sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Sitting in Terminal E at O’Hare, waiting for my flight back to Syracuse. Hoping to get this post done before we land there.
I flew into Chicago Friday afternoon. Checked into my hotel near the airport. It was across the street from the Rosemont Theatre, aka AllState Arena. I think this is where DePaul played home games during the glory days of Ray Meyer, Mark Aguirre, Terry Cummings and many others. It has to be at least 15 miles from downtown. I assume they played there because it was cheap and available. Would google it but I am too tired.
Found I could get a great ticket for a White Sox game that night for $14 on Fanimal, so I bought it and drove into the city to check it out. Been to Guaranteed Rate Field before. I think it was called US Cellular then. If memory serves, it was built in 1991. It is in great shape and very nice. Really wide concourses. Lots of food options. I tried an Italian Beef and a Chicago style hotdog to get a taste of Chicago. The Italian beef was good. I didn’t eat the roll. There was some kind of acid in was cooked in I think. Maybe a touch of vinegar.
The Comiskey foot long hot dog was okay. The hot dog was thin and it tasted like it had filler in it. Sorry, Hoffman quality. I asked them to drop it through the garden to get the ‘true’ Chicago experience. They put sweet relish, mustard, some tomato wedges, some onions and some hot peppers on it. More vegetables than hot dog. The hot peppers (they had like 6 of them) dominated things so much i struggled to taste anything else. Not my cup of tea.
It was near rush hour driving into the city and traffic was brutal. They have a number of large parking lots near the stadium and some people were tailgating. Nice setup.
They were playing the Twins. The White Sox was expected to be good this year but crashed and burned. The Twins are in first and had about 1/3 of the fans. Guessing there were 10K there.
Driving bad was also bad. I had a straight shot down the interstate but the Chicago police blocked off the entrance ramp close to the stadium. So I drove to the next one and again, they blocked it off just as I was arriving. This happened to 5 entrance ramps before I switched to another interstate and got to my hotel using the backdoor. Not cool Chicago.
So I got to my hotel about an hour later than expected but I saw a lot of the city I wasn’t expecting. Especially Halstad Ave.
It was a weird situation being in Chicago. Google maps noted that my destination (West Lafayette) was in a different time zone than my starting location. So I lost an hour driving there and thankfully gained one coming back. There was construction on the way and the ramp to I65 was closed but I got through it and got to the board tailgate around 2:50 pm (I think). I got a parking pass in a different lot than the tailgate was in so I had a nice walk of a mile or two before finding everyone.
Obie9 and Headmaster 9 volunteered to run this tailgate. I was confused. Didn’t know they had done tailgates before. Knew they were from near Syracuse. What the heck?
I guess no one in the Indiana area was willing to run the tailgate so they stepped up and did it. They had help. Big Mark, JRHEETER, Consigliere and many more pitched in. I didn’t help at all and felt guilty about it. Met a bunch of old friends, made some new friends, including Enrique’s little brother’s football team (and some of their families). I think Obie9 and Headmaster 9 did a great job organizing things. The layout was huge and well thought out. Grills, hot food, cold food, seating areas and standing areas with tables, and lastly the beer pong recreation area. And room was made for cornhole too. Someone is a great planner.
The food was all prepared perfectly. There was a ton of meat options and it was the most keto friendly menu ever. Yay!
After what seemed like 10 hours, it was finally time to head to the stadium. We took a shuttle to the stadium and had a chance to talk to some Purdue fans. They gave us some good natured ribbing (gotta say, the Purdue fans were cordial and cool the whole time I was on campus, and I saw and interacted with a lot of them). Just before entering the stadium, we met the family of the Purdue placekicker. The mom was wearing her son’s jersey. His name was a Ben Something (Friedel, something like that). She said please root for him to make his extra points. We agreed to look out for him and root for him. He unfortunately missed a key one during the game.
Obie9 got the tailgate good seats around the 10 yard line all together. There were a few orange shirts/coats scattered through the crowd but we did not have a good turnout. The player’s families sat near us too, which was cool.
I was at the SU-Purdue game in 2004. The stadium was renovated over the summer (I believe). The lights were new from 2004 (I think they were added in 2016). And the open end of the stadium is now filled and it looks like it has been reserved for students. They had a nice HDTV quality scoreboard in that end zone that was surely also installed as part of the last renovation. The sound system was very loud. Louder even than the dome (which I didn’t think was possible). It was unpleasant and is probably going to make a lot of corn farmers in Indiana deaf.
Nice wide concourses at the stadium. But they had supporting posts for the stadium in the middle of the concourse every 20 yards or so. Kind of unsightly but not awful. They had a ton of beer stands but I on’t think they had as many beer selections available as we do. Most of the food seemed generic but I did notice a BBQ stand that looked promising. I had no room to eat though because of the tailgate.
The stadium has good sight lines. Not as good as the dome. It covers a lot more square footage. But better than most. Only one level. Giant press box/private box on one side that kind of dominates the stadium. Sold out crowd and it was legit. Did not see any empty seats. Surprised at how quiet and docile the Purdue fans were. The students were the loudest Purdue fans and made a little noise but their fans were amazingly quiet for a 61K crowd. Thought our 150 fans were louder than their 61K. But I am hardly objective on it.
The news on OG came out a lot before kickoff. He was at the game and his bad ankle was on a wheeler. Props to him for bothering to come to the game. Respect. He must feel a lot of loyalty to his teammates. Hope this is not the end of his career at Syracuse.
Purdue started off with a lot of short throws towards the sidelines, along always targeting #2 against Wilson. They thought this was the matchup they could exploit. And they had some success with it. Wilson is still a little scrawny to play at this level and #2 shook him off and got away from him a couple of times. But for the most part, he was held to short gains and no YAC. They showed Johnson a lot of respect and rarely threw his way. Got a fairly long pass complete to Burks I think (#4) near the goal line but Johnson was in position to get a pick and the only reason it was complete was because the ball was badly underthrown. Johnson made the big playu to ice the ball on fourth and 1 knocking the ball away.
Purdue also tried hard to establish the run and as expected, they had zero success here. The Purdue OL is not very good, not is their RB. And our run defense is much much improved. This was a big key to the game.
They had their best success in the second half throwing over the middle, mostly to their TEs, who had size and athletic ability. Their best play all game was the old ‘roughing the passer’ call that the refs made whenever a QB was touched. At least they were consistent calling it. Not sure if this crew had a different interpretation of the rules or what. Football is a violent game. I think a QB should be allowed to be hit if they are in the process of releasing the ball. That said, keeping GS healthy is a huge priority for us and the refs calling things this way can only help us.
So many controversial calls in the game. So many reviews. I was not happy because I had a 30 minute walk to my rental car when the game ended and then a 2 hour plus drive back to Chicago. The game lasted al most 4 hours I think. Got to bed at precisely 12:59 AM. Not cool refs.
Rocky threw a bunch of blitzes at Card. One got him bad and I thought he might have a concussion. But he played through the hits and hung in there. They started using him as a weapon running the ball late and it helped them move the ball. He isn’t a dual threat QB IMHO but he is reasonably athletic and against the meh athletes of the B1G West he can probably do some damage.
Darton got bad cramps and got banged up. Just like last year. Wish we subbed more with our capable backups. We need him healthy all season. I think he was just so effective that Rocky felt he needed to play him as much as possible. Nice job KD. Saw DerekMcDonald making some nice plays. Wax was all over the field doing AA things. The safeties all seemed to play pretty well, though I wish they stopped the TE more. Some of that is on the LBs too. We will see teams throwing to the TE a lot now that this has been captured on tape.
The defense played quite well. Great to see them forcing a conservative offense designed to possess the ball to have so many turnovers. Hard to believe they had none until this game.
Thought special teams did okay over all. Stonehouse seemed to shank all his punts. What the hell? Is he hurt? Concerning. Denaberg was outstanding kicking off again but he missed his one FG attempt. But he made all the PATs. Great to see him taking KORs away from the opponent every game. Coverage units were good.. Return units were not good. Purdue had a crappy KO guy and we had a lot of KO returns but none went well. Blocking was very poor. Work for do here.
That leaves the offense and any discussion of the offense needs to start with the name Garrett Shrader. Purdue seemed surprised he was a running threat. WE ran a few options and they took away the RB every time it seemed and left GS to run with little to stop him. Props to GS for some great work with ball fakes on fake handoffs where he went the other way for big gains. Well designed plays executed really well. You have to put a spy on GS. The Purdue DC and HC never made adjustments. Shockingly bad coaching by those guys.
LeQuint struggled to get much running most of the game as the Purdue defense seemed geared to stop him. I think he didn’t do much damage until GS had really established himself as a threat in the fourth quarter. He did deliver in short yardage situations again near the goal line, helped by Rashard Perry (the Bennett Fridge).
This week it was Hatcher who dropped a TD pass. He is fast and as usual, had his guy beat deep but somehow dropped it. Not good. Think he had another catch ripped out of his hands by a Purdue DB. Gotta get stronger for sure. Donovan Brown had the ball stripped and stolen by a Purdue DB in the fourth quarter for the one SU turnover, but from the replay I saw, he had it when he was tackled and the refs inexplicitedly gave the ball to Purdue anyway. Sigh.
Didn’t see a lot of Purdue’s campus. The football stadium and the rest of their athletic facilities (which looked impressive by the way) were all located in the same general area, as is their golf course (which is hilly and looked very much like a typical nice course in CNY).
We were fortunate to catch Purdue with a new HC and new OC and DC. That said, they had a sellout crowd and a nigh game; ideal circumstances to beat an opponent and we just wouldn’t let them take control of the game. Props to the defense for hanging in there and getting turnovers when it mattered. A little unhappy with how we left them move the ball in the fourth but I think we loosened our coverages up some and went into a soft prevent mode to make them burn a lot of clock to move the ball. No big plays were allowed and that is a big deal.
Lots to be happy about. Some things to be concerned about too. Bottom line, we are 3-0 and likely soon to be 4-0. With a bunch of games we will be favored in. Some of the teams on the schedule look considerably worse than we thought initially and it looks like we have a chance to roll up a nice number of wins in the regular season.
Let’s hope Saturday we don’t have to ask GS to run the ball so much against Army and take control of things early. Hoping our starters can be rested the second half and be in good shape for the pivotable second third of the season coming up.
As mentioned, i was at the 2004 debacle at Ross Ade. It was perhaps the low point in the history of my SU fandom. As I remember it, we got boned on a promised home game with East Carolina, and needed a game to fill out the schedule. We panicked and agreed to play Purdue at Purdue like we were a MAC team. That was unacceptable and humiliating enough. But Coach P was still around and we had a new hot shot frohs QB (Joe Fields) and some SU fans (including me) thought we had a shot to beat Purdue in that game. We could do nothing right on offense or defense that day. I just remember shaking my head over and over and listening to an insanely loud Purdue train whistle they beat every time they scored. Which they blew a lot that day. That sound has haunted me for decades.
The win over Purdue in the dome last year helped but we needed to win at the scene of the trauma for me to live a normal life again. Thanks guys. I am whole again. Woo hoo!
Halfway through the flight back to Syracuse. The post is finished. That drive back to Chicago late last night took a lot out of me. GSP took me off I65 not long before the intersection with I80 and I had to drive on a couple of Erie Blvd like roads for 20 miles or so. One was the Lincoln Highway. Finally got back to the interstate that does the outer loop of Chicago (I243 maybe). It was rough to stay awake, Props to all the speedsters on I65 riding 80 mph who helped me get back in record time.
I think if Chicago was 15 minutes further from West Lafayette, I wouldn’t have made it.
Great roadtrip. Now I need a nap!
I flew into Chicago Friday afternoon. Checked into my hotel near the airport. It was across the street from the Rosemont Theatre, aka AllState Arena. I think this is where DePaul played home games during the glory days of Ray Meyer, Mark Aguirre, Terry Cummings and many others. It has to be at least 15 miles from downtown. I assume they played there because it was cheap and available. Would google it but I am too tired.
Found I could get a great ticket for a White Sox game that night for $14 on Fanimal, so I bought it and drove into the city to check it out. Been to Guaranteed Rate Field before. I think it was called US Cellular then. If memory serves, it was built in 1991. It is in great shape and very nice. Really wide concourses. Lots of food options. I tried an Italian Beef and a Chicago style hotdog to get a taste of Chicago. The Italian beef was good. I didn’t eat the roll. There was some kind of acid in was cooked in I think. Maybe a touch of vinegar.
The Comiskey foot long hot dog was okay. The hot dog was thin and it tasted like it had filler in it. Sorry, Hoffman quality. I asked them to drop it through the garden to get the ‘true’ Chicago experience. They put sweet relish, mustard, some tomato wedges, some onions and some hot peppers on it. More vegetables than hot dog. The hot peppers (they had like 6 of them) dominated things so much i struggled to taste anything else. Not my cup of tea.
It was near rush hour driving into the city and traffic was brutal. They have a number of large parking lots near the stadium and some people were tailgating. Nice setup.
They were playing the Twins. The White Sox was expected to be good this year but crashed and burned. The Twins are in first and had about 1/3 of the fans. Guessing there were 10K there.
Driving bad was also bad. I had a straight shot down the interstate but the Chicago police blocked off the entrance ramp close to the stadium. So I drove to the next one and again, they blocked it off just as I was arriving. This happened to 5 entrance ramps before I switched to another interstate and got to my hotel using the backdoor. Not cool Chicago.
So I got to my hotel about an hour later than expected but I saw a lot of the city I wasn’t expecting. Especially Halstad Ave.
It was a weird situation being in Chicago. Google maps noted that my destination (West Lafayette) was in a different time zone than my starting location. So I lost an hour driving there and thankfully gained one coming back. There was construction on the way and the ramp to I65 was closed but I got through it and got to the board tailgate around 2:50 pm (I think). I got a parking pass in a different lot than the tailgate was in so I had a nice walk of a mile or two before finding everyone.
Obie9 and Headmaster 9 volunteered to run this tailgate. I was confused. Didn’t know they had done tailgates before. Knew they were from near Syracuse. What the heck?
I guess no one in the Indiana area was willing to run the tailgate so they stepped up and did it. They had help. Big Mark, JRHEETER, Consigliere and many more pitched in. I didn’t help at all and felt guilty about it. Met a bunch of old friends, made some new friends, including Enrique’s little brother’s football team (and some of their families). I think Obie9 and Headmaster 9 did a great job organizing things. The layout was huge and well thought out. Grills, hot food, cold food, seating areas and standing areas with tables, and lastly the beer pong recreation area. And room was made for cornhole too. Someone is a great planner.
The food was all prepared perfectly. There was a ton of meat options and it was the most keto friendly menu ever. Yay!
After what seemed like 10 hours, it was finally time to head to the stadium. We took a shuttle to the stadium and had a chance to talk to some Purdue fans. They gave us some good natured ribbing (gotta say, the Purdue fans were cordial and cool the whole time I was on campus, and I saw and interacted with a lot of them). Just before entering the stadium, we met the family of the Purdue placekicker. The mom was wearing her son’s jersey. His name was a Ben Something (Friedel, something like that). She said please root for him to make his extra points. We agreed to look out for him and root for him. He unfortunately missed a key one during the game.
Obie9 got the tailgate good seats around the 10 yard line all together. There were a few orange shirts/coats scattered through the crowd but we did not have a good turnout. The player’s families sat near us too, which was cool.
I was at the SU-Purdue game in 2004. The stadium was renovated over the summer (I believe). The lights were new from 2004 (I think they were added in 2016). And the open end of the stadium is now filled and it looks like it has been reserved for students. They had a nice HDTV quality scoreboard in that end zone that was surely also installed as part of the last renovation. The sound system was very loud. Louder even than the dome (which I didn’t think was possible). It was unpleasant and is probably going to make a lot of corn farmers in Indiana deaf.
Nice wide concourses at the stadium. But they had supporting posts for the stadium in the middle of the concourse every 20 yards or so. Kind of unsightly but not awful. They had a ton of beer stands but I on’t think they had as many beer selections available as we do. Most of the food seemed generic but I did notice a BBQ stand that looked promising. I had no room to eat though because of the tailgate.
The stadium has good sight lines. Not as good as the dome. It covers a lot more square footage. But better than most. Only one level. Giant press box/private box on one side that kind of dominates the stadium. Sold out crowd and it was legit. Did not see any empty seats. Surprised at how quiet and docile the Purdue fans were. The students were the loudest Purdue fans and made a little noise but their fans were amazingly quiet for a 61K crowd. Thought our 150 fans were louder than their 61K. But I am hardly objective on it.
The news on OG came out a lot before kickoff. He was at the game and his bad ankle was on a wheeler. Props to him for bothering to come to the game. Respect. He must feel a lot of loyalty to his teammates. Hope this is not the end of his career at Syracuse.
Purdue started off with a lot of short throws towards the sidelines, along always targeting #2 against Wilson. They thought this was the matchup they could exploit. And they had some success with it. Wilson is still a little scrawny to play at this level and #2 shook him off and got away from him a couple of times. But for the most part, he was held to short gains and no YAC. They showed Johnson a lot of respect and rarely threw his way. Got a fairly long pass complete to Burks I think (#4) near the goal line but Johnson was in position to get a pick and the only reason it was complete was because the ball was badly underthrown. Johnson made the big playu to ice the ball on fourth and 1 knocking the ball away.
Purdue also tried hard to establish the run and as expected, they had zero success here. The Purdue OL is not very good, not is their RB. And our run defense is much much improved. This was a big key to the game.
They had their best success in the second half throwing over the middle, mostly to their TEs, who had size and athletic ability. Their best play all game was the old ‘roughing the passer’ call that the refs made whenever a QB was touched. At least they were consistent calling it. Not sure if this crew had a different interpretation of the rules or what. Football is a violent game. I think a QB should be allowed to be hit if they are in the process of releasing the ball. That said, keeping GS healthy is a huge priority for us and the refs calling things this way can only help us.
So many controversial calls in the game. So many reviews. I was not happy because I had a 30 minute walk to my rental car when the game ended and then a 2 hour plus drive back to Chicago. The game lasted al most 4 hours I think. Got to bed at precisely 12:59 AM. Not cool refs.
Rocky threw a bunch of blitzes at Card. One got him bad and I thought he might have a concussion. But he played through the hits and hung in there. They started using him as a weapon running the ball late and it helped them move the ball. He isn’t a dual threat QB IMHO but he is reasonably athletic and against the meh athletes of the B1G West he can probably do some damage.
Darton got bad cramps and got banged up. Just like last year. Wish we subbed more with our capable backups. We need him healthy all season. I think he was just so effective that Rocky felt he needed to play him as much as possible. Nice job KD. Saw DerekMcDonald making some nice plays. Wax was all over the field doing AA things. The safeties all seemed to play pretty well, though I wish they stopped the TE more. Some of that is on the LBs too. We will see teams throwing to the TE a lot now that this has been captured on tape.
The defense played quite well. Great to see them forcing a conservative offense designed to possess the ball to have so many turnovers. Hard to believe they had none until this game.
Thought special teams did okay over all. Stonehouse seemed to shank all his punts. What the hell? Is he hurt? Concerning. Denaberg was outstanding kicking off again but he missed his one FG attempt. But he made all the PATs. Great to see him taking KORs away from the opponent every game. Coverage units were good.. Return units were not good. Purdue had a crappy KO guy and we had a lot of KO returns but none went well. Blocking was very poor. Work for do here.
That leaves the offense and any discussion of the offense needs to start with the name Garrett Shrader. Purdue seemed surprised he was a running threat. WE ran a few options and they took away the RB every time it seemed and left GS to run with little to stop him. Props to GS for some great work with ball fakes on fake handoffs where he went the other way for big gains. Well designed plays executed really well. You have to put a spy on GS. The Purdue DC and HC never made adjustments. Shockingly bad coaching by those guys.
LeQuint struggled to get much running most of the game as the Purdue defense seemed geared to stop him. I think he didn’t do much damage until GS had really established himself as a threat in the fourth quarter. He did deliver in short yardage situations again near the goal line, helped by Rashard Perry (the Bennett Fridge).
This week it was Hatcher who dropped a TD pass. He is fast and as usual, had his guy beat deep but somehow dropped it. Not good. Think he had another catch ripped out of his hands by a Purdue DB. Gotta get stronger for sure. Donovan Brown had the ball stripped and stolen by a Purdue DB in the fourth quarter for the one SU turnover, but from the replay I saw, he had it when he was tackled and the refs inexplicitedly gave the ball to Purdue anyway. Sigh.
Didn’t see a lot of Purdue’s campus. The football stadium and the rest of their athletic facilities (which looked impressive by the way) were all located in the same general area, as is their golf course (which is hilly and looked very much like a typical nice course in CNY).
We were fortunate to catch Purdue with a new HC and new OC and DC. That said, they had a sellout crowd and a nigh game; ideal circumstances to beat an opponent and we just wouldn’t let them take control of the game. Props to the defense for hanging in there and getting turnovers when it mattered. A little unhappy with how we left them move the ball in the fourth but I think we loosened our coverages up some and went into a soft prevent mode to make them burn a lot of clock to move the ball. No big plays were allowed and that is a big deal.
Lots to be happy about. Some things to be concerned about too. Bottom line, we are 3-0 and likely soon to be 4-0. With a bunch of games we will be favored in. Some of the teams on the schedule look considerably worse than we thought initially and it looks like we have a chance to roll up a nice number of wins in the regular season.
Let’s hope Saturday we don’t have to ask GS to run the ball so much against Army and take control of things early. Hoping our starters can be rested the second half and be in good shape for the pivotable second third of the season coming up.
As mentioned, i was at the 2004 debacle at Ross Ade. It was perhaps the low point in the history of my SU fandom. As I remember it, we got boned on a promised home game with East Carolina, and needed a game to fill out the schedule. We panicked and agreed to play Purdue at Purdue like we were a MAC team. That was unacceptable and humiliating enough. But Coach P was still around and we had a new hot shot frohs QB (Joe Fields) and some SU fans (including me) thought we had a shot to beat Purdue in that game. We could do nothing right on offense or defense that day. I just remember shaking my head over and over and listening to an insanely loud Purdue train whistle they beat every time they scored. Which they blew a lot that day. That sound has haunted me for decades.
The win over Purdue in the dome last year helped but we needed to win at the scene of the trauma for me to live a normal life again. Thanks guys. I am whole again. Woo hoo!
Halfway through the flight back to Syracuse. The post is finished. That drive back to Chicago late last night took a lot out of me. GSP took me off I65 not long before the intersection with I80 and I had to drive on a couple of Erie Blvd like roads for 20 miles or so. One was the Lincoln Highway. Finally got back to the interstate that does the outer loop of Chicago (I243 maybe). It was rough to stay awake, Props to all the speedsters on I65 riding 80 mph who helped me get back in record time.
I think if Chicago was 15 minutes further from West Lafayette, I wouldn’t have made it.
Great roadtrip. Now I need a nap!
