability to travel. They were not willing to talk trash, kept saying things like "we just want to get through the season at this point" and were the quietest fans I have ever hear at an away game, breaking the record of the quiet NC State fans from a few weeks ago. Randy has destroyed the enthusiasm of the fans in devastating fashion. Hard for me to understand it given they are only 1 game from being bowl eligible. But that is not our problem anymore. B1G, good luck with this.
Regarding the Wilmeth Sadat Singh presentation, I didn't hear an apology from Maryland admins regarding what was done and I thought the hurried treatment they gave in the short period of time between the 1st and 2nd quarters was inappropriate and disrespectful. But I guess I should be happy they at least acknowledged they did something wrong. It was better than nothing.
Wanted to take a minute to say how nice it was to make so many new people on Saturday. Some had handles and I was familiar with their posts, some had handles but rarely post and a lot are lurkers that never post. It is always great to talk about SU sports with fellow fanatics and this was a very enjoyable experience. Great job by Shenexon, MarcusPitt, Crusty and Mrs Crusty, Juicy and Mrs Juicy, the Arundels, the Wilsons, JSOrange97, etc.
See a bunch of you in Tallahassee on Saturday.
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